Family Dinner

We are trying to get family dinner back on track, now that we have returned from our various adventures. The babies, being almost a year, (!) can now stay up a little later and we could stand to eat a little earlier and that way we can all eat together. I really believe that at least one family meal a day is really important and if we begin now by the time the kids are in school and busy dinner will be a habit and a cornerstone of our daily lives.

Tonight was the first great experiment and now I have a better understanding of what might work and what I need to work on.

Dinner was lovely. Grilled chicken sausages, heirloom tomato and fresh Buffalo mozzerala salad, sweet corn on the cob. Perfect summertime meal. I cut fresh corn for Stella and Elise, plated everything else for the older eaters and had dinner on the table by 6:30. The corn was well met. Well, Stella ate it like nothing else, of course, Elsie liked to grab a handful and drop it off the table. Great. But still, we all had a plate of *almost* the same food and were enjoying each others company.

Maia got a bit contrary...and it cemented in me the desire to keep a family meal going. The past month or two we've been having seperate meals. I've been making Maia "toddler food" along with Stella and Elises' baby food and then a dinner for John and myself. She has been living on chicken tenders and mac 'n' cheese and if we're not careful, she'll really start refusing to eat anything else. That would kill me. Tonight she insisted she didn't like tomatoes (she eats cherry tomatoes like candy), or sausage (she loves hot dogs and meat). We made her eat half her sausage and try her tomatoes (she inhaled her "white sweet corn") and drink her milk. I know. Worst parents ever. She likes food and I don't want her to forget that fact.

Stella enjoyed the new variety of foods--from corn to sausage and then. Buffalo mozzerella! I'll get her to be a gourmet baby yet. Elsie liked--playing with her food. But enough got in that I think she'll do alright.

My goal is to have dinner on the table at 6 PM sharp. Babies in bed by 7:30 and Maia to follow by 8. That still gives John and I some evening time to be grown ups together. We'll see how it plays out, but I am going to try my darndest. Because it's important. And delicious.