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Now that Little Missy has expanded her list of foods that she’ll eat--I’m not talking anything exciting like enchiladas or crab cakes, but she will eat eggs and clean noodles--she is often eating pretty much the same food as the rest of us. And now that she has a full, preschool-sized plate of food in front of her, Hubby and I have discovered how stinkin’ SLOWLY she eats.
It is not a problem of her liking the food on her plate; she does. Set a plate of clean noodles in front of her and she’s overjoyed. Or put a piece of hamburger pizza on her plate and she does the happy dance. It is just that she takes the smallest bites that can actually be called bites, and then chews those bites so long she doesn’t have to swallow any food, but the stuff dissolves to nothing and slides down her throat.
Hubby and G and I eat our food like normal people. We take normal-sized bites and chat in between, and then we are done with our dinner about twenty minutes before Little Missy is finished. AT LEAST twenty minutes. Sometimes longer. And so we politely sit at the table with her, while she takes teeny-tiny bites of her food and chews them until they’re dissolved into nothing, intermittently smiling and making jokes. And then we have to remind her to take more bites and to stop talking, which is not what the point of a family dinner. The point is to converse and talk with each other and not to constantly be reminding the three-year old to eat.
I’ve noticed the mood slowly changes at dinner. We all sit down happily, chatting about preschool and friends, but as the evening wears on Hubby and I run out of things to say. I mean, it’s hard to talk about finances and work with little ears listening and wanting to understand every minute detail of our conversation. So Hubby and I fall silent, and we both sit and shift in our chairs as we watch Little Missy. And then the synapses in my brain stop firing from lack of use and I can feel my intelligence slowly leaving. We must set a time limit for dinner before my brain turns to mush.
Now that Little Missy has expanded her list of foods that she’ll eat--I’m not talking anything exciting like enchiladas or crab cakes, but she will eat eggs and clean noodles--she is often eating pretty much the same food as the rest of us. And now that she has a full, preschool-sized plate of food in front of her, Hubby and I have discovered how stinkin’ SLOWLY she eats.
It is not a problem of her liking the food on her plate; she does. Set a plate of clean noodles in front of her and she’s overjoyed. Or put a piece of hamburger pizza on her plate and she does the happy dance. It is just that she takes the smallest bites that can actually be called bites, and then chews those bites so long she doesn’t have to swallow any food, but the stuff dissolves to nothing and slides down her throat.
Hubby and G and I eat our food like normal people. We take normal-sized bites and chat in between, and then we are done with our dinner about twenty minutes before Little Missy is finished. AT LEAST twenty minutes. Sometimes longer. And so we politely sit at the table with her, while she takes teeny-tiny bites of her food and chews them until they’re dissolved into nothing, intermittently smiling and making jokes. And then we have to remind her to take more bites and to stop talking, which is not what the point of a family dinner. The point is to converse and talk with each other and not to constantly be reminding the three-year old to eat.
I’ve noticed the mood slowly changes at dinner. We all sit down happily, chatting about preschool and friends, but as the evening wears on Hubby and I run out of things to say. I mean, it’s hard to talk about finances and work with little ears listening and wanting to understand every minute detail of our conversation. So Hubby and I fall silent, and we both sit and shift in our chairs as we watch Little Missy. And then the synapses in my brain stop firing from lack of use and I can feel my intelligence slowly leaving. We must set a time limit for dinner before my brain turns to mush.
