Two steps forward and one step back

I feel as if we took one step forward and now we are taking one step back. Grace has come a long way with her eating in the last six months. When we were in Russia, she would eat anything and everything we put in front of her. We would give her some rice cereal in our hotel room, and then we would go down for breakfast, and the ladies at the hotel would insist that she eat the yogurt and egg that they made for her. The first morning I thought "well, she just stuffed herself on cereal, there's no way she'll eat that too!" I was wrong. She ate it all. It didn't matter what we put in front of her...she'd eat it. Well, as long as it was really soft like scrambled eggs or pureed foods. She couldn't chew yet. 19 months and didn't know how to chew. We came home and I started the same routine. However, we quickly discovered that she did NOT want to eat lunch or dinner. We made sure she got plenty of healthy snacks in between, but when it came to actually eating lunch or dinner, she refused. One day, I was desperate. My friend called and offered some stew. She made too much and wanted to share with us. I pureed the food, and approached Grace. She downed the whole thing! That's when it hit me...she refused to eat the American baby food because it is bland. The Russian baby food has tomatoes, garlic, and onions in it.

So, in an effort to get her to eat lunch and dinner, I started cooking regular meals for her and pureeing them. Her eating improved drastically. Gradually, I started pureeing the food less and less. Around January/February, we started noticing another problem. Her lunches were still fine. We were now feeding her sandwiches, mac and cheese, Tyson nuggets, etc at lunch, and she had a great appetite. At dinner, however....not so much. She was back to having her temper tantrums. Now, my food isn't bland. Sure, I don't use tons of spices and such, but it's not totally without flavor. But she stopped eating anything except pasta and sometimes mashed potatoes. I became stubborn. You don't want to eat your dinner-fine, you go to bed hungry and tomorrow you'll eat a big breakfast. While that relieved us of frustration, it didn't encourage her to eat her dinner. We were watching Supernanny one night, and she had a little blurb about picky eaters; she said to just put the food on the plate and let them eat what they want. So, for a day or so I did that-but sometimes she wouldn't eat anything. This week, I had a little breakthrough.

I know that sometimes she won't eat the protein because she doesn't like the texture or because it's too tough. So, the other day when I made stew, I decided to puree it a little bit; just to break up the meat into more manageable pieces. She ate a whole bowl. Usually, what she would have done is taken a bite and swallowed the potatoes while spitting out the carrots and meat. However, since it was all blended together, she couldn't. She enjoyed the flavor of the whole thing. I also discovered that cheering her on by offering her an occasional goldfish cracker also helped. A mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do. The next day we were having chicken tacos. I'm trying to get creative with our leftovers. So, I knew she wasn't going to eat the chicken, but I also knew she would like the flavor. So, I did the same thing. I took all the "stuff" to make a taco, and I blended it all together for her. I added some crushed chips and she ate the whole bowl. Once she figgured out there were chips in it she was more enthusiastic. So now, I've gone two steps forward by realizing that other than tough meat, there are no limitations to her chewing now...big difference than six months ago. However, I've taken a step back by having to puree her food so that she will enjoy the flaovorful meal rather than picking and choosing just the carbs. Perhaps I'll take it a step further; perhaps half her meal will be all the "stuff" seperated so she can pick and choose, and the other half will be the same thing only pureed. Perhaps she'll eventually she'll realize they're the same only one is all put together and the other is all seperate. I'll post again to see how it all works out. Tonight we're having leftover stew from the other day. I'll giver her two plates; one with the meat, potatoes, carrots and juice and one with it all pureed together. Hmmmm.....