I'm just another working mom seeking a few moments of Zen and zinfandel between soccer practice and supper. My former beach bartender husband founded 
I have a dream. It’s Saturday evening….wait, better yet, it’s a week night. Hey, if I’m going to dream, I might as well dream big . Our family of four is gathered for dinner. The table is set with aplomb…not a utensil or container made of plastic to be found. Amelia is eating peas and Gerber meat sticks without massaging them into her hair. Caitlin is eating a nutritiously balanced meal without protest. The hubby is peacefully reading the news. I’m wearing a cute sundress (shallow me…always about the clothes). Oh and my lipstick matches my cute sundress. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Mealtime utopia. The chi and the wine are flowing. Caitlin is eating a nutritiously balanced meal without protest. Wait, am I repeating myself?
For some reason mealtime at our house is not the peaceful God is great, God is good alternative universe I envision. Caitlin, who ate everything she could get her chubby little fingers on as a baby and could never squeeze her cottage cheese booty and thunder thighs into a Baby Bjorn, is now incredibly picky. It drives me nuts that a sweet child of mine who once ate most all her greens and her yellows, as my mama says, feigns gagging if I mention the world vegetable. I know she is ingesting something of nutritional value, however, as she is over the 30 pound mark. Luckily she likes most fruits and dairy and she always eats a good-size breakfast, although I am guilty of buying too many convenience prepackaged foods like frozen pancakes. Well there is that lone box of buckwheat organic pancake mix in the pantry I bought in a granola moment, but it’s gathering dust. Caitlin’s repertoire of foods she will eat without much wailing and gnashing of teeth is fairly slim. I’ve tried the “do not prepare a separate meal” method I’m sure her pediatrician would approve, but Saturday night the hubby made these awesome steak fajitas and Caitlin, well, Caitlin ate corn chips and cheese. I remember being stubborn at mealtimes over the eat your veggies issue and sitting at the table in the dark kitchen with the dishwasher running…much ado over a broccoli floret. Amelia, in all her 11 month-old worldliness, will eat cold peas without blinking. Thank God for those gummy bear vitamins or Caitlin would probably have scurvy or rickets.
I have this same vision of happy sappy “Leave it to Beaver” dinnerland. Oh well, maybe one day!
This pickiness is so maddening. Last night we ordered food and offered Big-A a choice of entrees. She picked chicken nuggets with broccoli. When dinner arrived, guess what she refused to eat? Yep, chicken nuggets and broccoli. Then she claimed she wanted cheese, “just cheese” (when the other 3 of 4 dinner selections she’d been offered included cheese in some form). Thankfully, the baby will chow down on almost anything at this point…
My daughter’s eaten jube-jubes for breakfast. I gave up trying to offer her sensible meals all the time. If it means she’ll stop crying and beating up the fridge door, she can have jube-jubes. Her diet can be broken up into four food groups: Dairy, Mac n’ Cheese, Nuggets and Dry Cereal.
What are jube-jubes?
Jack eats Eggo waffles or french toast sticks almost daily. So don’t feel bad.
Mama_Tulip, inquiring minds want to know what the heck jube-jubes are! I believe you are in Canada, so you’ll have to fill us in, although it totally sounds like something Caitlin would love.
Funny, this came up last year on my blog, LOL. Check this out:
http://sorrysoldout.blogspot.com/2005/11/for-ee.html
And feel free to ask any other questions.
My son had an annoying habit of suddenly going off a food that he had loved for some time and I’d end up with a Sam’s Club-sized supply of whatever it was.
Mama_Tulip: Thanks for the pictorial! These are very much like “fruit snacks” here that Caitlin loves (packaged in various kid-addictive varieties…Dora, Care Bears, Snoopy, etc.)
Bluegrass Mama: I can’t leave Sam’s without looking like I’m stocking a daycamp. (you never know when that 5 gallon jar of Lite Mayo will come in handy!)
Let me jump on this bandwagon. My son won’t even eat fruit. Yummysweetdelicious fruit! But of course yesterday my mother put a bite of chocolate cake in his open mouth as a “surprise” and he gagged it up. I think it’s a 4 year old power thing. He seems healthy as a horse, so maybe pop-tarts, PB sandwiches, and bologna/cheese crackers do a body good. That’s what I keep saying at least
)
I had to laugh at your buckwheat pancake mix comment – we have some of that attracting moths in our pantry, too! The kids would rather eat frozen eggos. I give up.