The Dinner Habits of Toddlers

I know I’ve blogged about this topic before, but I swear, at every meal I’m convinced my children are from another planet. What is UP with their bizarre mealtime habits? When my son was an infant, he ate anything. He would accept any meal in large quantities. Now, he eats less than my 17-month old. Last night I made fajitas, and he whined the entire time I was cooking. “I don’t want that! I don’t like fajitas. I want peanut butter and jelly.”

My response was, of course, “You’ll get what I cook and like it.”

My daughter was peeved that dinner was served later than 5:00 p.m. She wanted food, and she wanted it NOW, darn it. I believe she was sitting on the kitchen floor with her arms wrapped around my knees, whacking her head against the kitchen cabinets while screaming, “Eat, eat!”

My response was, “Don’t give yourself a concussion, darling.”

When all was said and done, my daughter inhaled the food and dumped a glass of milk all over herself. She was surprised that gravity actually DOES apply to her. :confused2: She cried, her dress was changed, and then all was right with the universe.

My son, after complaining for half an hour that he didn’t like fajitas, said, “Oooh, chicken! I like this.” He ignored the tortillas, called the green peppers and onions “sticks and worms” and ate approximately one chicken piece. I think it may be time to break out the children’s vitamins. Yikes.

In other news, I made a little bit of forward progress on the new book. I realized that the book had no middle and this could be a problem (you think?) and spent a bit of time brainstorming secondary plots. I have some ideas but as always, I have to write it all the wrong ways first until I figure out the right way. Only 2 pages of progress, but I tend to write in spurts. When a scene is cooking, I can often get much more, but you never know. My hero was whining (which reminded me of my son) and I had to give him the slapdown.

Today the goal is to finalize one of the secondary threads and get a few more pages.