Food Wars

The food wars have begun. Breakfast usually goes well, but every other meal is a challenge around here. The kids sit and pout or scream that they don't want what is being served. They beg for crackers "yah yahs" between meals and are definitely hungry. I've started to regulate how much they get for a snack in the afternoon because they would fill up on snacks and ignore every meal if they could. They eat good food at snack time, so it's not like they are getting fruit snacks and other junk. I don't want them getting used to not eating meals and only snacking all day long.

I'm a hard ass mom and am not above putting them to bed hungry. If they honestly don't like something then I'm not going to make them eat it. Arya has gagged every time she's eaten goat yogurt or chevre cheese. She obviously doesn't like them with that type of response. Eiley's dreaded food seems to be mango. She hates that right now. If they won't even taste what is being served (and it's not one of the foods I know they hate), then they don't get anything else. The two of them play off of each other, which makes things worse. Today they both wanted lunch at 10:50. I held them off until 11:15 and then gave them pasta from last night. The neighbors probably wondered what was going on in this house with the amount of protesting each kid did. Eiley started it and Arya quickly joined in. Eiley wanted her blueberry yogurt smoothy that she didn't finish yesterday. I try to pick my battles and give them a variety of foods. I know that if I gave her the smoothy that would be all she ate/drank. It wouldn't keep her full though and 20 minutes after going down for her nap she'd be up screaming from hunger. She wouldn't nap after that and we'd spend the rest of the day between her yelling from being over tired and her yelling for crackers.


Unrelated to this, A&E finally started climbing the outside of the staircase today. I've discouraged it so far, but knew this day would come soon.

After the huge fit they threw, they both got put in their cribs to chill out. Five minutes later they were ready to come back down and try the lunch thing again. By noon they were both happily eating pasta, salad and broccoli in their chairs. They didn't dislike anything I was feeding them, they just would have preferred jelly beans and cookies to the real food. I totally understand that, given my huge sweet tooth, but they aren't getting jelly beans or cookies unless they've eaten something nutritious first.