Foods and nonfoods

Small children seem to have a love of putting anything but food into their mouths.  Much to the dismay of moms everywhere. I want him to eat a nice steamed carrot, he wants to eat a nice red crayon.  I want him to eat a muffin and some eggs he wants to eat a book.  And on and on it goes.  When we had a birthday party and I offered him a cupcake, thinking we could take some cute messy photos, he wanted nothing to do with it.  I mean yes he poked it and flipped it upside down but out of all the things he tried to do with this cupcake, tasting it wasn't on the list.

It sometimes feels like kids have this innate backwards understanding of what to put into their mouths.  If it's food it will not pass the lips.  If it is not a food a solid effort will be made to chow down.  He tries to eat paper, I tell him no.  I try to feed him an apple slice, he tells me no.

Now I feel like the subject of Edvard Much's famous painting The Scream.

I'm not saying that my son doesn't eat solid foods, he does... sometimes.  He's just exceptionally picky, even by my pregnant-lady standards.  Needless to say meal times have become difficult in this house.  At least we can still both agree on butternut-squash-soup, but I refuse to let that be the only thing we eat.  I need a little more variety than that.

And what really gets me, is when I make food for him because I've seen him happily eat it a few days ago, and he will not even try it today.  This whole food thing bothers me to no end.  If we didn't need it to survive I would have washed my hands of it long ago.  Who needs this level of aggravation three times a day, everyday?

I don't feel like playing twenty questions every meal to find out what my son will take a few bites of and then lose all interest in.  And why is the food on my plate more interesting to him than the food on his plate?  It's the same food!  I just wanted eat something without my son playing with it first, is that so much to ask?  Apparently it is.  Some days I wait to eat until he's taking a nap so that I don't have to deal with his need to play with my food while I eat.

This sadly isn't always an option as there have been days where he skips his afternoon nap, much to my dismay.  I'll put him in his day bed, and do the whole naptime ritual with him, and he will look like he's about to fall asleep, for about half an hour.  Then he bounces up and wants to play or have a snack and what ever I was planning on doing during his normal two hour nap is now not going to happen.  Which is extra lame when I was hoping to use the time for food preparation.  Because now what are we going to eat?!!?!?  Ugh, I guess there is always cereal.