One of the highlights of my day, however exciting the rest of it was, was dinner time. Logan and I have been doing a lot of thinking about Declan's eating habits. We always said that we wanted him to be able to eat anything, and like more things than me. We thought that it was going in a good direction when he was little because he would eat any baby food. As he grew older, he had some aversions to texture so we slowed down a little with trying new foods. It then got to the point that by the time I got home from work, and Logan was closing so he wasn't home, I didn't have the time or the energy to make a meal for Declan and I, especially if I didn't think he would eat it.
It ended up being much easier to make things that I knew he liked, and things that would only take minutes to make. See mac and cheese, grilled cheese, pb and j. Recently we have had a lot more time to have family meals, but since he has been so used to getting the same things that he liked, Declan has been refusing new food. Logan and I decided that this was unacceptable as it is disrespectful to the person that spent time making the food. We feel that he is now old enough to understand this concept. We, however, were absolutely clueless as to how to accomplish this.
Two nights ago Logan made homemade fried rice with brown rice, edamame, broccoli, onions and vegan chicken. It was pretty delish. Declan decided that since it was something different he wasn't going to eat it. We knew that no matter what, the kid wasn't going to starve. If he was hungry enough, he would eat. He decided that wasn't the case and instead threw a fit when we asked him to eat the food. We decided that he needed to be removed from the table if he couldn't sit there appropriately and we put him in his crib. He stayed there for about five minutes and was then invited back to the table to try again. He didn't fuss at all and ate a teeny tiny bite. He said he was all done and we accepted that. We weren't going to force him to eat, but we wanted him to know it wasn't ok to not eat what was put in front of him. He needs to at least try it.
Last night we were all pretty tired by the end of the day, so I just cooked up some sweet potatoes and made him a grilled cheese. He ate both with gusto, which I wasn't surprised about because I knew he liked both. However, tonight he got the rest of the sweet potatoes and then we decided to try the fried rice again. I made myself a bowl and brought it to the table. I cooled off a bit and put it in his bowl. Then... what do you know... he ate it up! He ate up a good amount of it! Now, who knows if this was because he just decided to like it today, or if he was just in a better mood or more hungry or if what we did actually worked but... he ate something different AND he ate so many vegetables! I'm a happy Mama!
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