Travelingjenny

Tess will eat almost anything. This is very convenient, especially when we eat in a restaurant – which is not very often, since she no longer likes to sit still while eating. Tess doesn’t need her own meal, she’ll just eat a little bit from everyone else’s plates – noodles, the tomato slice off of a hamburger, french fries, etc. And she’ll help herself to whatever is within her reach. Sunday evening, I was eating a salad at Gritty’s, and she helped herself to some cherry tomatoes. No problem. But then she grabbed a slice of raw onion. I figured I should let her try it – I mean, she might actually like it, right? Plus, she’s an experiential learner, so I thought this might keep her from grabbing onions off plates in the future. She took a bite, chewed for a couple of seconds, and then just looked at me with a grimace. I fished out the onion, gave her some grated carrot, and continued to eat my salad. The next thing I knew, she was making a pitiful little sound. She was holding the onion again, and had the same sad-but-cute grimace she had made only one minute earlier. Maybe experiential learning is not going so well for her, after all.

When we were getting ready to leave the restaurant, I asked Grace to carry her lunchbox (containing special, restaurant-only toys) with her to the car. Then I lifted Tess out of her highchair and put her on the ground. She walked over to her own lunchbox, picked it up, and proceeded to walk towards the door, lunchbox in hand like a big girl. She had heard what I said to Grace, and she wanted to do the same thing! She never even looked back to see if we were coming too! She passed several tables along the way, and attracted a lot of attention. I must say, watching that tiny little girl march away with her big lunchbox was a pretty adorable sight. She walked all the way to the car, and when I picked her up to put her in her carseat, I noticed that the poor baby had onion breath. I guess next time I’ll have to move the onions out of her reach!