Children of the Corn Chips
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.
