Scientific Dada

Mealtime in our household is no longer what it once was. For example, we (Chris & Melissa) used to sit together and eat slowly and talk about what we did that day and interesting topics from the news or any number of subjects. This no longer happens. Instead, here is an up to date description of meals:
-Melissa fixes dinner. Everett announces that he doesn’t like it, even if it’s been his favorite food for the last 6 years and he asked Melissa to fix it (this is only a mild exaggeration).
-We put Teddy in his chair and give him his dinner. He refuses to eat.
-We put Gwen in her chair. She screams and cries and straightens her body to keep her bottom off the seat. If we force her into her seat then she screams and cries louder and then and throws her dinner plate (and everything within reach) onto the floor. After a while she will sometimes settle down and eat, but within a few minutes she says “Up! Up! Up!”, and if we get her out of her chair she walks about 8 inches over to Melissa’s chair and says “Up! Up! Up!” and then wants to sit in Melissa’s lap and eat her dinner. The only compromise we have found is for Gwen to sit in a regular grown-up chair at the head of the table. She can’t really see much, so she often kneels on the chair, and this naturally leads to standing. We constantly tell her she may not stand on the chair but only lasts a couple minutes. Tonight she fell off her chair. Fortunately she is ok. We decided today that it’s time to start putting the babies in time-out as a consequence for bad behavior.
-Teddy is determined to use a fork to eat his food. Nonetheless, he throws the first three forks we give him on the ground while saying “Uh-oh”. Eventually he has a few bites of food, then wants a cup of water so that he can conduct experiments. He puts bites of food in the water and mixes it up with the fork. After a while he dumps the cup in his lap and wants to start over. When we tell him no he cries and throws his dinner plate on the floor.
-While this is happening, Everett is doing anything but eating his food. He talks about his day, tells us how much he doesn’t like his dinner and wants to get up every few minutes to get things from the kitchen, go to the bathroom, etc. After not eating dinner he is ready for dessert.
-When there is a clearing in the overall level of commotion, Chris and Melissa try to shove food in their mouths as quickly as possible.

Fortunately the children do cute and funny things from time to time. This morning Chris was talking to Melissa about scientific data when Everett suddenly perked up and said “Who is Scientific Dada?!?” (he was confused by the fact that Chris pronounced data with two short a sounds). It was one of the funnier things we have heard in a while and this be be Chris’ new nickname!

Comments (1)

One thought on “Scientific Dada

  1. However, they will all eat bread, preferably with butter. And when the babies smile and say “HI” in those sweet voices, all is forgiven. Good job, Scientific Dada.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Powered by WordPress
Natural World RapidWeaver theme by ThemeFlood