So one of my pet peeves is open mouth chewing. I have talked to people who do it and well to be honest, I wanted so badly to understand this behaviour that over the years, I have tried to see if the benefits that have been spoken of are true for me. Nope, I find it upsetting and silly when I try. Why on earth do people do it is still beyond me. No, the food does not taste better. Unless you are sick or have other issues I cannot understand how you can have your mouth closed and breathe through your nose but the moment you add food you claim you cannot breathe through your nose and need to chew and breathe, which I find incredibly difficult. I have tried and tried in private to master this knack of open mouth chewing simply to understand and yet I still find it uncouth to say the least.

Yet today found me actively chewing with my mouth open in an exaggerated fashion. Lily demanded to be included when we ate lunch today, well she showed a lot more frustration at not having her own bit to eat at least. Some days there are things she can suck on but today nothing was really appropriate for her to do that with. Everything looked like a choking hazard to me, so I took the plunge… to see if I could convince her to chew.

She did, with a big smile on her face when I encouraged her for doing it right. So, in went a little tiny bit of chicken that could be swallowed whole if she stopped chewing, nope, she happily chewed away… with her mouth wide open as mommy had so plainly showed. Tiny bit after tiny bit went in, and she proudly showed her chewing ability to me.

What have I done?

Obviously I cannot bring myself to document the open mouth chewing just yet.