Toddler food

It seems like kid food has been a busy topic this week. 

One of my friends at work was complaining on one of the social networks about how unhealthy the choices are for kids at restaurants. There were a lot of people who commiserated with her and a few who made suggestions of food alternatives at restaurants.

Then today, I was talking with another friend who said she basically has to force her 2-year-old to eat these days. He used to be a great eater, fruits and veggies and a lot of other stuff. Now, he doesn't seem to care even for some of his favorite things.

I can identify with both friends.

It seems like most restaurants offer chicken nuggets and fries, grilled cheese sandwich with fries or hamburger with fries. And that's fine, except that Biscuit doesn't eat grilled cheese sandwiches. Biscuit only eats hamburgers every once in a while (there's never a guarantee of when that every once in a while is, either). So that leaves chicken nuggets and fries as his only options at a lot of restaurants.

One restaurants we like has honey chicken that Biscuit LOVES. It's an Asian restaurant, so the honey chicken comes with rice and broccoli. Biscuit won't eat rice or broccoli. So the last time we went there, I baked a sweet potato, scooped it out and put it in a bowl with a little butter and cinnamon. I took the bowl of sweet potatoes out of my pocketbook, cut up the chicken on Biscuit's plate, and he was happy as a clam.

And I totally understand where the other mom was coming from, too. There used to be so many things Biscuit would eat that he won't even touch now. And to make matters worse, he'll look at food he doesn't like and say, "Eeeewwww!" Oh, I was VERY pleased when he learned to make THAT noise!

Biscuit is still in the phase where one day we can't get him to each much of anything, then the very next day we can't seem to fill him up. Tonight was the latter.

Biscuit is starting to figure out that certain foods are served at certain times of the day. Oh, he'll still ask for Goldfish for dinner, but he's started to memorize some of the food pairings we give him at meals.

This morning, he said, "Mom, I want a blueberry candy bar and yogurt for breakfast." The blueberry candy bars are fruit breakfast bars, by the way. The breakfast bar and yogurt is a common pairing. So is a breakfast bar with applesauce or oatmeal and a banana.

Tonight, for the first time, he made a pretty good dinner request.

"Mom, I want little pizzas and peaches for dinner," Biscuit said. Sometimes I'll make him little pizzas out of English muffins. Jeff was covering a game tonight, and I couldn't think of anything I wanted, so I told him that sounded fine to me.

You would've thought I told the boy he could buy everything in the toy department.

"PEACHES! PEACHES! Pizza and PEACHES!" Biscuit yelled. Then after he repeated it over and over, he yelled again. "Mom! Mom! Pizza and peaches both start with P. THEY START WITH P, MOM!"

Biscuit loves beans and sweet potatoes, and bananas, applesauce and peaches. Sometimes it's hard to figure out how to handle all the food issues, but hey, my boy isn't starving.