Hellobee Boards

This is us most nights! When Dh WOH he gets home slightly before 6, which is when I aim to have dinner on the table and from about 5:30pm LO is a real PITA! She's fine all day by herself and then super clingy right before dinner. Sometimes it helps to let her raid the tupperware cupboard or bring lots of her toys in to keep her busy.

@abbydabbydoodlebug: I think it's a combo of being tired & hungry and also it's probably the only part of the day where I'm occupied almost constantly for a decent amount of time.

My 18 month old still has those days (today is one of them). I just tell her that I'm cooking dinner right now and I can't hold her/help her/whatever. She usually gets cartoons during this time and I just try to ignore her

I try to have a relatively novel and interactive toy available. At that age, I used his sensory bin a lot (large plastic bin with rice, beans, or pasta as well as measuring cups and other tools). He also has a drawer with rarely-used kitchen tools that he can play with. Or I'll make a new kind of play dough. Now at 28 months he is obsessed with helping (and actually pretty decent), so I let him help unless it's dangerous (or dump random things in a bowl and let him stir.)

And then sometimes there's cartoons. Can't win 'em all.

We had the exact same issue so we built her a learning tower (the Ikea hack one) and since then it has been awesome. She can climb up and down whenever she wants and she can watch everything I do. She also loves to help measure, pour and stir so I make sure to include her when I can. It changed our life!

Carried LO around in a baby hiking backpack at this age to make dinner!! He was up high enough to see what was going on and thought it was fun bouncing around!

I got a learning tower at a local consignment sale, and D LOVES to help me cook. He's limited in what he can do, and I have to watch him like a hawk (he kind of burned himself last night), but it definitely helps. Because, yeah, that time from getting home from daycare to eating dinner (5-6pm) can be a bitch.

No advice because I go through the same with my 20 month old every night, and unfortunately most nights DH isn't even home for dinner. Even TV doesn't help, he has to be in the same room as me. Sometimes I let him play with the spice rack and that keeps him entertained for about 5 minutes. But when I'm cutting up vegetables, etc. I sit on the floor with the cutting board and have him "help" me with a butter knife.

@abbydabbydoodlebug: My LO is 15 months and does this. It's like he smells food cooking and realizes he's starving. I've taken to putting him in his high chair, pulling him into the kitchen near me and giving him bits and pieces of dinner as I cook (such as, if we are having tacos, some cheese or black beans). A few times a week, DH and I will sit and have an appetizer while LO eats his meal, and then we eat after he goes to bed, so don't know if that's a possibility also.