What Are You Up To This Weekend?

“What are you up to this weekend?” she asked with an ambivalent smile as she grabbed some cheese puffs from my cart.  I’m sure she was expecting me to say something like “watching the game” or “mowing the lawn”.  I’m also sure it was a canned question she was instructed to ask everyone who reached her cash register as the work week came to a close.  From the look on her face, I knew that my response was one she’d never heard before.

I was battling the clock as I raced to Trader Joe’s after work to pick up some of the Little Dude’s essential items.  I had to be home at 5:00pm sharp and it was already just past 4:30. It would take me 15 minutes to get home which left me barely 10 minutes to get into the store, find everything on Mrs. Dude’s list, and get back in the car.  It was a steamy 99 degrees outside, which made everyone drag a little more than normal, but I had no time to spare.  

I pulled out my iPhone and searched my notes for the needed items. Even though the list contained only a dozen or so items, I could barely remember my name that day let alone what flavor of yogurt I needed to find. My mind was understandably elsewhere.

I headed up the first aisle, grabbing the strawberry yogurt and some fruit snacks, then made a U-turn into the frozen aisle. Grabbing a few items without stopping the cart, I made another quick turn to find a few of the Little Dude’s favorite items were out of stock. The clock was ticking so I headed to the last aisle to find the last two items on the list were also out of stock. I could feel my palms moisten as the anxiety caused by realizing I was out of time kicked in.  The Little Dude would have to get by without his carrot applesauce for a few days.

I raced home for our last family dinner as we knew it. Everything seemed normal, but there was stress in the air.  And Egg Drop Soup. We tried to keep things as normal as possible for the Little Dude that night. He knew what was going on, at least technically, but the extent to which he was able to process it is a mystery. After dinner, we took the dog for a walk, gave our almost-3-year-old his bath, read him some stories and put him to bed. 

Mrs. Dude and I had a lot to finish and the clock was ticking. Would we have enough time?  As I noticed a mountain of unfolded laundry, I realized that we never quite do. We did our best to get everything in order before finally falling asleep around 1:00 AM.

When the alarm clock buzzed just shy of five hours later, I wanted to hit snooze so badly that I would have given my first born for another 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep. But that couldn’t happen, we had an appointment and had to be on time. I felt nervous but excited as I looked across our spacious bed at Mrs. Dude and said “Let’s go have a baby”.

And so we did.

After a few weeks away, I'm excitedly rejoining the YW crew this week.

Who Picked This Pickiness?

One of my first posts when I started this blog a year ago was about my frustration at having the pickiest eating toddler in the history of civilization.  Just like they do on TV about old shows no one has thought about in decades, I thought I’d do a “Where Are They Now?” look at, well, where we are now in regard to the diversity of the Little Dude’s palate.

Spoiler Alert: It still sucks.

I expected his picky eating to be a phase that he’d grow out of, as countless people assured me it would. I suppose there is still time for that to occur, since he’s only 2 ½ years old, but it seems like it never will. Especially when we are at kids’ birthday parties and the inevitable cheese pizza is served. Mine is the only kid who would rather eat a bag of Baked Snap Pea Crisps than that mozzarella-covered cardboard they often try to pass off as pizza.

Mandatory Kids' Birthday Party Meal

You might be thinking that it’s much better for him to eat baked vegetable snacks than greasy pizza, which is probably true health-wise. I often wonder about the social component of his pickiness. People have suggested that he’ll evolve when he is around other kids. Um, he’s sitting next to 20 other kids who are all eating pizza and he’s not. Must he go to Burning Man for a bigger crowd?

We are very lucky to have a happy, healthy boy who is consistently near the top of the growth chart, so I shouldn’t be complaining. But the frustration caused by his unwillingness to even taste certain foods is compounded by the fact that he frequently talks about them. Yes, my son is an E.T., an Eating Tease.  

Sometimes Mrs. Dude or I will ask what he wants to eat, though we know it’s really a rhetorical question since he eats the same 5 things every day. Occasionally he’ll surprise us and say he wants pizza, for example, and immediately qualifies his request with “for real!” to add validity.  So we make the pizza, put it in on his plate, and watch as once again he’d rather skip dinner than suffer through the horror of cheese baked on top of tomato sauce and dough.  And every time this happens I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy pulls the football. Good grief. 

The Little Dude’s eating repertoire has been virtually the same for the last year and a half. He does have an affinity for breakfast food, but beyond that I’m running out of ideas.  This is the same kid who ate Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for dinner EVERY NIGHT for more than a year, and that only ended because we stopped giving it to him every night. Now the great majority of his evening meals are anchored by (Nitrate-Free) Turkey Dogs, aka the only type of “meat” that he’ll consider eating.

There is one exception to his edict of not trying new foods, and that is if he determines that an item is a cookie, cake, candy or other type of sweet. He can hone in on a dry-looking Do-Si-Do from 20 yards away even though he’s never seen one before but the thought of a dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget is torturous. How he developed that sixth sense, I’ll never understand.  

Double-fisting vanilla cones

People who know me well have suggested that this is my payback for behavior from 25-30 years ago. You see, I was a picky eater once, too. In fact, I ate the same lunch virtually every day from kindergarten through 6^th grade: peanut butter & jelly. I’ve broadened my horizon since then, but even at my pickiest stage I ate at least a few other items. I think I can count every item the Little Dude eats on my fingers and toes. And that’s including both Original and Honey Nut Cheerios.

So what should we do? As a parent, this is incredibly frustrating on so many levels.  We can’t go to a restaurant without packing a full meal, because the likelihood of him eating something from the menu is almost nil. Unless they serve hotdogs.  And even then, he won’t eat the French fries or carrots served with it.  He’d much rather eat a half-dozen Trader Joes rice cakes.  Maybe he has the right idea after all.

 How have you dealt with a picky eater?