When blueberries backfire

I have been taking the patient approach in getting Hannah to eat her dinner; putting it in front of her and if she wants it, she eats, if she says “done” and tries to get down, I put her down.  Without dinner.  She does get milk before bed time though.  I don’t want to force her to eat because, well, let’s face it, you can’t actually force someone to eat something unless you shove a tube down their throat and then throw the food in, I don’t want her to develop a bad relationship to food, or use food to gain control (or think she is in control), and I don’t want her to dread meal time.  I read a book that said toddlers will never starve themselves, usually they are eating a lot more than we realise as they are constant grazers, and they don’t need as much food as they did before because they grow a lot less.  Fair enough.

The other day, Hannah wanted me to put together the wooden train set she got for Christmas.  “Train!” she told me.  I, on the other hand, was trying to get her to put her pants on.

“Put your pants on, and then I’ll make the train for you.”  I told her.

“NO!”  “Train!”

“No train until you put your pants on.”  I calmly told her.

“No!”

This went around a few times and then something amazing happened:  She came over to me, sat in my lap and stuck her foot in the air so I could put a pant leg on it.  Just like that, she let me put her pants on.  Then I put the train track together.  Everyone was happy.

And I got an idea….

I made Hannah hokkien noodles with vegetables, egg, and a little bit of honey soy sauce for dinner (which is delicious by the way, thanks Romana for the idea).  I put it in front of her.

“Done!”  She exclaimed while trying to get out of her high chair, without so much as smelling the delicious dinner I slaved over the stove to make for her.

“Do you want a blueberry?”  I asked her.

“Blueberry!”

“Ok, I’ll give you a blueberry if you eat one bite of dinner.”

“NO!”

“Do you want a blueberry?”  I asked her again.

Photo courtesy of bewellbuzz.com

“Please.” She said with her cute little face.

“First eat one bite of food, then you can have a blueberry.”

She opened her mouth, and ate a bite of dinner.  I gave her a blueberry.  I gave her another bite of food, then a blueberry.  Soon, she had eaten her entire dinner.  I was ecstatic.  I’m pretty sure she was too, blueberries are her favourite.  That was the first time in her entire life that she has actually eaten egg.  She doesn’t like egg.  She doesn’t like chicken.  Or beef, or fish.  She pretty much doesn’t like any sort of protein unless it’s hidden in pancakes in the form of wheat germ.

We did the same thing the next night, and she ate all of her dinner.  I’m really onto something.

Or so I thought.

I tried to give her something other than the noodles the night after that.  I made her some Vietnamese rice paper rolls with a tiny bit of  teriyaki chicken, grated carrot, grated cucumber, some sort of little noodle that looks like glass, and avocado.  She took a bite, then promptly spit it out while making a face that conveyed grossness.  She wouldn’t eat it anymore.  I wouldn’t give her a blueberry.  She got really upset.  I made her some more noodles like she had eaten the previous 2 nights.  Nope, didn’t want that either.  Wouldn’t eat anything (except for blueberries, which I wasn’t going to give her if she didn’t first take a bite of dinner).  Stalemate.  She got down with no dinner.

Sigh.  Now I’ll have to think of another way to get her to eat her food.  Any ideas?  Or maybe she will go back to bribery as long as it’s something she doesn’t hate.  At least she drinks V8 juice (watered down of course).

What do you want for lunch?

Me: “What do you want for lunch Sweet Pea?”

Hannah: “Bubba.”

Me: “Ok, you stay here with Daddy and I’ll go make you a bubba for lunch.”

Did she eat it?  Nope.  Not a bite.  Ok, that’s not true, she took a bite of the carrot, pretended to gag and then wanted to get down.  Humph.

I’ll have what she’s having

I don’t usually post 2 days in a row (because a] I can’t be bothered, and b] I figure if I can’t be bothered writing 2 days in a row, surely you guys can’t be bothered reading 2 days in a row), but I just had to document this.  This little lunch-time feat knocked my mis-matched socks off.  Ok, not really, but only because it’s currently too hot to wear socks!

Today, I made a nice little plate of cheese, grapes, strawberry (yeah, only one, there was only one good one), and an apple cinnamon muffin (with added wheat germ for protein) for Hannah’s lunch.  Did she want to eat it?  Not a chance.  It’s so hard to get her to eat anything.  She doesn’t like egg (even if it’s just part of french toast, along with cinnamon and vanilla.  Delicious.), meat, fish, sandwiches, pretty much anything apart from fruit and some vegetables really.  Oh, and bars of course, she LOVES those darn Heinz Little Kids breakfast bars.

She didn’t want to eat her lunch at all.  Instead, she tore it into tiny little bits and scattered it around the table.  She did not, however, throw it on the floor.  She knows she gets time out for throwing food on the floor.  When the entire meal resembled the dry ingredients of a cake mix, she proclaimed “DONE!” and wanted to get down.

Fine then, down she went.  I don’t yell at her to eat more food, or try to force her, or scold her, or tell her she’s naughty. I don’t think that is very helpful, and would eventually result in an unhealthy relationship with food.  Plus, she can learn that there are consequences of not eating.  I.E. she will be hungry.

So I put her down, and then she wanted to sit in the normal chair (rather than her high chair) next to me (because I was still eating my lunch).  She grabbed a pen and started drawing a lovely little picture which kind of resembled a fur ball or a dust bunny.  She looked at my lunch.  She looked at me.  Now back at my lunch.  Now back at me….

“Do you want some of Mommy’s lunch?”

“Mmmmm.” That means yes in Hannah speak.  I’m sorry to report, she got that from me.  I didn’t even realise I say mmm for yes.  Until she started doing it of course.  Oh well, I’ll work on that.

I gave her a bite.  She spit it out.  But then she wanted another bite.  Kids are so weird.

She stuck her chubby little baby arms out toward me and wiggled her little fingers. “Mom” (fine, Mum, she says Mum, much to my dismay) she said, willing me to pick her up.

I picked her up and put her in my lap, where she sat and started eating my lunch with her hands, grabbing it and shoveling it into her mouth.  She can use a spoon or spork, it’s just so much better to use hands.

She didn’t like her arrangement of grapes, cheese, strawberry, and muffin.  So you know what she ate instead?  Tandoori chicken curry with rice.  I don’t think I’ll ever possibly be able to guess which foods she will like, and which she will not.

Tandoori Chicken Curry (photo courtesy of Woolworths)

The day I accidentally ate lamb

Let me just start by saying that I don’t eat lamb.  I don’t eat beef.  I don’t eat a lot of different meats.  Not because I think it’s wrong, just because I think they taste disgusting, and after all this time of not eating them, the very thought gives me the heeby jeebies.  Maybe it’s because red meat has (or seems to in my mind) a lot more blood in it, and blood makes me very squeamish (which is why I gave up wanting to be a veterinarian).  One time, The Jess was in our kitchen (we used to live together.  Twice), and decided it would be an awesome idea to cut an english muffin open while it was frozen.  Not on a cutting board, mind you, but in her hand.  I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.  Blood was pouring out of her hand, dripping everywhere.  My arms started flapping (that happens when I’m excited, grossed out, or freaking out) like I was trying to fly off, out of there as fast as possible. “What do we do, what do we do?!”  I screamed.  “Argh!  I can see the meat!!!!!”  So yeah, that is the relationship between me and blood.

Meat and I go way back too.  Once when I was, I don’t know, maybe 3 or 4, my parents wanted me to eat some beef.  I was such a fussy eater.  They said I couldn’t leave my seat until I ate it.  Hours passed, I wasn’t budging.  Dad must have been at work.  Mom had to go and take care of the horses, so there I sat.  Until I got an idea.  I knew she’d check the toilet, the garbages, all the usual little hidey holes, so I wrapped my disgusting beef up in a napkin and hid it under the china cabinet.  And, I was allowed to leave my chair.  But what about the smell, you ask.  Yeah, it smelled pretty bad, but it was decided  (ahem, after I suggested it) that an animal must have crawled under the mobile home and died again.  That had happened before, so it wasn’t too far-fetched.

 

“I’m so hungry!”  I said to Aaron.  We’d been waiting for dinner at the 40th birthday party we were attending (what, we have a 40 year old friend?  We must be getting old) for quite a while.  Some of the important guests were rather late and the food couldn’t be started without them.  My tummy was grumbling at me, willing me to go and get some of the delicious smelling indian butter chicken.

“Dinner is served.”  That announcement pleased my stomach.  I got in line for the serve yourself feast.

This is butter chicken

“Butter Chicken.”  The little folded sign in front of the bain marie read.  I took a ladle full, grabbed some accompaniments and went back to my chair.

“Mmmm, this looks delicious!”  I told Aaron, right before I put a big bite in my mouth.  I started chewing.  This doesn’t taste like butter chicken….  This is a bit spicy.  Butter chicken isn’t spicy. I cut open a piece of meat.  Hard to tell, but this could be chicken.  Part of the thigh or something.

“Which one of those is butter chicken?”  I asked Aaron.  He had opted to try both the chicken and the lamb.

“This one,” he said, pointing his fork to the one that didn’t resemble what was on my plate at all.

Oh…my…gosh… I just at LAMB! “Boo, this is LAMB!”

Yep, the signs were the wrong way around.  After I freaked out, the signs were corrected.  I ran to the bathroom to scrub every tiny molecule of disgusting lamb from my mouth.  No, I didn’t, that was a lie.  Funny thing is, it wasn’t even the meat that tipped me off, it was the spice.  The lamb sign said spicy, the chicken one did not.