Toddler Tales: Food Wars

I'm not typically a superstitious person.

But I think I jinxed myself. A few months ago, I made an annoying mom mistake and bragged on my toddler for his healthy eating. And it has come back to bite me in the ass. One of my mom friends who has older boys even warned me that this healthy appetite would be a short lived phase, and that in a few months he wouldn't eat anything. Well, she was correct. 

Now I feel like I'm living life on some kind of sick and twisted game show, where the object of the game is to figure out which food he will not reject on any given day, and the prize is that I there is no prize. I realize that this is not abnormal--all the books, blogs, and other moms tell me that this is simply a right of passage and that I should just pull up a seat and get used to being a member of the Picky Eater's Club. Honestly, I am probably getting payback for being such a picky eater myself as a child.

Although I clearly didn't miss too many meals at this phase of life.

 It's not that Bobby won't eat, and it's not that he is really picky about food; it's that he only wants to eat certain foods when he wants to eat them. 

For example, he loves broccoli. Loves it. He could marry broccoli. We had to eat broccoli at nearly every meal for nine months. And now, out of nowhere, broccoli is dead to him.

And then there's the day-to-day mealtime bipolar disorder episodes. One day he will lick his plate clean of lasagna and want seconds. I think, "Oh good, I've found something he for sure likes! I'll make this again next week." I take the effort to make it next week, put it on his plate, and then he won't look at it. Literally will turn his head and refuse to look at it. Same thing with tacos, shrimp, and spaghetti.

It's not that he is a snob and turns his nose up at my food because my cooking isn't good; remember, he may eat my food on any other random day. I'm trying to convince myself that maybe my food is too good for him. Maybe he's like a tiny frat guy who would rather eat Krystal latenight than eat foi gras.

 (To clarify, no, I do not cook foi gras). 

It just seems like WAY too much work.

 I made spaghetti and meatballs the other night, and he refused them. These are the same meatballs that he completely downed a couple of weeks ago. But this particular night, he wouldn't entertain the idea of even looking at them. I don't believe in force-feeding a child, so I said, "Okay, kid. You don't wanna eat? Fine by me. But that means you go to bed hungry."

Mama laid the smack down.

So I took the plate away, and we went upstairs to FaceTime Alex before bed. The three of us were talking to him on the iPad, and then after a while I noticed that Bobby had stealthily sneaked away. He had been gone for about five minutes without us even realizing it. I walked downstairs and could see the light from the freezer illuminating the dark kitchen. An empty toaster strudel box lay discarded on the ground with the icing packets scattered about. Toaster strudel flakes in a trail led me to my child, who was standing butt naked with a half-eaten frozen chicken nugget in each hand. 

I had to hide my amusement and put on a stern face, but it was pretty difficult. 

"Bobby, you mean to tell me that you refuse to eat the nice, homemade spaghetti dinner I gave you, but you will eat a frozen toaster strudel with no frosting and frozen chicken nuggets?"

He smiled innocently.

The smile that launched a thousand wine glass bottoms high into the air.

We woke up yesterday morning to find that we were out of the mini frozen pancakes that he usually eats for breakfast, so I made homemade pancakes. I made the legit homemade kind that requires eggs and butter and milk. They were light and fluffy and tasted like teeny, tiny, flat cakes. Boy, were they good. But Bobby can't attest to this, because he didn't eat them. He eats the frozen mini pancakes every morning like it's his job. But the pancakes made from scratch? Nopers. 

It's cool; I ate his.

Probably looked a little something like this.

As I was sitting down at the table to eat enough pancakes to feed a small hippopotamus, I heard crinkling and bolted up from my seat. Bobby had opened the freezer again, and was, once again, eating frozen chicken nuggets. First of all, we need to address the fact that our freezer is not the easiest thing in the world to open. We have one of those freezer drawers that is on the bottom, and you kind of have to put your back into jerking it open. So I'm actually pretty impressed that a toddler could even do it. Second, I am confused as to why a person would reject homemade pancakes but eat frozen chicken. It's beyond me. 

Which one would you choose?

 Later that afternoon, he wanted to eat a banana. I picked up the banana and asked him was he positive he wanted to eat it, just so we would be certain about this choice. He nodded and said, "yesh" in his cute little tot voice (we're working on "yes ma'am," but that's beside the point). So I peeled the banana and handed it to him. He took one look at the peeled banana, shook his head in disgust, and ran away. 

 I'm at a loss trying to figure out why he will eat something one minute and reject it the next. I don't prepare meals around his food preferences, and I don't make special meals for him. My mama never babied my pickiness, and I won't do it either. Breakfast is his favorite meal, while lunch is usually very casual for us and involves leftovers or something of the lunch meat variety; so he almost always eats a good breakfast and lunch. Dinner is my biggest issue with him. 

The food that he will always eat is banal at best: hotdogs, chicken nuggets, cheez-its, apples, and ham. Except it's got to be cheap lunch meat ham. We had a Honey Baked Ham for Christmas, and I thought, "Oh perfect, Bobby loves ham!" Well, I stand corrected. Bobby doesn't like $100 ham; Bobby likes crap ham.

 And then there's his favorite food: pizza. But he's also quite discriminatory toward pizza. He loves the $5 Hot and Ready pepperoni pizza from Little Caesar's. Alex made the mistake of walking in with a pizza from Domino's the other day, and I handed Bobby a piece. A piece of mediocre franchised pepperoni pizza is a piece of mediocre franchised pepperoni pizza, right? Well, apparently not, because Bobby wouldn't touch it. Somehow he knew the difference. 

One of these is the food of the gods. The other one is inedible swill. I'll let you decide.

 But one thing I can guarantee he will eat every day is ketchup. He recently discovered ketchup, and his world has officially been rocked. He loves ketchup so much that he will even dip apples in it, which is pretty damn disgusting. But you know what? I'm so over toddler eating at this point that I'm throwing in the towel and letting him dip apples/pretzels/chocolate in his ketchup. Because ketchup is basically a vegetable, so my work is done.

Keep on keepin' on!

-Annette