The baby's gone on Highchair Strike...

In our household we've always believed in the principle of sitting down to eat - preferably together. On the one hand it's safer; there's less risk of a little person choking if she's not wandering around the room while she eats. And on the other it's a teeny, tiny bit less messy if she's sat in one place! My least favourite meals have been the ones where Bean has been free to roam, tomato-stained fingers and all (especially as there's usually a cream sofa within grasping distance).

But in addition to this there's the social etiquette thing. A lot of our meals are family social occasions and it's soooo much nicer when she's there, part of it, and usually being the most entertaining thing at the table (because she's cute, not because we're boring, btw!!!! :-) ). It's just not the same if she keeps wandering off to play somewhere and you can almost hear the tuts at how ill-disciplined our child is if she doesn't sit nicely. After all, it's perfectly reasonable to expect a young toddler to have a two hour attention span as we all take our time on a leisurely lunch. NOT!

Up until a couple of weeks ago, however, Bean was always excellent at going into her chair, eating however much/little she wanted, and then asking for "up". Now is a different time.... Now, if she doesn't want to eat she WILL NOT go in the chair and sometimes, even if she does want to eat, she WILL NOT go in the chair (but will grab the food from the tray and run off to her Cosy Coupe and eat it in there!). We're talking screams of "noooooo", legs kicking all over the place, arched back, the works.

So we've tried the following:
1) Put her in anyway.
My least favourite solution as it involves holding her tightly and somehow manhandling her into place. She doesn't like it, I don't like feeling like I'm forcing her, and it rarely results in her eating. So after 2 or 3 attempts at this we abandoned this tack as too unpleasant and against our parenting beliefs.

2) Tell her no chair, no food.
And off she runs happily to play, confident that there's always copious streams of breastmilk should she feel hungry later on.....including at midnight, 2am, 3am, 430am........ I'm now too tired to continue with this option! :-/

3) Let her eat picnic style....
....as long as it's not anything runny! Generally this would only apply to tea time anyway, which she has generally remained ok about going into her highchair for. So increasingly her breakfast has been croissant-type things and fruit, while lunch has been slices of ham, chunks of cheese, breadsticks and more fruit. We're ok with this one, as long as she shows she can still "do" proper sitting down meals, which brings us to.....

4) Let her sit at the table on a proper seat
After all, this is the crux of it really. She may only be titchy, but she's decided she's all grown up! In the car, she wants to sit on a proper seat with a proper seat belt (obviously not possible!), and for mealtimes she wants to sit on a proper chair like Mummy and Daddy. Out and about this works fine. Lots of places have comfy bucket-style armchairs that she can safely sit on, but at home we have standard open-sided dining chairs. But we have found a few ways of making her Big Girl dreams come true...

Firstly, we got her a child's table and chair for the kitchen where she can eat her breakfast (for 5min before she gets up and finishes it off picnic style)

Secondly, we put one dining chair against the wall and sat her on it, and then put my chair right against the other side. She stayed there for about 7min :-)

And then finally we got our Amazing Travelling Highchair (see earlier posts) and put that on one of the seats. I was far from convinced it would work - after all it's still a highchair of sorts - but so far so good! No kicking and screaming sitting on it and no getting down to wander around all the time. She's not using the tray so she eats from the table like the rest of us and for now, that seems to be good enough for Bean.

Winner!

The Land of Milk and....................More Milk!

Today Bean turned 18months. :-)

That means she has been eating solid food for just over one WHOLE year.

And a few weeks ago (right before the horrendous week 75 development leap) I distinctly remember having a conversation with my own mother about how Bean seemed to have finally cut down on her breastmilk feeds. We'd even had a few days where she'd gone 7 or 8 hours with me physically in the room with her during that time!

When oh when will I learn to NEVER say things like this in Bean's hearing?!

When she was a newborn it happened if we praised how few night wakings we'd had recently - she immediately subjected us to a 7-feeds-a-night marathon. Then if we mentioned that the last few dirty nappies had somehow not escaped out of the nappy, the next one would be right-up-to-the-neck-and-requiring-a-bath jobbie. To this day, if I tell Bean she's eating really well, it's like she suddenly notices and decides she's all full up!

So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that, after commenting on how little milk Bean had had recently, she's suddenly gone into Boobie-Overdrive and is asking (no, strike that, DEMANDING) for "MAAAAAAA" every time I enter the room/sit on the couch/try to do something else. We're easily back up to 8+ times a day and she's no longer sleeping through either, but waking once, sometimes twice, for milk then too. (FYI, she only slept through for a couple of weeks around turning 15months).

To begin with it impacted on her food intake. She always wanted milk right before a mealtime - just the way it panned out I think - so wasn't that hungry. And then would finish eating early in order to fit in another milk feed afterwards too. We had maybe a week of Milk Days and boy did it show in her nappies! ;-)

It's really disconcerting though. You imagine your baby will just progress forwards, gradually eating more and more until the milk part of her diet dwindles away to nothing. So when your 16month old eats well, but your 17month old eats nothing, you get (well, I get) a bit worried. Should I refuse to breastfeed? Should I give more snacks? WTF is going on?????

Fortunately for Bean, I spend so long wondering what to do I never actually get round to "doing" anything! :-) She has therefore had her milk whenever she's wanted it and had her food whenever she's felt like that too. And now, at 18months, she's eating two pretty good sized meals and one that's little more than a snack, plus her 8+ breastfeeds!

Oh, I've written this once she's in bed though. I don't *think* she can read yet but I'm not taking any chances on her finding out what I'm telling people now......

I can hear you Mummy.............