Chill..

Instead of howling at J every 5 mins with a "NO!", we decided to let the little kid had some creative play without anyone hovering around. We left him alone in his high chair in the dining area, with a bowl of apples and a mug of water. Actually, we didn't plan this, we just wanted to have 20 mins in front of the TV and veg. And also, we got tired asking J to "feed Mama, feed papa" when he obviously wasn't in the mood to share his food. So we pretended to be pissed off and walked away.

We checked on him from seconds to seconds, to make sure he didn't fall off the chair or stab himself with the fork, but what totally amused us was how much fun he had. We thought he would be upset being left alone but not at all.

Since he was hogging his apple with so much fervour, he of cos started off with feeding himself. He would occasionally turned to face himself in the mirror and beamed with so much pleasure and turned back to eating more apples. And then he decided maybe eating apples just wasn't as much fun as making apple juice, so he turned his mug upside down and "washed" his hands before he proceeded to make himself some freshly squeezed apple juice. Very nice....he pinched the apples with so much might, I fear it would leave marks on his tiny fingers. He was very careful too, making sure the apple juices fell straight into his little bowl. But I gathered he wasn't too thirsty and wanted to perk up for the next day, cos he started giving himself an apple facial. He smeared his face with 2 little hands full of apple juice and made sure they reached his neck too. Very through indeed...

This went on for another 10mins or so. By then he had enough fun and was ready to terrorise us with his apple flavoured self. Didn't cost us anything, but it got us some 20 mins of bliss and so much fun for him. We should do this more often.