I have a pet peeve I'd like to share: Picky Eaters. I mean, I cannot stand going out to dinner with someone or having someone over who is a picky eater and lets you know all about it. It drives me crazy. I know, I know, sometimes there are just things you *don't* like no matter how many times you've tried them. But I just don't get how someone even becomes a picky eater in the first place.
When I was growing up we had a rule: You had to try it and if you HATED it, you could spit it out. I actually can't remember having spat something out. Whenever I actually stopped protesting and tried whatever it was, I found that I liked almost everything. Today, when I go to dinner at someone's house, it doesn't matter what they are serving, I will eat it with a smile on my face. I think it's rude to go to someone's house and let them know how much you don't like something they spent time preparing.
And you know what toddlers are? They are Rude Picky Eaters.
Before dinner, Olivia will ask for about 25 snacks but she'll only eat them a certain way. For instance, if you peel the cheese stick wrapper too far back, she'll freak out and refuse to eat it. Same thing with a banana. If I cut her breakfast sausage on the day she wants to eat it whole, I may as well just throw it out. And if milk or juice doesn't go in the right cup, well, LOOK OUT WORLD! This morning I was the dumbest mother in the world and I put the milk in the Incredible Hulk cup and the juice in the Monsters Inc cup and she refused to drink either of them until they were in the "right" cups. So, there I stood at the sink, transferring liquids to the right cups and thinking to myself "What the hell am I doing? I am a college educated business woman. I negotiate with people all day and convince people to do what I need them to and I can't freaking convince my toddler to drink her milk out of the cup I poured it in."
Mike and I love to eat and I guess I just never imagined that teaching someone to eat well would be this complicated. We eat a pretty good variety of foods and Oli does pretty good but she gets weird about certain things. Like yesterday, we had jambalaya and I think she ate like 20 pieces of sausage but if a tomato was touching the sausage she would hold it up to us and make this distressed sound like she was about to be attacked by the flesh eating tomato touching her fork. She'll will pick out mushrooms and will not eat beef. She eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich EVERY. SINGLE. DAY for lunch and STILL asks for one for dinner.
What's really weird is that, based on what I've heard from my friends and family, she's actually a really good eater. I can't imagine what this would be like if she were a *bad* eater.
Maybe we got lucky on that. Maybe not. We don't make Olivia her own food at dinner. She has what we are having. And if she doesn't like it, she doesn't eat it, and I think some nights she probably goes to bed with a slightly empty belly. She doesn't ever complain about it but sometimes, the next morning, she'll eat like twice as much breakfast. There are a few exceptions when we make her something different but it's not that common.
And why does it take so LONG for a toddler to eat? I mean, she gets distracted like every 15 seconds and it takes her FOR. EV. ER. to eat one small meal. Last night, she was goofing around instead of eating her dinner and I asked her if she wanted any more and she said no. So, I ate the rest of her dinner. Like 30 seconds later she said, "I want to finish my dinner!!!" What the crap? I swear I don't just take my kid's food. I felt really bad about it though.
It never really matters what she has on her plate anyway because she's always more interested in what's on ours. Tonight we were having stir fry and she and I had the exact same vegetables and chicken and every other bite, she would reach her hand across the table, into my bowl, and grab a veggie. I know I should be happy that she's eating veggies but keep your friggin' hands out of my plate! I'm a former fat kid: You do NOT want to get your hand between my food and my mouth. It's a danger zone. After about the 78th time, I finally snapped at her and said "Please stop!" Of course that hurt her feelings because, Heaven forbid, I try to eat a meal without toddler hands in my food. She cried, I apologized for being so selfish for not wanting her fingers in my food (WTH?), and then she announced she was done and wanted to sit in Mike's lap.
Predictably, after her bath, she started asking for Cheerios and jelly beans and all other manner of nonsense. I anticipated this though and we are standing firm. After dinner, I put her still-full-plate up on the kitchen counter. Every time she asks for something else, we just go in the kitchen with her and give her the bowl of stir fry. I think she's given up because she's sitting next to me right now eating her boogers.
I'm not sure if we are handling this the right way or the wrong way but I just can't stand the thought of having to make her chicken nuggets every night for dinner. I barely have enough time to cook ONE dinner.
I remember my mom saying things like "This isn't a cafeteria!" and I never got that until now. I also remember things like "Quit opening the fridge!" and "Stop opening up food and not eating it!!!" And I get that now too. I wish every single food would come in a resealable package because, of the 5 things Olivia will ask for, 4 of them will be opened and never eaten or have only one bite taken out. I cannot stand to waste things so this drives me bonkers.
Yeah, I know, this is normal and toddler taste buds take time to grow in. But I do think the only way she's going to develop a taste for a variety of foods is if we keep offering them to her without an alternative. Otherwise, I'm convinced I'm going to have the kid who eats only macaroni and cheese and ketchup.
In the meantime, I'm really banking on the hope that her boogers, which she eats like they are a damn delicacy, have enough nutritional content to tide her over until morning.
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