The Lunchtime Grind

As with all things related to childcare, I have a routine for feeding Abbie lunch. Whenever I need to concentrate on one child, I need a routine to place the neglected children in situations that normally entertain them to reduce screaming. They still scream a lot, but at least I can feel like I’ve done my part by strapping a baby into a high chair and giving him a toy that he normally loves. If that’s not enough to keep him happy, he has no one to blame but himself.

The lunchtime routine starts with strapping Abbie into her booster seat with a bowl of yogurt and a spoon. I know it’s a bad idea to feed your child the same thing every day, I give her different flavors of yogurt almost daily, so it’s like she’s eating a variety of foods. Next I retrieve her brothers who are hopefully playing nicely in the living room and not rolling around the floor in search of newspapers to chew on that daddy haphazardly left lying on the floor. I strap them into high chairs and give them toys so I can keep an eye on them and know when they start screaming that it’s just out of boredom instead of assuming they’re bored when I hear the screaming from the other room.

At this point Abbie has usually abandoned the spoon in her ongoing quest to convince me that yogurt is a finger-food. I’ll sit in front of her and help her neatly finish her yogurt, spooning it out of the bowl myself if necessary. With the yogurt gone, I fill her tray with the next course of water, milk, and Tasteeos while tending to her vegetables on the stove. By the time I have her fully steamed vegetables cooled to a palatable temperature, everything from her tray is usually on the floor, but that just leaves more room for the veggies.

Unlike every other real or imagined child I’ve ever seen or heard about, Abbie likes her vegetables. I give her a mix of things, and I can tell her preferences by the order she eats things. The first things gone are either the carrots or the lima beans. The carrots I understand her liking; they’re kind of sweet, and I like things that are sweet. Her fondness for lima beans mystifies me, though. I hate lima beans. As a child, I devised a strategy for eating lima beans that I still use today that involves swallowing the bean whole like a pill without puncturing the skin and exposing the nasty innards to my taste buds. Abbie, who still won’t eat pizza, sucks them right down and asks for more.

With the beans and carrots gone, she goes after the peas while generally trying to avoid the corn I put on her tray because I have a big bag of it that I’m trying to get rid of. Once again, the closest thing most children will come to eating a vegetable that doesn’t have the word “fry” or a derivation in its name is corn; Abbie doesn’t seem to care for it.

Not that I’m watching Abbie eat the whole time. I’m too busy checking on the boys, singing to them, shaking rattles for them, and generally seeing if there’s anything I can do to make them tolerate being ignored for a couple more minutes.* Plus I need to make my lunch.

* There isn’t.