Those of you with young children know what ‘floor food’ is. For those that don’t, let me tell you. Floor food is food that has been dropped on the floor, and is often consumed at a later time by your child.
For example, your child is sitting in their high chair, eating orange slices for snack. They drop / throw one slice on the floor. You don’t see it or step on it. A few hours or the next day later, your child finds the missing orange slice and eats it.
Think of it as a food storage and survival mechanism for the sippy cup set.
Floor food is an ideal strategy for those that cannot walk/ reach the kitchen table /open the fridge. It reduces dependence on adult care and fosters autonomy.
I think of it as a back-up plan in case all adults are suddenly wiped off the face of the earth. Your child knows that buried at the bottom of their toy box is half a piece of toast, and apple slice and an old sippy cup. This is enough to sustain a toddler for weeks.
With three children ages five and under there is an awful lot of dropped/lost/found food on our floors. No matter how much we sweep after every meal, something escapes us, only to be later found and consumed.
And sometimes things happen that give floor food a whole new meaning.
There was the pancake mix incident. Two children, one large bag of pancake mix and an unlocked cupboard – a recipe for disaster.
Hubby walked into the kitchen when he saw the puff of white smoke escape. It was a cloud of pancake mix, tiny particles floating in the air. He found Little Miss Adorable and Baby Dunk sitting in a pile of pancake mix. Little Miss Adorable was playing with small piles of pancake mix and making little roads through it. Baby Dunk was lying face down on the floor and eating it.
Hubby swept it up as best he could and cautioned me never to mop the floor again. He said adding water could turn the entire floor into a giant pancake.
Then there was the day I walked in the front door stepped in cheese. Yes, cheese. Crumbs and small chunks of cheddar cheese filled our foyer. I found half a block of cheddar behind the front door.
We still don’t know how that happened.
Just the other day I caught Baby Dunk trying to stuff half a banana in the space between the fridge and the cupboards. I guess that was his back-up plan, faced with the possible end of the world and all.
More recently we found our childproofing needs to be kicked up a notch. Baby Dunk learned to unscrew the lids of plastic bottles!
The gallon-sized bottle of white vinegar I keep handy for cleaning kitchen surfaces – opened by Baby Dunk. Luckily the smell stopped further investigation. You would think I would have learned from the Little Miss Adorable, OT, Speech, Language and MORE Swear Words incident.
One day I was busy in the kitchen and Baby Dunk was crawling around. I heard Baby Dunk say, “Water!”
I asked him, “Do you want a sippy?”
Silence.
Alarmed, I looked over. He had the large lid of a maple syrup jug protruding from his mouth, sucking furiously. I removed the lid from his mouth. He pointed inside the huge jug of syrup and announced, “Water!”
I guess the syrup is for the pancakes, seeing as the mix still on the floor.
What are your childproofing horror stories? Have you found any floor food lately?
Disclaimer: I do not advocate or support feeding children off the floor and I understand the importance of childproofing, but sometimes stuff happens. And it’s pretty funny when it does.
