Feeding My Toddler

I remember when I would plop Charlie girl in her high chair, put a bib on her and feed her a jar of food that contained vitamins and nutrients and remarked how great an eater she was.  I remember when she would start to eat finger foods by herself, and I fed her salmon and peas and told everyone around me that she loved to try new foods and she loved vegetables.  I looked at my timehop the other day and saw a photo of her eating a whole bowl of string beans as a snack.  I had a foodie on my hands.

I was a flippin’ moron.

Today, Charlotte’s favorite food is pretzel sticks.  She wants to eat them for breakfast, lunch & dinner.  She will only drink milk and thinks water is the devil.  She will not even look at salmon, let alone eat it.  Vegetables are the poison of the earth.  If I tried to give her string beans as a snack she would grind them into the carpet and laugh.  Why would she be on the carpet, you ask? Because she won’t sit in a high chair for shit.  High chairs are the devil.  High chairs are prison wagons meant to contain food to one spot and limit mobility.  We don’t use high chairs.  She laughs at high chairs.  I don’t even know where my high chair is, to be honest.

The child does have days where she eats like a champ.  She will eat vegetables and chicken in soup, or as she calls it, “shoop.”  She’ll have two scrambled eggs with cheese, toast, peanut butter sandwiches, peas mixed into macaroni, meatballs galore.  And then there are days where she eats cheerios off the floor like an animal and drinks 750 million ounces of milk.  Those are the best days.  They go something like this:

Breakfast: Milk, an egg, sometimes a yogurt.  Breakfast is her best meal of the day, usually.  She’ll have a bottle then some food and then ask for 12 more bottles.  Yes, she’s still drinking a bottle so shut your face because I literally do not care.

Snack: Pretzel sticks.  All the pretzel sticks.  No water to wash down the salt, just more milk.  She doesn’t care that milk is expensive.  She’ll drink a gallon a day.  She gives zero f’s.

Lunch: No, she will not eat a meatball.  No, she will not eat soup.  No, SHE WILL NOT EAT A SANDWICH THANK YOU VERY MUCH.  She will have one slice of cheese, a handful of cheerios and more milk.  You think she cares that all she consumes is dairy?  She doesn’t care.

Dinner: I get home for the dinner hour.  It’s a joy, truly.  I make her a meal, she tells me no in the nastiest way possible.  I ask her if she wants the following:

1. Peanut butter sandwich.  She takes a few bites and I find the remnants regurgitated on the floor.  Because today peanut butter is poison food.  Yesterday we ate a whole sandwich, but today she’d rather suck the vinegar out of the cleaning dishrag than eat a peanut butter sandwich thank you very much.
2. Eggs.  Eggs are usually a winner, last night she screamed no in my face until my ear drums blew out.
3. Pad thai.  I don’t even know why I tried this one to be honest. I must have lost my mind temporarily.
4. Kix. F your kix.  Not eating those.
5. Cheese.  NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

If she doesn’t even eat cheese this is how I know she’s not going to eat a damn thing and this is when I give up and stop chasing her around the house holding various food items like a lunatic.  She told me she wanted corn after that.  And went and got her fake piece of corn from her kitchen set and pretended to eat that.  So she had like, 10 ounces of milk and fake corn for dinner.

Clearly, I am the best mother in the world.