Friday, May 27, 2011

Last time...

This was absolutely the last time...

The last time she(meaning me) would make 3 different dinners. Or was it 4? What happened to "eat what I make or don't eat at all". But that seems like cruel and unusual punishment.

I know what it's like to be the picky eater.  My grandmother would make special dinners on the side just for me...so I would eat...I could go for-what-seemed-like-ever without eating. My parents tried every trick in the book to get me to eat. I would sit at the table for hours until I finished what was on my plate...little did they know by "finish", that really meant spitting my chewed-up food in napkins, running to the bathroom and flushing away the evidence.

My children (or some of them) have inherited this picky-food gene. I fought with it at first. I didn't make them sit at the table for hours, but I wouldn't make them a special dinner either. That lasted about a day. Do I really want to make an issue out of food? My girls will go through enough issues with food in years to come. If I can give them a good base to start with, I'm hoping they will deal with food in a healthful way, and not in the binge-purge cycle I once struggled with at one point of my life (something no one knows about me until right this very moment...I was really good at hiding it).

I will continue to be a short-order cook, as I am certain my grandmother did for me...out of love. I will continue to ask them every night, "What would you like for dinner?". I don't care how annoying I find this at times, I don't care that I go through a case of Eggo waffles every week because that is #3's dinner...EVERY NIGHT, I don't care if they don't eat the fruits and veggies I serve with dinner every night, because I know in time, they will eat them...just like me, now. It might have taken me 20 plus years to do it, but you know what? I don't care.

And all the mothers who have given me advice on this issue(or non-issue in my house)...she they were wrong.

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