BUSY BEE

Lately, it seems as if Liv cannot find the time in her daily schedule to actually sit down in her high chair and eat a meal. She seems to be much to busy reading her books in the playroom, watching Dora, climbing up and down and up and down the stairs, pulling all the toilet paper off of the ring in the bathroom, splashing in the toilet. You know, all those important things a 1 year old needs to get done during the day.

Every time I pluck her from whatever task she was busy completing in order to place her in her highchair for some much needed nourishment she revolts. Most often she begins screaming out loud with a look of panic on her face as if she is saying, "Mom get me out of here!! I must finish tearing apart that bathroom and read my 'all about animals' book or I will just die!"

I tend to ignore this behavior, placing different items on her plate in the hopes that one will spark her interest and distract her from her tantrum. Sometimes this works, but as of late it has unfortunately not. She now throws the tantrum AND throws the food. Let's just say I don't like this very much. Not to mention, she is very persistent, and will sit in that darn high chair for what seems like an hour screaming and crying to be released. So naturally, I give up, and get her out of the highchair, where she happily goes back to her task at hand. Until she decides she is hungry, comes back, shouts and crys out pointing to her highchair in the hopes of getting some food. So I put her back into the high chair, where she screams again.

Seems she wants the food, but does not want to be bothered with having to sit nicely in her chair to eat it. Seems she wants to eat her food at her leisure, taking a bite when she feels the need, then going off to the playroom for some fun, and coming back around again when the mood strikes. You get the idea, she does not want to be told when she should eat.

So this morning, I had a grand idea. I decided after we had gone through the whole process talked about above, and she was standing at the high chair reaching and whining for the food, to just put the top of her highchair with the food on it, on the kitchen floor. At first when she noticed her food sitting on the ground she was a bit hesitant. Looking up at me as if to say, "is this for real??"

Even when she came out of the playroom for seconds she still seemed a bit hesitant, almost wondering if this was too good to be true.

But after that second trip to the site where her food was put out for her, she seemed quite comfortable with the idea of eating off of the floor, no longer worried about Mom taking the food away.

For over an hour or so, she played, came around to the kitchen to grab a cheerio off her plate, went to play again, came back around for a piece of banana, then off to the playroom yet again smiling all the while- the girl was elated that I had finally come up with a solution to her problem.

Mom, on the other hand, not so elated. I am thinking this may have been a mistake as now she is going to think she can eat off of the floor all the time, and this really is not acceptable - c'mon, us Shelton's weren't born in a barn.

But goodness, the girl was in hog heaven.