So you’re cooking for a 2-year old…

That’s the working title for my new reality TV show idea.  There are all of these cooking shows that pit chefs against one another, but not one of them has a judging panel that can give a 2-year old a run for his/her money.  I’d like to offer Z up as a cooking judge.  He’d made Gordon Ramsay look like a softie.

My approach to feeding Z has always been to provide healthy options and hope he eats something.  If he doesn’t finish a meal, I don’t argue (why turn meals into power struggles when you know you can’t win?) and I don’t rush to find something he’d like better.  I’ve found that if he’s not pressured, he will usually try everything and will often finish whatever is in front of him.  He also likes to have company when he eats, but only if you pay attention to him.  If you are distracted (i.e. on the phone, reading a magazine, watching TV), then you may as well leave him to his own devices – he’ll do much better on his own.  But if you chat with him and remain fully engaged with him, then he’ll eat things that he refused 5 minutes earlier.

However, Z definitely has his preferences and I do try to work within them to a point, especially if he hasn’t been eating well for an extended time.  He’s never liked cooked cheese or most meats, which is fine with me since those aren’t very healthy for him anyway.  But getting protein into him has always been a challenge so I keep a supply of plain yogurt, cottage cheese and tofu on hand just in case.

Lately, he has refused to eat anything with color (other than fruit) and he’s gotten even more sensitive to textures than he was before.  He has even rejected his old favorite vegetable – green peas – because he doesn’t like the skins.  (Have you ever tried to peel a pea?  It’s not easy.)  This has made it especially challenging for me to feed him a healthy diet, since nutritious foods are generally brightly-colored and pretty much everything is textured.  Today I did pretty well at lunch (whole wheat english muffin with hummus and havarti cheese, and a side of butternut squash that I baked, pureed, and then mixed with a bit of applesauce), but I’m already worrying about what I’ll give him for dinner.

Luckily, he still eats breakfast and snacks like a champ so I know he’s not starving.  And he also loves to eat Mei-mei’s food, so I’ve been able to get a few portions of pureed peas in his belly.  I just wonder what he’s going to come up with next.