It Was So Easy Back Then...

This is a photo of Rachel when she was 20 months old. The boys are a couple weeks shy of turning 20 months old. Unless they take some miraculous turn in behavior in that time, we can safely draw the conclusion that Rachel was SO MUCH BETTER BEHAVED THAN HER BROTHERS ARE.

There's quite a lot to learn from this photo:

• Rachel is smiling
• The boys may smile for the first minute or two after sitting down to eat but the colony of ants in their pants makes them go nuts after about 5 minutes
• There is a well balanced variety of food on her plate
• Nathan only likes carbs. It can be bread, noodles, rice, oatmeal...just carbs
• Daniel only likes meat...no veggies
• The cup
  
• The straw is intact (and has not been yanked out in order to make the milk flow easier when turned upside down)
  
• The lid wouldn't survive a fall to the ground (but hey, this is the year 2004 and Rachel's parents have absolutely no experience with their only child doing anything remotely rebellious...LIKE THROWING FULL CUPS OF MILK ACROSS THE ROOM!)
• Her shirt is perfectly clean. No milk dribbles...no milk in her hair...no experimenting to see if milk does indeed fall prey to the laws of gravity when the cup is turned upside down (see a pattern?)
• Clean eating area
• The tomatoes have not been used as finger paint
  
• The cheese hasn't been crushed between tiny fingers and tossed overboard
• For some reason the boys feel compelled to "rescue" their food from the confines of their plates and bowls. As soon as the food hits the table in front of them, the spoon or fork comes out and they start scooping/flicking the food out..."Go peas...go carrots....save yourselves!"
  

All I can say is we didn't know how good we had it. I'm sure if you were to ask us back then, we'd say that raising our first child at 20 months was a challenge, how much work it was chasing this SOLO kid around, etc. We'd probably even have the audacity to say we were tired. HA!