My kids eat their dinner. The rule at our house is that we eat our dinner or we go to bed, but this has been a relaxed rule since Zane and Nora began eating real food, people-food, if you will. I want the little beasts to have a wide variety of foods that they like. When Brian and I began dating, I recall there was a certain young man that would only eat corn dogs and chicken nuggets, both high in nutrients (preservatives are nutrients, right?)and I didn't want to have to fight the vegetable battle with the new batch of kids too.
So in order to expand their palates, I make a variety of foods. Some are kid-friendly, some are not. Tonight was burritos of the bean and cheese variety and rice with black beans and corn. It wasn't spicy or bitter, two characteristics in foods that the little folks balk at. But from all the whining and protesting, you would think I was feeding them deep fried snake balls dipped in jalepeno fire sauce.
We ate outside at our new picnic table,too, and perhaps it was the novelty of that situation that set them off. Neither Zane nor Nora would eat their dinner. This resulted in me yelling at them, then threatening them, then standing sentinel at the end of their table, making sure they stuffed something into their pie-holes besides their juice boxes and their raspberries. I almost pulled out the guilt trip my folks used to use on my ass on meatloaf night. (Coincidentally I still despise meatloaf) My mom would put on her "I'm soooo disappointed in you" puss and then tell me about the starving children in Africa, specifically in Ethiopia at that time.
What I really wanted to tell her was to box up my meatloaf and send it over there. None of those Ethiopian kids were that hungry, anyway, I was sure. Tonight the Africans would have been the recipients of beans and rice and burritos. I wonder how those kids feel about Mexican.
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