Me: 0, Mila: 24587239813

Hey. So. This is going to be super surprising, but guess who stopped being willing to sit in a highchair last week? What's that? Your money is on the Tiny Human with The Big Personality?

DING! DING! DING!

I have no idea where she got the idea that highchairs are a negotiable item, but there it is. Mila thought that if she screamed every time someone lowered her into her highchair, she would magically wind up eating her dinner in my lap.

Which, NOPE. All the nopes in Nopelandia. Noooooope! Well, mayb ... NOPE. The nopes are so serious that I was willing to wage war over the topic. Thus, Saturday's dinner looked like this.

 

For the first twenty minutes, I patiently waited for the baby who loves/hates me to figure out that yelling wasn't getting her anywhere. The next twenty minutes involved less patience, but just as much yelling.

Sorry, neighbors. You probably thought really bad things were happening in our house. Actually, what happened is that I put Mila in a highchair and handed her food. I KNOW! I AM TERRIBLE! THE ACTUAL WORST!

Right around the 45 minute mark, it occurred to me that I might be looking at the world's most persistent baby. The intensity of her anger hadn't diminished at all, even though I knew she had to be starving. It was an hour past her normal dinner time. Surely she would give in!

Nooooope.

At the 50 minute mark, I decided to up the ante. I dug into the Halloween candy (which will be gone before Halloween gets here, obviously), found a pack of Peanut Butter M&Ms, and handed one to Mila.

She threw it at my head. While yelling. Then she yelled some more because there was a perfectly good M&M and it wasn't within her reach.

I gave her another one.

My logic was that if she was given a food she loves, she would have a hard time remembering that she was mad. And my logic was wrong because even while the kid had blue food dye dripping down her face, she kept yelling. She managed to continue her yelling while she furiously shoveled candy into her face.

Surely it would end soon.

I gave her another pack of M&Ms.

My logic still sucked. She kept yelling with the fiery rage of her Pixar twin, Jack Jack.

I went for a third pack.

She kept yelling. She stopped eating because, of course, she's Tiny Human and tiny humans don't have that much space for food. She was full. But she kept yelling! She yelled right up until the moment when I pulled her out of her highchair. Then she smiled and ran off to play.

Now for the good news. I never caved! I made that child sit in her highchair! And she ate her dinner! I mean, obviously I won the game. It's not like Mila proved that if she yells for a really long time, she'll get to eat candy for dinner.

. . . Oh.

(Making it even more fun? She will sit in her booster seat. It's entirely different from a highchair, obviously.)

(Toddlers are insane. It's a fact.)

Comments

[Robin]

Fun. I'm not sure how long it has been since my son used one, but he outgrew them before 2 and is scared of booster seats. Also, even if I wanted to use our space-saving-straps-to-the-chair highchair as a booster at the table it wouldnt work anyway because the arms wont go under the table. Fail. Restaurants can be really fun now when he wants to crawl under the table or run.