growing more and more independent

Lately the kids have become more and more inde­pen­dent. They are typ­i­cal tod­dlers that want to do every­thing for them­selves. Usu­ally I just let them have at it. I try to sit back and let them puz­zle out how to do what­ever it is that they want to do but there are times where I feel like I don’t have the time to sit and wait for them so I bull­doze ahead.

The kids are get­ting really good at feed­ing them­selves. We usu­ally stick to stuff like pasta, chicken, pizza and salad and they man­age quite nicely. Admit­tedly they usu­ally just eat with their hands but they are get­ting bet­ter at using uten­sils. We have salad almost every night and now the kids expect that we will pull their chairs close beside us so that they can eat salad too. Some nights this means that they just push stuff around with their forks and other nights it means that they are grab­bing fist­fuls of greens or toma­toes and either eat­ing it or attempt­ing to feed us.

Since the kids have become more pro­fi­cient with using uten­sils we have avoided eat­ing soup for din­ner until tonight. We went to a friends house and he made pea soup for din­ner. When we arrived before we even entered I could smell the soup, it smelled amaz­ing. He had crusty loaves of bread for dip­ping and my hus­band whipped up a salad. All I had to do was wran­gle kids until the meal was ready.

We got the kids in their chairs and started to eat. I picked out car­rots and pota­toes to cool and then pile on the kids’ plates. My daugh­ter was con­tented to clutch her spoon in one hand and grab car­rots with the other. My son was upset almost from the start. He didn’t want any of the food I put on his plate. He pointed ani­mat­edly to my husband’s bowl of soup and brushed away any attempts I made to feed him soup from my spoon. Our host said it didn’t mind if the boy ate from our plates so I moved my bowl over in front of him. He clutched his spoon and I thought he was just going to fish around once he saw that it was soup but he man­aged to get some on his spoon and nav­i­gated it up to his mouth. About half the time it slid off and landed on his pants but the rest of the time it got most of it in his mouth. This made him extremely proud and I have to say that I felt pride swell up in me too. There is some­thing about watch­ing my kids feed them­selves that makes me happy.

By the time we were fin­ished my son had soup smeared all over his pants, shirt and his chair was splat­tered with it too. But my son ate an amaz­ing amount of food and I was happy. Yes, we have a lot of laun­dry to do, but he won’t be this messy for long.

I am notic­ing that both kids are not so con­tent with their spe­cial plas­tic plates and cut­lery any more. They want to eat off our plates and use our uten­sils. I think I’m going to have to find unbreak­able dishes like Corelle and then we can all eat off the same plates.

I find stuff like this to be bit­ter­sweet. I am so proud that they are grow­ing up but I do miss them being tiny babies. I need to find some­one with tiny babies so I can get a fix of that new baby smell.

Related posts:

1. teach them well
2. you can sit a tod­dler at the table…