Her sharp excessive teeth are great for ripping bread, berries, breasts. She holds one crust in one hand, places it in her mouth, clamps her front teeth down and then rips the bread away, like I imagine savage pirates do to juicy mutton. Musette doesn't quite understand swallowing yet, so instead of pushing the food to the back of her mouth, she just jams more food in and the food does the pushing for her.
Sometimes when she is "finished" her food, we find pieces of it still in her mouth later. Last week it was a pocketed green bean. Earlier it was a chunk of beef.
The lactation consultant told us "food before one is just for fun", as in, most of her nutrition should still come from breast milk. This is great in theory, less so in practice. Baby Musette likes to chew on me the way she does her mutton bread. But we persist, because it's good for her, because she likes it, because if she knew what she were doing she wouldn't do it, because my child who never stops moving will relax in my arms and put her hand to my mouth and sit so still for ten, twenty, thirty minutes as she brushes her fingertips across my face so I can give her kisses.
Because I'm her mommy, and I do mommy shit now.