Henry officially ate at the table with us for the first time tonight. He did great! That means he also had a plate, just like the girls, and a spork.
Basically we got the “duh, what were you waiting for” reaction from him.
He’s using the booster, which we took out a few weeks ago in anticipation. When it’s not being used as such, they use it as a tiny chair or stepstool. It’s a squeeze, but we managed to get all three kids along one side of the table, so it needn’t pull out from the wall. He sits between me and Sadie. She’s so excited to have him there, it doesn’t matter that she’s in the middle.
So now we’ll clean up the high chair, hang onto it a few days or so in case, then it’ll be up for grabs or off to the dump (it’s seen better days, having been a hand-me-down even for Sadie, though still functions). That’ll free up a spot for some other furniture, like the utility table we used to put there. Not that it has much utility until they are all old enough to allow the storage baskets under the table to be used, but hey. We’ll gain a ton of storage space in a couple years, maybe less.
He’s also dead set on using the potty sooner rather than later. The girls were never as aggressive about it, as far as I can recall.
Next thing you know he’ll be sleeping in the bedroom with the other kids. He’s borderline ready for being able to wake and wander out of the room without it being a big deal. It’s more of a problem that he’s an agent of chaos if, say, he joins them for bedtime stories. That still keeps everyone awake longer. He’ll get there though. The three of them make a great team. In separate rooms they all woke up around the same time today, and when Sadie was sad and cold, he leaned against me and put on a show to make her laugh. You could see him studying her reaction, processing the feedback and adjusting what he did accordingly.
I’m probably forgetting some benchmarks, and didn’t even bother to get into the current food and medical stuff. He went nuts for lima beans tonight, and thinks graham crackers are one of the best things ever, for instance. He seems to be able to eat canned peaches in heavy syrup safely. Eating several peeled green seedless grapes bothered him a bit, but not so much that he can’t have a couple grapes like that if the girls are eating them. Last week he thought the beefy chili I made was awesome, and he seemed to tolerate it well in modest amounts, but I think there was a delayed reaction to the spices and it’s one of the things that in the past week have had him a bit on the red-faced side more than I’d prefer to see. Overall, he’s already grown less sensitive. If it weren’t for the emergency room visit for the eggs, we’d almost be downright relaxed about food issues. Too bad about the eggs though.
