Dinnertime Invasion

We have several baby gates in our house (more than I would like).  They are used to contain the children and also to keep them out of certain areas.  As a general rule I have the gates to the kitchen open most of the day.  Around 5:30 pm when the kids get hungry, dinner is still cooking and the kids all start invading the pantry I shut the gates to the kitchen.  I leave the children in the living room and I stay in the kitchen to finish cooking dinner.  The kids are never happy about it!  They stand at the gate and whine and beg for food like wild animals.  Vincent, Joel and Cecilia can be good all day, we can have a great day, but there is a switch that is flipped in them between 5-6pm and they turn into hungry animals that will stop at nothing to find food.

Sometimes they can be distracted with their favorite tv show, but for the most part they just stand at the gates and hope I will give in and give them a snack.  I do sometimes.  The problem is that Joel has figured out how to open the baby gates.  He can’t open the gates the proper way, so he lifts up the bottom of the gate and swings it open!  Not only does he free himself but also Cecilia, Vincent is usually distracted by the tv.  Cooking dinner while keeping two small children from climbing on chairs and table and stealing crackers out of the cabinet is not easy!  

It amazes me how much these two look alike in pictures!  They are cute for wild animals.

Brad is used to getting texts from me around 5-6pm that say “ETA?”  Basically I want to know if I have any reinforcements arriving anytime soon or if I am fighting the battle alone.

For those of you that think I should let the kids be involved in cooking I do let them help at breakfast and occasionally at lunch and rarely at dinner.  The problem at dinner is that they act like they have never eaten any food in their entire lives (even if they had an afternoon snack an hour earlier) and they abandon me to raid the cabinet.  I am hoping they will outgrow this interesting behavior, but for now we will make the best of it.