Timesaver Tuesday: Feed Me First!

I'm not sure that today's tip is as much as time saver as it is a sanity saver. Over the last nearly 18 months, I have learned that dinner time is much easier if I feed EG first. This is especially true now that she is more active and hates to sit still longer than a few minutes at a time. What we started doing a few months ago is going ahead and getting EG her plate of food before we sit down to eat. That way, the focus is all on her and she can take as little or much time as she needs without aggravating hubby and I by getting up and down. If we haven't sat down to eat yet or are not in the middle of eating, we don't mind getting her down and cleaning her up early. We don't get to do this every night, but it's definitely nice for her to already be finished with dinner so that we can sit down and enjoy ours. While we eat, EG can either sit in her highchair and finish eating (if she hasn't already), sit in her highchair and draw or play with something, or play in the kitchen. This is, obviously, hard to do at restaurants, but at home it works great! Also, it's not something that I want to continue forever because I feel like (and research shows!) family meals are VERY important (even though she does stay with us through dinner...). It may not be a solution for everyone, but it works for us. In the end, I'm sure it saves time as well because we don't have to interrupt our dinner to put her down, clean her up, etc. Try it and see if it works for you!