A few things that we haven't blogged about before...

When Mercer & I went to NC, he got to feed a giraffe. There's a new platform built at the NC Zoo and the zookeepers have limbs that people can hold and feed through the railing. Mercer held the branch (with my help of course) but he was face-to-face with a sideways-chewing animal. He wasn't scared at all. He was quite fascinated. [ The picture at the bottom of this web page of the man feeding the giraffe isn't accurate of what Mercer & I did... an (apparently) taller giraffe was feeding at the platform and you could directly feed it through the railing instead -- about 1' away! It was probably more interesting for me, honestly http://www.nczoo.org/animals/giraffe/keepercorner.html ]

Mercer is now clearing the table. When he's finished eating his food, he puts his utensil on his plate and hands it to Todd or myself. He also says "all done." He also hands us his bottle when he's finished. Sometimes, he'll bring it into the kitchen and try to put it in the sink. Occasionally he gets it in there.

Every now & then, we try foods with nuts in them. I think that the recommendation is that he gets nuts when he's 2 years old, but he wants to eat our food a lot of times, so -- we've tried it a couple of times (once with almonds and then several times this week with macadamia nuts, as it was in a pasta dish we made a big batch of. So far, so good. No reaction / no allergies that we can see.)

One more thing about food... here are some pictures of him eating black beans. We went to a restaurant last night where he wanted to feed himself - as he's insisting on more and more. He would eat some spoon-fuls of the beans, but he would also pick beans out of the bowl with his fingers one-by-one and eat them that way too. We didn't take a camera with us to the restaurant, so we brought him back home to continue (after all, playing in the restaurant then occasionally eating a bean makes for a long meal). He wasn't happy when we left the restaurant because he wasn't finished, so we set him back up at home. Check out the residue of his handy-work all across his face! He seems proud of it, actually.

Finally, the daycare has been trying Mercer out in the Toddler room every now and then. We're not sure when they're officially going to move him over, but it will be sometime in December we think. He will still get to play a lot, but they'll also start teaching him things in that room.