Dinner Reservation For Lucas, Your Floor Is Ready

This is not what I imagined feeding a toddler would be like.  I just got over a good old fashioned gut wrenching cry.  My baby won’t eat his food…unless it is on the floor.  He also won’t wear clothes or his diaper. So what does that leave me with, a naked baby eating food off the floor.  I try so hard. 

B.B. (before baby) I was all about the pontificating.  I will have boundaries and consistency.  My baby will not learn bad behaviors because he will not be given the opportunity to learn them.  For instance, B.B. I thought if my baby throws food on the floor then lunch is over and he will just have to wait till dinner to eat again.  That way my baby will “learn” that throwing food on the floor is unacceptable.

I was sooo full of shit.

That was before I knew that a hungry baby = an angry baby complete with blood curdling screams, a continuous whining sound of waaaah – waaah – waaah, wanting up and then down simultaneously, little hands scratching my eyes out, and some no nonsense pulling of my hair.   My baby doesn’t need baby sign language to communicate, he is saying, “Fuck you!”  I don’t need $75.00 of Baby Einstein tapes to tell me my baby is pissed and wants his food…on the floor.

So I toil away in the kitchen battered and bruised, (and missing patches of hair) lovingly cutting up over priced organic fruit that I have to drive half way across town to get.  I carefully butter Lucas’ stone ground bread with organic butter from a small farm in Vermont with a picture of the “Bessie”, the family’s dairy cow, on the packaging.   Only to have Lucas throw the food on the floor…not to mention Bessie the cow’s hard work.  It’s not easy having something pull on your udders all day.  Show some respect child.

I take Lucas out of his high chair and before I can even turn around, the diaper is off and my child is scurrying around naked on his hands and knees eating his food off the floor like a child in a Save the Children commercial with Sally Struthers. 

That’s when the bawling starts, my bawling. My child has a will of his own.  He is growing up, going from baby to toddler.  All which is good….I guess…right?  It is frustrating though I have to admit.  Is true love still feeding something, despite the fact that the something you are feeding, scratches your eyes out and pulls your hair. I don’t want to turn into an inflexible Mother. “It’s the high chair or NOTHING!”  That would be horrible, but a balance between the two is something I am working on. In the meantime, dinner is served. 

See you on the rug.

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