From the Kadish Family: Oh no, it's time to eat!

Mealtime, one of my most dreaded times of the day, and it occurs at least three times every single day. I never know if it is going to be an easy, clean, everyone is happy meal or a fussy, "I'm not going to eat anything you put in front of me", throw all the food on the floor meal. Some days I get three "good" meals, which is rare, some days three "bad" meals, not too often, but mostly I get a combo, one or two "good" ones and the other(s) "bad".

Breakfast: The easiest meal by far is breakfast, about 95% of the time Tristan and I are both satisfied with his breakfast behavior. He normally eats breakfast around 9:30/10:00 a.m. since he drinks milk when he wakes up around 8ish and isn't quite ready to eat until a little later. Around this time I usually ask him if he is hungry and he replies "num, num, num", walks over to his highchair, puts his hands in the air and waits for me to pick him up and strap him in. I then get him a bib and begin to slice a banana...he pretty much eats a banana everyday, unless I run out and haven't made it back to the store. After putting the banana on his tray I normally wash the dishes in the sink, make the bed or do some other household task (real fun stuff!). My cue to come back is when he starts making a lot of noise and squirming, to which I find one of two things.

Either he has eaten all of his banana and is ready for something else or half the banana is on the floor, his way of showing me he just wasn't in the mood for a banana that morning and is ready to move on to something else. So we move on to a NutriGrain bar or Cheerios and finally a yogurt. I can pretty much bet my entire life savings on him eating the yogurt...this kid is absolutely obsessed with yogurt, if he could survive on yogurt alone then mealtimes would be a piece of cake! After he scarfs this down, all that is left to clean are his grubby little hands and face. This is when the lion lets loose...he can't stand for me to clean him up after a meal, but we get through it and he is off to play again, concluding the breakfast meal.

I know it seems kind of mundane and boring that Tristan eats pretty much the same thing everyday for breakfast, but he really doesn't like to budge from his breakfast routine. I have tried pancakes, waffles, blueberry waffles, banana muffins, eggs, oatmeal and a ton of other things, but he is pretty content with his banana, Cheerios and of course, yogurt (at least it comes in multiple flavors and is made with whole milk!). Although, we did stray from our normal breakfast routine the other day when I took Tristan to eat breakfast tacos at a local Mexican restaurant...he actually ate about half of a bean and cheese breakfast taco, and of course a yogurt! The next morning is ready for good old faithful though!

So, you are probably thinking that this doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, keep in mind that I did mention that breakfast was by far the easiest meal of the day, and it is also when Tristan eats his favorite food, yogurt.

Lunch: Completely hot and cold when it comes to lunch, but on average this is when I seem to get most of the "bad" meals and when I end up the most frustrated and thinking that my child is going to shrivel up from a lack of nutrition. One day he eats most of what I give him and the next day he'd rather starve than eat what I put on his tray and pretty much throws everything on the floor in protest. We have absolutely no pattern or schedule for lunch, unlike breakfast. He usually eats after he wakes up from his nap, any time from 1:30 to 3:00, totally depends on if he takes an hour and a half nap or a three hour nap (yes, he took a 3 hour nap the other day!).

I have been trying to expose him to more "adult" foods since he was about 11 months, but this kid is so stubborn and picky about taste and texture that he won't even try half the stuff I give him and refuses to eat baby food. I can usually get a piece a of cheese down him, and some days that's all he wants to eat. Other days, he'll polish off a whole jar of meats sticks along with his cheese, but the next day I struggle to get one or two sticks in his tummy. He's not really a big fan of sliced deli meat, he tends to chew it for awhile and then pull it out of his mouth and pick up another piece just to chew it and eventually pull it out, repeating this process over and over. For awhile, he would eat sliced pears and peaches everyday, but now it's a toss up whether he wants those too. Strawberries used to be a favorite, but he has recently decided to give those up altogether.

Lately, he has really liked grapes, blueberries and blackberries, but not the whole piece of fruit. He puts a sliced grape in his mouth, chews on it until he gets the entire middle part out and then spits out only the skin. He does the same with the berries, basically biting into the berry to make the juice gush and then pulls the rest out...what a trip this kid is!

Other foods that sometimes make the cut, and sometimes don't, include thinly sliced apples, applesauce, baby fruit strips (essentially dried fruit), bread, peanut butter crackers, NutriGrain bars, goldfish and graham crackers (sometimes he'd rather crumple the cracker up than eat it). But, animal cookies and vanilla wafers almost always pass the taste test for Tristan!

Are you beginning to understand what I am talking about when I say I dread mealtimes? Lunch ends up taking anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes everyday, and that doesn't inlcude all the cleaning up I have to do!

Dinner: Much like lunch, I never know quite what to expect at dinner, but I do think I get more "good" meals than "bad". If we go out to eat for dinner, then I order him a grilled cheese sandwich, macaroni and cheese, cheese quesadilla, or ravioli...depends on where we go...normally, he gladly accepts any of these. He also LOVES the honey wheat bread served at Outback...he practically eats half a loaf of it. Funny how he will eat bread from there or a grilled cheese sandwich, which consists primarily of bread, but when I give him bread at home he doesn't want anything to do with it, other than to throw it on the floor.

At home his favorites are cheese or meat ravioli covered in tomato sauce...he even likes to eat the leftover tomato sauce from a spoon! A close runner-up is pasta shells and cheese. He is actually pretty happy with most pasta dishes, as long as the noodles are small, not long and stringy like spaghetti or vermicelli...there's that pickiness about texture again. It's probably the reason he is picky about meat as well-I have had a hard time finding meats that Tristan will eat. Since he doesn't always want the meat sticks and tends to spit out most of the deli meat I really don't know what to give him other than meat ravioli or the meat sauce from spaghetti. He has eaten extremely tender chicken fajita before and seemed to like that. Any suggestions from experienced parents are welcome!

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned much about vegetables...well, that is because Tristan turns his nose up at every vegetable before he even tries it out. I have tried green beans (who doesn't like green beans?), halved cherry tomatoes, diced carrots, peas, corn, broccoli and cheese bites, etc. They are all pretty much a "no" in his book. The only thing Victor and I have been able to get him to eat is a sweet potato (with a sprinkle of cinnamon and brown sugar). I have even tried to be creative (I say "creative" instead of "sneaky") when it comes to getting vegetables in Tristan's stomach.

Since he likes ravioli and mac and cheese so much I have mixed his vegetables in those, but it only half works. Once he catches on that there are veggies in his food he manages to eat all the pasta and sauce part and spits out just the veggies...it is really amazing how he can separate the foods in his mouth and manage to just spit out the veggies! I have also tried covering the broccoli and cheese bites in tomato sauce, but that just really irked him! He thought he was getting one of his good ole favorites, and instead it was broccoli! Once again, any suggestions are more than welcome!

I guess the only thing that has helped keep Tristan interested in eating and trying new foods, rather than throwing or playing with it, has been that I have let him feed himself with a fork the past few days, and he is actually quite good at it! He has a hard time stabbing his food, so I usually help him with that, but once it's on the fork, he puts it right in his mouth. He ate his bean and cheese taco from the other day with a fork, a whole bowl of ravioli the other night and part of his banana this morning using a fork. I have to say, I am quite impressed, especially since I am letting him use a real fork...I just haven't bought any of the baby forks and he does such a good job with a real fork that I am wondering if I need to. Of course, he is closely supervised when he has a fork in hand!

It's probably time I wrap it up...as you can tell by reading this (if you made it this far), mealtime is quite an adventure at our house. Oh, how I long for the days when eating used to be such a quick, easy and clean task...two jars of baby food/cereal per meal, fed by Mom and consumed within 5-10 minutes. What happened to that? I guess I'll have to keep wondering!

Well, I couldn't expect you guys to read this endless post and not give you any pictures, so enjoy the ones below but don't let all the smiles fool you, I just don't remember to take the ones when he is throwing food all over the floor!

Yummy graham cracker!