This morning at breakfast Audrey exclaimed, "Look Daddy, I'm eating quickly. I'm not going to take a long time today!" And sure enough, she had taken a number of bites of her cereal and finished within 15 minutes or so.
I told her how happy I was with her because lately she's been taking her sweet time to eat her meals, sometimes stretching well past an hour. Dinner can be particularly long because she's too busy doing other things and then she'll conveniently get *very* hungry right at bed time.
Breakfast can be frustrating because, as things go, we're often under the gun to get her over to preschool. And if she goes to preschool on an empty stomach there's no telling what sort of behavior lurks ahead, particularly when Mommy picks her up. Like Daddy, she needs food in her tummy to keep her spirits up.
So we've been telling her that there will be no treats or other privileges until she decides to eat with the rest of the family and finish within a reasonable amount of time. We're not talking about racing through meals. Like the French, we try to sit and enjoy ours. But there is no reason it should take 30 minutes to eat a banana. Or 45 minutes to eat a bowl of oatmeal. Or an hour and a half to eat a helping of macaroni and cheese. I am laughing as I sit here writing that but it has happened many times.
Grace, meanwhile, is ravenous. She'll eat as much food as you give her. A chopped up banana will be gone in 5 minutes. She'll eat an entire avocado in one sitting. Two bowls of oatmeal? No problem. Clearly she's going through a growth spurt and we're trying not to invite comparisons, but it's like the tortoise and the hare. And it doesn't seem right that a 1-year-old should be eating faster - and *more* - than her 3-year-old sister.
This morning was encouraging though.
