Like a Waitress at Charlie Trotter's

I'm not big on table manners.  I don't put my napkin in my lap and I use my fingers to push peas onto my fork.  I talk with food in my mouth all the time.  I don't plan to hold Sam to standards any different than we have for the adults in our household, so we've been pretty easygoing about table manners so far. 

I mean, she's only two, so there isn't too much we can expect yet.  It was quite a victory to get her to stop throwing food on the floor.  She does know how to use a fork, a spoon, a regular cup, and even a napkin, but that doesn't mean she chooses to use them every time.  When she is hungry, fingers are still the fastest way to get food from there to here.  That's fine with me.

However, we are working on a new "skill" at the table: getting Sam to accept more than one food in front of her at a time. I had to think about why she had a problem with this.  When she was a baby, of course, we fed her one thing at a time out of little jars or bowls.  Everything was soft so even when she started using a spoon, bowls made more sense than plates.  Then she moved on to solid but soft things like cooked carrots, fish sticks, and noodles.  We could have put these all on a plate, but many of them still belonged in bowls and it was just so easy to offer the vegetables first, by themselves, so that she wouldn't leave them on the plate.  It was just the natural progression of things and it has carried over even now that she is starting to eat many of the same things that we do.

A few days ago I realized what I was doing.  I would get up from the table to get Sam's next "course" multiple times per meal, and it suddenly started annoying me.  Time for her to get her meals all on one plate, all at one time!  I knew she would fight this, so I set my expectations.  I brought her bread with cream cheese, peas, and sliced chicken, all on one plate.  She screamed and flung the whole plate on the floor.  I told her lunch was over for the moment, and we cleaned it up.  I asked her if she wanted to try again and she said yes.  And that was it.  Problem solved. 

Now we're working on having a cup on her tray at the same time as the plate.  I wonder what other crazy things we're doing to accommodate her old baby needs that we just haven't noticed yet.