One picky eater

I am a very picky eater. We all know that. And we have all come to accept that.

Elem is an even more picky eater. We all know that. But we have all not come to accept it as of yet.

I am what you would call a very simple eater (picky eater). To break it down- I do not like many foods, I love meat, love bread and pastas, and a handful of veggies and fruits. I do not like my food to touch on the plate and rarely will you find me eating a casserole or one or more foods at a time, no food on forks that are going to be touching other foods, and hardly any dairy because it doesn't sit well with me. I am sure I could go on, but I will most likely always be this way, because I always have and even though I have tried to like foods here and there, those new ones that enter my menu are few and far between. It is just not my thing, and even though I wish I liked more foods so that I could be this amazingly healthy person, I just can't do it. I don't have the taste buds for it, and I have just come to accept it. Food is not something that is all that great for me, I can't cook worth a flip, and I just eat to eat, not because I like it. Elem-is similar to me in so many of those things I just listed. He doesn't like his food to touch each other, doesn't like a wide variety of foods, doesn't like to try new foods, and really judges most food on their presentation before he will even consider if he is going to put it in his mouth or not. This makes being a mom-and planning for a healthy preschooler so much more difficult than I ever could have imagined! If I could cook I might have a slight leg up, but since I can't and we are dependent on Seth for all the cooking, making Elem's meals healthy and fun for a preschooler to eat is so hard! Our work schedules and life schedules don't help a bit either-since we don't even get home till close to 6pm and sometimes he or I is getting home after that. Currently some foods that Elem does enjoy eating are hotdogs, rice, pasta or noodles, cereal (without milk of course-just like his mommy), waffles, chicken, turkey, sliced-shredded-or string cheese, milk, and bread. Uhm that menu does not allow for much of a variety in eating, and it is super frustrating for me to purchase fresh veggies and fruits and just end up having to throw them away because he wont even touch them! I have tried to keep at least one veggie or fruit on his plate at every single meal that we provide for him, but sometimes it is just so hard! Whew, this is seriously something that I am having to work hard at, and in the grand scheme of things it is just so much easier to simply offer him some healthy deli meat, because I know it will at least get eaten and he will not be hungry! I feel like I am trying hard and am going to keep hoping that he ends up with his dad's taste buds and willingness to eat anything you put in front of him, but it is not looking that way for us! So I snapped this little video to remember just what a typical night at the dinner table looks like for us. The video is about 5 minutes long, but I wanted to capture the entire episode. And this being after about 10 minutes of pre-whining and effort to get up from the table and just not eat anything.



This episode, which happens on average 5 times a week or more, brings me right back to the days when I was about 5-10 years old (yes all of those years) and I would sit at the table with my family while they would al be eating dinner and I would just be picking at my food, trying to think of a way to get out of eating it. I had many different ways of "not having to eat" my food, and I wont go into detail on those, but lets just say napkins and the dog helped out a lot! ha!Payback for how I obviously tormented my family (mainly mom) during meal times and most likely during weekly trips to the grocery store trying to find something that I could force down, is so not fun. Elem, how can you still be so cute when you are trying to talk your way out of eating your food??? And you haven't even touched it or tried it yet?