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I’ve been trying to find the perfect finger food to help my baby develop his pincer grasp. Everything I tried- banana, cucumber strips, scrambled egg yolk, grated carrot, halved grapes and blueberries, the list goes on- seemed more frustrating than helpful. It was so slippery he couldn’t get his fingers around the pieces, and I realized while trying to clean off his highchair that I couldn’t even pick any of the pieces up, and I’ve been using my pincers for decades! Of course I am of the “avoid packaged food” mindset, but here’s where being integrative comes in. I needed to find a good middle ground for feeding my baby something to help him develop his fine motor skills, yet without all the added junk. I read in Dr. Sears The Baby Book that vegetable puffs are a bad idea. Feeding those to our babies leads them to believe that veggies should taste like a chip. We need to teach them that vegetables should be juicy and fresh. And the fruit puffs seemed to have so much added sugar. I chuckled over Nina Planck’s “no cheerios and goldfish” policy in her book Real Food for Mother and Baby. But what to do? They seem to be the inevitable finger food of choice. I knew I could find a healthier alternative. So I scoured the ingredients of every organic o shaped cereal on the market and decided on Oatios.

They have only 5 ingredients, all whole and organic, nothing synthetic and no wheat.
When I opened the package and put one in front of my baby, he ever so carefully pick one up with perfect pincer precision, as if he’d been doing it his whole life. And it went straight into his mouth. Apparently he’s been studying us and just waiting for me to give him the right finger food with which to display his skills.