Like the character out of Roger Hargreaves' eighth Mr Men book - the fluorescent-pink blob of scribble with eyes - my little man (although he's not quite fluorescent pink) has a really nice smile and is also extremely messy. He's so messy at mealtimes, in fact, that I'm beginning to dread the task of having to feed him; so are my poor knees. Because after every single meal - due to the fact that little man (who's now thirteen months old) has decided to adopt some early independence and refuses to let me feed him anymore - I have to spend (on average) a good twenty minutes on my hands and knees scrubbing the dreadful mess that he's managed to splatter about.
Now I’m not sure whether it's his age, or whether it’s a “boy thing” (as I honestly can't remember little madam being nearly as messy), but mealtimes in our house, have become an almost despairing and exhausting experience; this is mainly due to little man's inability to keep his food on his plate (or, better still, get it in his mouth). Instead, little man has managed to turn mealtimes, into mess-times. And did I mention he’s also quite keen on using his food for target practice?
For instance, the other morning's despair began at breakfast time. I was running a little behind - this isn’t that uncommon in my household, by the way, and is something you'll probably hear often from me due to my inability to get my arse up and out of bed early for the purpose of organising myself somewhat before little man and little madam get up themselves - and I'd given little man some toast, and a small bowl of Weetbix with milk, in his highchair while I managed to sneak away for a quick shower. I returned a couple of minutes later all clean and dressed, with a nice new pair of thongs on my feet, not only to have a full spoon of mushy, slushy Weetbix hurled in my direction. To my disgust, it flew off the edge of the highchair and landed, with a loud SPLAT, right on top of my foot. Needless to say, my thongs have never been the same - or looked quite as new as they were - since. Not to mention, I was then required to spend time (time that I really didn't have on this particularly morning due to the fact that I was RUNNING BEHIND!!!) on my hands and knees – which were still a little sore from the day before - cleaning the mess off the floor.
A few nights ago, I also made the disastrous mistake of serving rice for dinner. Now I know rice can be messy - little madam has proved this many times - but little did I know HOW messy (not to mention ANNOYING), this particular ingredient can be. After making an unsuccessful attempt to feed little man, I decided that I'd take a few deep breaths and forget about the floor for a short while. After all, we have floorboards. What does it really matter if a few grains of rice get dropped during mealtime? I plonked a small bowl of rice with chicken stir-fry in front of little man, along with a large plastic spoon, and then joined little madam at the table and ate my meal, while little man began to plough through his bowl of food in the highchair beside me. Now I wasn't surprised (given the fact that he's only really just started using cutlery) to see, a short while later, a large plastic spoon (with some food on it) flying through the air. After all, I can only imagine how frustrating, trying to put a spoon full of food in your mouth only to find you’ve lost half – or sometimes more – of the load on the way, can be. But little man carried on eating, and continued to give me the impression that he was enjoying his meal, using his hands; he actually seemed to be getting more in his mouth this way so I was thinking Terrific! Go little man!
Unfortunately though, when I took my eyes off him a short while later, to take in another mouthful of my own meal, I heard a strange noise. At the time, I mistook the noise (strangely enough considering the weather had been typical for Spring that day) for rain and so I glanced out the window to see if the weather had suddenly changed. Oddly enough, though, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It was then, when I heard the noise again, that I realised it wasn't rain that I'd heard after all. I turned towards little man just in time to see the third handful of rice leave his tiny fist and fly through the air. Now at this point, I could have broken out in song to the tune of It's Raining Men, and replaced the word Men with (yes, you guessed it) Rice. But for some reason (perhaps because I knew my knees were going to be really sore again later) I didn't really feel like singing at the time. I felt, instead, like SCREAMING! I quickly left my seat at the table to grab a cloth from the kitchen - I wasn't thinking too clearly at this stage, and taking the bowl away from him hadn't even occurred to me...I am human, remember - and he let fly another two handfuls of rice, and managed to hurl the bowl a good two metres before I returned.
All I could manage to do, at that point in time, was shake my head at little man (and his rice covered surroundings) and mutter something along the lines of, "You've gotta be kidding!" Little man just looked at me with one of his really nice smiles and I wondered then how I could possibly start teaching him not to throw food. I decided that the best way would be to make him wait for his desert while I cleaned up some of the mess. I guess my logic behind this was, if he worked out that throwing food meant his desert would be delayed, he might be less inclined to do it. Unfortunately, though, as I got down on the floor and began to clean-up the rice, little man decided to play a target-practice game again and throw some of the collection of rice he had in his lap (and on the highchair table) onto my head. My, my. The joys of motherhood.
I gave up my quest to clean-up immediately, no doubt, and decided I'd give him desert immediately to distract him from the task of giving me a cold and soggy rice shower - clearly I'm terrible at following through with my lessons. So it didn't surprise me at all to find myself, at the end of the meal, cleaning up almost an entire tub of yoghurt, which had also - like the rice - been creatively splattered about the floor almost like a work of art from Pro Hart.
It also didn't surprise me, the following day, that almost another tub of yoghurt ended up on my good friend’s lovely mahogany-coloured polished boards when she was kind enough to offer little man a tub at her house. Sorry Terri!
Thanks, little man (aka Mr Messy), for forcing me down onto my knees more than well-trained horse. I’m sure the floor really appreciates your sharing efforts too. Love you!
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