Mealtime with Joel

Eating any meal with Joel is a challenge.  He has a unique style that I just can't figure out completely.  If you give him any food on a plate, bowl, etc he will dump the food out, put the object on his head, and drop it.  He will then begin shoveling any of the food that is still on his tray into his mouth.  That is until he seems someone else in the house that has something that looks better.  This is the curious part because 95% of the time we are all eating the same thing, our is just neatly on our plate and his is all over his tray and highchair seat.  Joel will sit there and say "that" until he gets to try the food you have, because the food off of someone else's plate is always better than what he was given.

Some would say just let him eat off his tray and most days I do just let him eat off the tray, but he is 14 months and eventually he needs to learn how to use dinnerware and utensils.  Right now I wouldn't dream of taking him to a restaurant or dinner at someone's house.  At least not someone who isn't related to us!  Last week I thought I had the solution.  I saw a product online that was essentially a few suction cups with a tray that you can put any plate or bowl on and the kids couldn't get it off.  They had a great video on the website of toddlers pulling on the bowls and plates as hard as they could and the suction cups sticking to the table.  I immediately ordered one.  Well, it lasted all of 5 minutes.  Joel was able to get a plate and 3 different styles of bowls off.  Then he proceeded to disassemble the product. 

As you can imagine meal time is messy.  Joel won't leave a bib on he just rips it off and throws it on the ground.  For awhile I was making him eat in just a diaper to save his clothes.  Bad idea!  It meant I had to give him a quick bath in the sink after almost every meal.  At least when he is clothed I just need to was his hands, face and hair.  Why his hair you ask?   Joel loves to take his hands and run them thru his hair and then grab his ears when he is done eating, luckily he has short hair so it isn't a huge deal.

Joel is lucky he is cute and that the dogs like to clean up after him!  Here are some pictures from dinner tonight!

Those are noodles on his head

This is about halfway thru dinner

You can't see that both his hands are covered in sauce, along with his legs.  The amount of food you see on the tray here was also on his seat.  And we wonder why our dogs love him so much.