Saturday, February 28, 2009

The Family Meal

The Hoos and I have been contemplating dinner lately. We are trying to determine the point at which it becomes imperative that our entire family sits down for dinner together.

Currently the girl eat dinner together at 6. AK usually eats leftovers from the previous night's dinner; LP eats some of those if we are lucky, but more likely she eats some sort of pasta accompanied by the same side of fruits and veggies her sister is eating. After they are done and I clean them up, I prepare the grown-up dinner while they play

The Hoos gets home around 7 and we sit down to eat closer to 7:15. AK will sit in her high chair at the table with us and play, and LP with likely sit at the table with food she pilfers from our plates or some new munchie that she goes and takes from the fridge or the pantry. We do try to get LP to try our dinners to get her interested in new foods without me putting in the effort to make her an individual meal and have it tossed because she doesn't like it.

I know that many people insist that their kids eat the same meal they eat. It does not really seem feasible in our situation. Either I will have to have lots of meals premade that I can pop in when I get home with the girls at 5:30 and the Hoos and I then eat AK and LP's reheated leftovers or we eat lots of take-out.

For now the situation works for us. I am hopeful that at some point we will all be able to eat together at 6:30 sometime in the coming years. Ideally before they are fifteen and too busy with their friends and after school activities to sit with us at all.

No comments: