I'm not the type of parent that made a lot of bold "i'll never... " statements when Henry was first born. Which isn't to say that i didn't have a lot of internal expectations-- some of which worked out and some of which have been dashed on the rocks of parenthood.
The area in which reality has veered farthest ashore from my aspirations is food. JT takes food seriously; devoting serious time and research to improving his cooking skills, sourcing local fresh ingredients, and building a repetoir of delicious meals for us to eat. And by us i mean he and I, because the boys will have none of it.
Henry and Silas seemed to start out well, as babies they ate everything they were given: vegetable, protein, fruit or starch. They both seemed to love food and although we had to load all of Henry's meals with cream just to keep him on the weight charts-- he wasn't skinny for lack of eating.
Similarly, both of them hit a picky eating phase about the time they entered toddlerdom. Silas' phase seems to be even worse than Henry's. This isn't encouraging as Henry is still a picky eater. He's had more adventurous periods, but generally he likes what he likes and that ain't much.
Because they don't eat at the same time as we do (hallelujah for quiet dinners after bedtime!) we do we fix a seperate meal for them. Because we aspired to the "don't cook seperate meals for your children" theory we have settled into a gray area where they get a different dinner but it's not actually cooked.
Translation-- days and days of fruit, applesauce, cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, mac n cheese, and chicken nuggets if we eat out. For the most part the food they get is healthy, but it's not even really a meal, and it certainly isn't what we hoped they'd be eating. As if to taunt us our friend's kids *do* eat what they eat and they're not just making cheesy chicken over there. The last i was over the girls were noshing on oxtail soup and other wonderful "adult" food.
I recently re-seized the reigns of our children's nutrition and am developing my own repetoir of "non-processed but appetizing to suspicious mouths'" meals. I've got some pizza bagels, quesadillas and tortellini lined up. Any other ideas and i'm all ears. I'm rationalizing that if we can expand the options for what they *will* eat, we can start to fashion more and more palatable dishes out of ingredients that are more varied than mild cheese and applesauce.
3 comments:
Tamra, do you think your discussion of Henry's eating habits/dislikes/likes has any connection to his asking me for a "real dinner"? :) I just wonder. Sheree
Hey Tamra,
I'm back on and catching up. One thing our pedi told us that stuck with me is that kids will eat what you eat. You may want to consider breaking out the leftovers and sitting down with them a few nights. If they see you eating it and enjoying it, they may turn the corner. It actually worked and the girls eat their lettuce now. (With dressing, however our Pedi said we should eat it w/out dressing but I could not force myself to enjoy it so how could I expect them too?)
sorry to post anonymous, It's been so long I forgot my password.
Hey Tamra it's Andrew. If it's any consolation, my brother and I were both fairly picky eaters when we were kids.
My bro wouldn't eat fruit, and for a while I vividly recall having a tough time with: tomatoes (fresh and cooked), beans, mushrooms, seafood, any potatoes (yeah I don't get that either), onions, olives, ketchup, mustard, pickles, mayonnaise, peppers, and a bunch of other stuff.
It was bad enough that one of my grandmas passive-aggressively said to my mom at some point "your kids are picky eaters." Haha.
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