Toys, Tots and Dinner

When we sit down at the dinner table nightly, there is always one goal in mind. To get our two year old to eat.  I look back fondly on the days not so long ago when he used to eat anything we put in front of him gleefully telling us "that's dee-licious!" I used to brag willfully to fellow moms at how my toddler would eat like a champion and sniff at their eating issues. My husband and I would snicker when we'd sit for a meal and recount others troubles. How I miss those days, for we've eaten our words. In. Spades. 


We have a two year old that we are currently trying to convince that food groups exist beyond fruit snacks. Heck, I call it a good day if lunch consists of fruits snacks AND a Peter Rabbit organic fruit smoothie. Although we are on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich kick lately that we are milking for all it's worth. Breakfast has always been easy for some reason. He loves breakfast. Breakfast is never bribe worthy. Pancakes, waffles, oatmeal, even Mommy's shredded wheat. The kid loves it all. Lunch is spotty. Lunch is nap dependent even. He'll skip lunch somedays for a good nap; but then, so would I.  We can do yogurt, a sandwich, a squeezy applesauce, ravioli.  He loves a good Lunchable by Oscar Meyer, though we try to limit those to preschool lunch days only for the ease of it. 


But dinner. Dinner is the bane of our existence. Dinner takes finesse. Dinner takes creativity and cajoling nightly on Mommy and Daddy's part. Dinner sometimes means behaving like our parents and swearing the child will go to bed hungry out of our frustration from him refusing to eat what we've prepared. I know he laughs when we say that as he's already, at the tender age of two, learned how to call our bluff. No matter what we cook, no matter what he's agreed to eat, by the time we sit down at the table "It's too hot", "I don't like that", "I don't want that",
"Can I have a fruit snack?". The list is long and we are weary. We tried special all kid-friendly grocery shopping to inspire his meal time palate. That worked for a week.  We bought the Jessica Seinfeld cookbook hoping for inspiration. We've yet to find time to make a recipe. We hold out hope there's a simple method to get him to eat our family dinner each night. Tonight we gave him a new toy. Sure. We'll just bribe him all the way through to college. That'll work.