Baby Steps

While I was working this weekend in Southern California Dave sent me a shocking new picture of Drew.

While the fact he's eating wouldn't shock the typical person, because it was a vegetable was surprising to this Mama.  Yep he tried celery with peanut butter!

Dave said he only had 2-3 bites before he was "full".  But he tried it and didn't gag.  Baby steps...

Double Dipper

Last night for dinner I just didn't have it in me to re-heat the leftovers I'd pulled out.  So we decided to head over to Chevy's.  That's when things took an interesting turn.

See for yourself:



Yes that would be Drew eating Salsa. Salsa! And he was willingly pulling out the chunks of tomatoes - and eating them! Of course we didn't tell him they were tomatoes for fear he'd change his mind.

And yes, my kid is a double - or rather a quadruple - dipper.

Persistence Pays Off

Finally, our persistence in forcing Drew to try new foods paid off.  Before I give you the details let me give you a glimpse into our torture sessions dinnertime rituals lately.

If you haven't noticed Drew is a picky eater.  And I mean PICKY.  Since he was around 14 months old he would make himself throw up versus eat anything he didn't like - we think this was mostly a texture thing.  So overnight the kid went from eating EVERYTHING to about 3 things.  I'm not exaggerating by much.  He still will only eat those "3" things - bacon, PB&J, chicken and french fries, hash browns, sausage, pizza

We let it slide and didn't force new foods until a few months ago - deciding cleaning up puke at every meal wasn't worth it.  Not we had a tendency to lose our appetite (come to think of it that would've been a nice weight loss plan). 

Fast forward to our current dinnertime torture sessions, we're forcing Drew to try new foods.  For weeks he has had the chance to earn "stickers" on his reward chart for trying something new - along with a number of other "chores" he can do.  The reward is anything from stickers to a meal at "Old McDonald's" - his favorite.  Well, recently he could care less about earning his rewards.  He'd rather starve than eat anything.

And to be fair I'd put only a bite of food on his plate, and the rest would be bread/PB, Crackers etc.  Not enough other stuff to fill him up, but enough that he wouldn't starve.  Often we'd have to pin him down to put the new food to his lips, send him to time outs, turn movies/TV off - whatever leverage we seemed to have.  Needless to say there was a lot of screaming and crying from the child - Dave and I felt like crying too out of frustration, but we refrained.

We haven't found anything new that he likes.  Luckily there's only been a lot of gagging, no puking.  That is until last night.  I made spaghetti.  We put some sauce and 1 noodle on his plate, then gave him a slice of french bread.  The meal started out like any other - screaming sessions filled with "I don't like it", "I'm not hungry" (which 2 minutes before dinner was served he was begging for goldfish snacks). 

Dave made a game out of dipping his bread into the sauce and eating it.  We told Drew all he had to do was dip his bread and he could earn the sticker.  He did it.  Then on his own went back for more, and more, and more.  Dave and I were making "eyes" across the table - you know the "Holy Crap he's eating it, but let's not make a big deal about it" eyes.  Then he asked for more sauce and more bread.  Three servings later he announced he loves spaghetti.  He asked to have it for dinner tonight too!

That my friends is progress.

If You Give Drew a Cupcake

If you give Drew a cupcake...

then he'd lick the frosting.

After Drew licked all the frosting, then he'd realize he "finished" the cupcake.

After he finished the cupcake, he'd want another.

The moral of this story... Drew will eat all of the chocolate but refuse the cake.  I wonder if he was switched at birth, because neither Dave or I will refuse a cupcake dessert (that is unless we're watching our waistline).

Eating Veggies?

For more than a year now, it's a struggle to get Drew to eat much of anything other than chicken and french fries. The other night for dinner, we stumbled into Applebees, where we proceeded to order him a grilled cheese with fries.

Typically everything we're eating looks very appetizing to Drew - until he tastes it. Well this time he kept at one of our menu items...


Onion Rings. He loved them! Who knew? So does this count as eating his veggies?

I'm kidding of course. Now if we could only get him to eat something nutritious.

Food Strike Over?

Could the nearly year long food strike finally be nearing an end? On Thursday Drew amazed us by first requesting pizza for dinner - which was already in the plans. And then secondly by eating more than just the "peckeronis".

That's right, he decided to finally eat pizza! He hasn't touched a slice of pie in probably 6-8 months! Let alone anything with cheese. We're thrilled and of course cheered him on - I think all the books/articles say to make it a non-event, but we couldn't help ourselves.

This particular evening he polished off an entire slice. Oh, and he's requested pizza every night for dinner since. We caved on his birthday and made another pizza. How can you turn down a 2 year old on his birthday - if he's going to eat it, alrighty then!

Now if we can make some headway on noodles....

Once you Pop, You Can't Stop

You know the old Pringles slogan - "once you pop you can't stop". Drew proved that to be true Wednesday night. It's not anything new that he likes to eat junk food like chips, but he popped the top and he couldn't stop.

He ate probably a quarter of the can himself, and LOVED holding the can. In fact when it was almost empty he tried to drink from it!

Problem is, all the little crumbs came out of the can and all over my living room floor. Thanks a lot kiddo!




Who says it's too early to teach your kids to clean up after themselves? So we pulled the dustbuster out, and let him clean up the mess...

He did a pretty good job with it too. Perhaps Daddy needed to help a bit, but not bad for a rookie.

It's Bacon!

Drew has a whole new take on the five basic food groups. You may think the groups include fruits & veggies, proteins, grains etc.

In reality it includes bacon, chicken nuggets, and more bacon!

For dinner last night Mommy & Daddy were having a grilled chicken salad (well half grilled, and half baked since the grill ran out of propane). Drew is in a no-chicken-without-breading funk right now. So I made a few slices of bacon. Several bites in and you can hear Drew say "mmm bacon".

Oh, he's even rebelling his booster seat too, needing to sit like a big boy on the chair like Mommy & Daddy (hey if it keeps him from whining to sit on my lap at dinner time...).

Drew managed to polish off about 2 strips of bacon for dinner. Hey, it beats the goldfish he ate for dinner the night before. We're quickly running out of meal ideas for this picky eater, who is boycotting the few foods he does eat.

The kicker of the day - Mommy went out for a few hours to go to a scrapbooking/stamping open house, to come home to a naked Daddy & Drew and a house wreaking of puke. Apparently in his attempt to get Drew down for the night, Dave heard the familiar sounds of a gagging kid. Seconds later they were both covered in the wretched stuff. NICE. Bacon - smells delicious going down - not so pleasant coming back up!