It Sounds Easy

Feeding your child breakfast should be a fairly simple task involving making a meal, putting child in high chair, feeding your child, cleaning their hands and face and viola...mealtime is over!

That doesn't happen here.

Midge has decided that he doesn't want to sit and eat. He doesn't even really want to stand and eat. So I feed him two bites of yogurt standing up and he runs off to play. I am tempted to chase him but I am not about to teach him that mommy is not his portable feeding machine. We go to Jazzercise after breakfast and after an hour he bursts out of childcare clamoring at my feet with his hungry pant that sounds remarkably like Bill Cosby's imitation of lamaze breathing. We only live a couple blocks away so I opt to take him home and feed him what is left of his breakfast. The entire way home he is falling apart. When we get home I stick him in his high chair and go to get his yogurt. When I turn back he has wiggled out of the chair and is squatting on the tray. I try to place him back in the chair he throws a tantrum.

At this point I decide that he needs to learn that if he won't sit then he won't eat. I have to make one of those pivotal mommy calls where I either have to break down and try to feed him on the go or suck it up and allow him to experience the reprecussions of his actions. It was a tough call because he's still a young toddler but I decided that I had made every effort to feed him and I had to let it go and let him be unhappy. I offered him another bite, but he ran off so I left the room.

Within a minute he came back to me crying. I mean, he looks pathetic and all but by this point I just shake my head. By 11am he has taken two bites of yogurt. He is hungry and refuses to sit down and eat. The sheer ridiculousness of the whole breakfast ordeal has lasted until lunch now. Look at this face. I hope he can duplicate it's pathetic-ness for grandma or maybe even the CPS agents when they come out for a malnourished child report.

Gotta make lunch with a screaming toddler at my legs. Maybe I'll sprinkle some Valium on my pizza today.