Thanks for the suggestions ladies.... she is too young to understand the books but I think I might get a few for when she is older.
It really is like she does it deliberately for a reaction at times and it will come out of the blue too. She will look me directly in the eye and bring her hand down and hit either herself, the tray or me if I am close enough. I have been saying "no baby we don't hit, that hurts mama" and distracting her with something else and that will usually work but at other times she will leave me and go and do it to DH who says something similar. Luckily we are both taking the same "distract,distract, distract" approach at the moment. I will definately look at getting the Science of Parenting on my next pay day too and hopefully my Pinky book will arrive today for a few more strategies...

It is so tough and DH and I keep saying stuff to each other like "I hope we don't wreck her" because we feel so clueless at times about discipline etc. I guess we aren't that clueless because we have seen and heard what others do and know what we DON'T want to do, like yell or smack etc... Thanks again from the vague one.