Trying to Catch a Break

Last night after dinner I had reached my limit with Two. To be exact, it was 20 minutes after everyone but Gabbie had finished dinner and moved on to other activities, while she was still sitting there avoiding even looking at her dinner for fear that some of it might actually end up in her mouth. She was also loudly lamenting the fact that she had been left alone at the table by her horribly mean parents. My head was ready to explode, and though I'm not proud of it, I finally let her down from the table but not without yelling at her first.

It may be the hormones talking, but this kid refusing to eat is the most frustrating thing I've ever had to deal with. It's worse than potty training, because in this situation she's not even bribable. We tried the whole, if you eat your dinner we'll give you dessert thing, but then it just puts the idea of a dessert in her head and then she won't eat anything else, and would rather not eat either dinner or dessert than ingest a single morsel of chili or chicken pot pie. She must think that I'm a horrible person for trying to get her to eat such apparently abhorent meals.

Anyway, Aaron had been outside working on a flower bed, but heard my rather boisterous lecture and came in to intervene. The funny thing is that he didn't come in to save her, but rather to save me. He's worried about my stress level, especially as I get larger and closer to my due date, so he came in and sent me packing for an hour. I was instructed to do whatever I wanted, so long as it was away from the house and the two of them. The man has a point - the only time I get free, and to myself, is when I'm at work, and that's not quite the quality time he thinks I need.

So I went to Target, seeing as it's near our house and there were a couple of baby items I wanted to check out. The only thing I ended up buying were some Halloween window decals to use with Gabbie to decorate our sliding door, but it was nice to have a few moments to just breathe. Aaron told me I definitely have to get out at least once weekly until bambino numero dos makes her appearance, which is fine with me. Next time I'm hitting up the craft store.

As to how to deal with Gabbie and eating, though, I have no idea. I may have to research some ideas online or learn how to meditate. She's just lucky she's so funny and cute!

1 comments:

Cassie said...
October 12, 2010 at 3:30 PM

You know what the most frustrating part of it is (at least for me)? Andrew will eat only mediocre-ly (totally just made that a word) for me, but at daycare? That boy GOBBLES the food and often asks for more. Even if he gets the same thing at home that he gets at daycare -- he always eats there better. Frustrating!

You didn't ask for advice so I'm not going to give it (frankly, I have no idea what I'm doing myself half the time), but I will tell you what we do with Andrew. He gets the same thing we get for dinner, along with a few things that I know he likes and will always eat (yogurt, green beans or carrots or corn, some kind of fruit). He always eats the things he likes first, and then he'll usually take a bite or two of the unfamiliar food. If he likes it, he'll keep eating it. If he doesn't and asks to be excused, I'll let him get down. At least he's eaten SOMETHING that way. The key for us, I've learned, is to completely ignore the way he's eating during dinner: carry on conversations with him as usual, but say nothing about how well he's eating or pestering him to eat more. (He does get admonished if he starts to play with his food, of course.) It seems like when I don't make food such a big deal, he always eats more. But that will probably change tomorrow, because two-year-olds are the farthest thing from predictible.

Sorry about this long comment. I probably should have just e-mailed you. I'm so glad you got a little bit of time away from the house and your obligations...You totally deserve it for these next couple of months!

Leave a Comment

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Back to Home Back to Top Mrs. Ca. Theme ligneous by pure-essence.net. Bloggerized by Chica Blogger.