When it comes to food, Toddler B is as healthy and
adventurous any toddler. Which means, I’m pretty sure he’s surviving on cheddar
bunnies and food I tell him not to eat off the floor. I remember when he first
started eating solid food and I started him on peas, moving on to squash,
pureed kale, spinach, broccoli, carrots, sweet potato and more. It was my plan
to make him fall in love with vegetables. What happened was a little bit
different.
I guess it was inevitable. He discovered cookies. And chips. And
crackers. And pasta. And bread. Basically, my toddler eats like he’s
carb-loading for a marathon. Which I guess makes sense considering the fact
that he spends most of his waking hours in motion, running, jumping, climbing
and hurdling all over the place.
I did develop a few tricks to get the occasional green food
into this rambunctious boy, like making home-made squeezers with some of his
favorite fruits while sneaking in kale or spinach. I also found that he’s more
likely to eat vegetables if he’s involved in the cooking process, like the
night we made mashed cauliflower together and he cleaned his plate! This
weekend at the grocery store, a genius idea came over me- why don’t I let him
pick his own produce? We strolled through
the vegetable section and he selected avocados and a green bell pepper. I don’t
know who was more excited about that pepper, him or me!
During lunch the next day, I cut the pepper into “sticks”
and arranged it carefully on his plate with a dipping cup full of hummus. He
took one bite of the pepper and I heard him say under his breath, “…yuk.” He immediately gathered up all of the pepper
slices and moved them off of his plate onto the table, saying, “Just chips
please. Just chips.” I was actually too
busy laughing at his meticulous and oddly polite request to be upset about it. I handed him some tortilla chips to go with
his hummus instead. And a squeezer.
At two years and one month old, B is officially 35 inches
tall and weighs in at nearly 30lbs. His new favorite toy (his own words) is his
Blaze monster truck. He loves pretending, racing, playgrounds, playing with his
cousins, and so much more. He dislikes bedtime, being interrupted, and of
course, vegetables.
