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I hate to admit it, but there's actually something that my family could improve on: sitting down at dinner time. Literally.

I don't really know how it started, but getting rid of the booster seats and the highchairs probably had something to do with it. I couldn't help it. I was ready for all of us to sit at the table like a family with placemats and all.

I am a mother/short-order cook forced to meet everyone's dinner time demands. In order to preserve some of my own dinner time sanity, I recently declared to my family, "You will eat what is served, when it is served, and if you starve between now and breakfast it's not my fault."

So far, it has worked. After figuring out that whining wasn't going to work and that breakfast is a long way away, dinner time actually started to become enjoyable. That was until the standing started.

I don't know if the food tastes better from a bird's eye view, but I do know that when it has futher to fall it makes a bigger mess. No longer strapped down, my two-year-old will stand up, take a bite, sit back down, get out of the chair, peak under the table, run around to the other side of his chair, hop back up, and start all over again.

Now his older brother has gotten into the act. I know I need to stop them, but as it turns out, they actually eat more this way.

It's a mess. Literally.