Dinner Time at the Gardiner House.

Not for the faint of heart, I present to you today- a portrait. A tableau if you will. Dinner Time at the Gardiner House. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll end up covered in your child's waste.

Tonight, as occurs most nights, I made dinner. It was a lovely dish. It smelled wonderful. And after a lot of salt for me and cheese for Doug the taste was nearly edible. (Unless you ask Hailey in which case, not so much.)

Dinner began with Hailey blowing up a balloon till it popped in my ear and I screamed at the top of my lungs "I told you no more balloon," and ripped the remaining shreds into tiny pieces and stormed to the garbage can to dispose of what one would assume were shreds of worthless rubber but were apparently broken pieces of my child's happiness (cue the tears).

On that note we prayed.

After at least 5 minutes and 18 phrases that included strengthening our body, the prayer was over and we could eat.

SCENE 1: LIBBY
Libby (for the rest of this paragraph referred to as "the wild animal") has now entered the phase where she must feed herself. Gone are the days of putting little bits of food into her mouth. Oh no, it is now more of us frantically handing the wild animal food while she places her mouth near her high chair tray and bulldozes it in. Tonight was no exception. She loved dinner and when poor Doug so much as began to take a bite of his own food the wild animal would release her fury in a howl that caused the neighborhood dogs to begin barking.
END SCENE

SCENE 2: HAILEY
There are some things that get worse with generations. So in some ways, it isn't her fault really. The Drama. The 24/7 Drama!!!!!! With each bite a new plot twist was revealed. "I think this may be poison!" cries our heroine. "You'll eat every poisonous bite!" cries our villian (aka- the mom- me) Then with the dry heaves. And the plugging of the nose. And the tears. Really, it was an applaudable performance. Her second best one this week. Yes folks, those are actual tears.
END SCENE

SCENE 3: IN WHICH LIBBY FINISHES EATING AND PROCEEDS TO SMASH THE DINNER ALL OVER HER HEAD
Yes, I saw it and No, I didn't stop it. When you are a child you develop selective hearing, when you're a parent it's selective vision. If you don't see it, you don't have to punish it. Don't see it now and deal with the consequences later. Just let me eat my dinner for the love of zucchini!

And so the dinner progresses. 3 out of 4 of us our done. Hailey is still sobbing and holding out hope that she will be delivered from the torment of vegetables. There are beef chunks stuck to the inside of my baby's head. It becomes apparent that a bath is the only option. The one catch is that I've just scrubbed the kids' tub as my mom is coming to stay and will need the tub. So the alternative is my jetted soaker tub. The problem lies in the fact that I can't reach Libbs when she's in that tub and a drowned wild animal isn't on tonight's agenda. So I strip Libby (who proceeds to choose this diaperless moment to poop) and myself down and jump on in.

And this, dear reader is how I end up soaking in my child's dinner.

After washing Libby I sit back and let her splash. A carrot floats by. Oh there's a chunk of beef. My brother-in-law John calls bathing "stewing in your own juices." For the first time I felt like it was true.

I sat back and listened to the struggle downstairs...

DOUG: So help me Hailey if you don't finish your food in five minutes, you don't get to watch your movie.
HAILEY: You already said that ten minutes ago.
DOUG: AHHHHHHHH*#()%^($ &#)*%
and the sound of something being thrown into the sink.

And now it's 8:30. Libby is asleep. Hailey is somehow watching her movie (Dad's- pushovers!) and I'm plotting tomorrow's dinner.

Can't we invest in a nice set of feeding tubes?