I’m not sure if you’ve heard this rumour, but when you have kids they expect to eat dinner EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.
Without fail.
I know. I know. This means that dinner has to be cooked or sourced each and every day. You don’t read that in the parenting books. Or perhaps you do and I skipped that chapter.
OK, I’m joking. I know it’s obvious, but I didn’t know how monotonous the whole experience would be. And it would be easy if the kids just ate, but all kids are different. My two are like chalk and cheese.
Lacey is a good eater, in that she’ll eat a wide variety of foods. But she eats like a bird. Last week, while we were away, I really noticed the difference in my girls eating styles. Over breakfast I had to beg Lacey to eat, “Please eat your breakfast today.” And then as the morning went on my expectations narrowed, “Please eat just three bites” then “Please just eat two bites” and then I was happy with anything, “JUST LICK THAT DAMN HASH BROWN AND WE’LL CALL IT A DAY”.
She’d much rather be people-watching or playing or anything but eating.
Lulu though, she loves her food and in large quantities. She’ll happily have three sittings in each meal. On our last afternoon on Magnetic Island we decided to get pizza for dinner. I’ve learned in Lulu’s short life that if she hasn’t eaten by 5:30pm, life is not worth living. She loses it. So at 5pm I ordered pizza, it was cooked and then we headed back to our apartment. At this stage we were driving in a topless car, which has no roof, no windows and no doors. Lulu had detected that there was pizza in the car, probably because the car is the size of a matchbox and the pizza was sitting on my lap a mere 14cm away from her.
She had a meltdown. “DINNNNNER! DINNNER TIME! PIZZA!” She’d never eaten pizza before but she knew how to say it and she wanted to eat it. She got louder and hungrier and started crying. Mum, who was driving and is usually the most patient and tolerant of them all, turned to me and said, “GIVE HER THE PIZZA!”
The pizza was hot, having been just cooked, and we all know that when you have a toddler that the time between a food being too hot and being at a temperature able to be eaten is a lifetime. Like, seriously, how long does it take a hot chip to cool down? TOO LONG is the answer to that one.
So I took out a piece of pizza and I held it up to the sky to cool it down as we drove. Yep, I was the lady waving a piece of pizza in the cool afternoon air praying for it to cool down and the meltdown in the backseat to be over. Cooling down the pizza is not enough though, Lulu needs a distraction to go with it. So I made up a pizza-cooling-down song. “I’m cooling down the pizza! Pizza! I’m cooling down the pizza in the pink topless car!”
She wasn’t happy still, so I tore off the crust and gave her that and she was momentarily satisfied. Lacey had two bites and called it a night, and Lulu ate the rest while we were back at the apartment. Then moved onto fruit and back to pizza, making sure she had her obligatory three courses.
Do your kids eat? Or is it a battle every night too?
There aren’t enough caps in the world for me to write BATTLE.
I think we should go on a strike. One that involves an island, a cheese platter and wine.
I hear you. Food and kids can be sooo frustrating. With our three we’ve covered the gamut – the fussy eater who eats good sized portions of the food he does eat (which thankfully includes meat and veggies); the slow eater who has a great palette (he’ll eat prawns, olives and chilli and he’s only 6) but takes a minimum of 45 minutes to eat dinner and our youngest who eats so much during the day (he is at me all day) but hardly sniffs his food at dinner. The thing about dinner these days that’s frustrating is the shenanigans that go with it … the food stuff is coming second these days and that’s saying something!
Oh yes. Mine won’t sit down for even 3 minutes. It’s a moving food war.
Let’s do it again tonight, shall we?
And then your boy child “grows up” into a man baby and so the food wars go on…
No fun at all. 🙁
… I love the picture you paint of cooling the pizza in a pink convertible, Chantelle…. wonderful… totally relate to the ‘producing tea every day’ problem… thankfully those days are behind me and I sometines don’t eat an evening meal at all…. aahh .. the freedom.. xxx <3
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My daughter eats really well but she has heaps of food allergies {dairy, soy, eggs, pork, bacon, ham, sausages, apple, avocado, pear, mandarin} so she pretty much eats chicken, beef and veggies + a few select fruits. Luckily she does pretty much eat everything we give her though.
My little man isn’t even two yet and dinner is a major battle. He is the slowest eater ever and takes a minimum of 45 minutes to eat dinner. He is determined to do it all himself which is fantastic, however he gets a little lazy after a while and says he is done purely because he is sick of feeding himself (but also refuses for us to help!!!). On top of all of that, he goes through phases where he wants to eat all day then other days won’t touch a thing. Argh!! Just when I think I have him sorted he changes his mind… oh toddler life, how I love you!!
So funny! So true! Our oldest two are almost EXACTLY like yours, and then our third… who knows/cares? We have given up – eat, don’t eat, we ain’t playin’ this game no more!
Its hilarious with my baby, especially when I am feeding her soup (most favourite food), every time I am cooling a spoonful of soup before feeding her, she will keep on asking and confirming, “it’s for me right mommy? you are not going to have my soup right?”
With your description of incidence, one could picture the whole sequence… so cute and funny!!
Aww how cute!!
Oh god, the cool-down period is the WORST, as is the 35 seconds it takes to heat a bottle in the microwave.
I can just imagine you with a piece of pizza in the air singing at the top of your lungs – too funny (though I’m sure it was stressful at the time)…! x