You guys, dinner is FINALLY going better. Not perfectly, but better! Lukie has been a picky eater since he turned about 1 year old. Despite my best efforts to give him a wide range of flavors, make everything homemade, and try to keep him adventurous, around 12 months, he went from eating EVERTHING we sat in front of him to ONLY eating cottage cheese. It has gotten slightly better over the months; he would eat pizza, cheese cubes, grapes, strawberries, pineapple, bananas, peaches... basically, he is a fruit bat with a weird penchant for dairy.
He wants really badly to sit at the big-people table. This didn't start until his cousins were here and he saw Roland and Freddo sitting at the table like big kids...but now he's pretty sure he's a big kid.
A booster seat may be in our near future.
Anyway, I decided a few days ago that I'd had enough of the cottage-cheese-only diet. Pete and I agreed that part of the problem was that we were putting cottage cheese out on the table. Once he saw that it was an option, he wouldn't eat ANYTHING else. So, a few nights ago, we started putting him in his high chair with a spoon and a blob of whatever we were having for dinner, and just letting him sit there until he was willing to try it. We don't offer cottage cheese; he eats what he eats. I told myself he wouldn't starve himself, and if he got hungry enough, he'd eat what was on his tray.
He started mimicking us when we were blowing on his hot food. This is something he does at every meal now-- he likes to blow on his food. Whatever, as long as I'm not in the line of fire of an overly enthusiastic gust.
It's been going pretty well. The first night, he tried his chicken pot pie pretty willingly. He decided he liked the chicken, and picked most of that out, and then willingly ate 2-3 large chunks of broccoli. He was not, however, a fan of the kale...but I'm gonna chalk that up to still not having much in the way of teeth. I gave in and gave him some cut-up banana after he had not eaten much, but overall, I think the experiment went pretty well.
Last night, he ate most of the egg out of his shakshuka, and then he ate half a quesadilla. (Pete and I were having leftover tortilla soup and quesadillas for dinner. He's not QUITE ((re: nowhere near) good enough with a spoon for soup yet.)
I know lots of people say that it's a parent's fault when their kid is picky. That's partly true...and partly not. I did EVERYTHING I could to make him be an adventurous eater, and despite my best efforts, he turned into a picky eater. I'm treating it as a phase, and hoping that once he sees how many vegetables his daddy eats, he'll want to be like Daddy. We'll keep eating healthfully and offering him healthy choices, and hopefully someday, he'll come around. One thing's for sure, though-- to get this kid to be adventurous, he can't see the cottage cheese as an option. I won't be a short-order cook for his whole childhood, so we can't start that trend now. Cottage cheese healthy, and he can have it sometimes, but the days of it being the ONLY thing he would eat need to end.
Also, laundry baskets and dryers make excellent bongos, if you didn't already know.
