I'm not so sure - I think the mess goes in waves. At first it was inadvertent, she was still so young that she was taken by surprise by her own arm-flailing. Then she worked out the whole food thing and we had a neat phase when everything got hoovered up. Now she's a bit more savvy and the Deliberate Fling has arrived to demonstrate the end of the meal and the mess quotient has notched back up. I'm hoping for an out-growing of this phase but she is already starting to take an interest in spoons and wanting to do it herself so I can see that this is likely to be the next stage of the mess-fest. To me, looking at non-BLW babies, Small & I are just less fazed by the mess and so (I hope) aren't racking up any complexes for the future about "dirty" hands or "messy" foods. Not to say that puree weaned babies will automatically go on to have "issues"! However spoon fed babies do seem to have a spoon strike sooner or later and then they may have some catching up to do on the whole dexterity & texture-handling front.