The other day I spotted a Jiffy pizza dough box in the pantry and deemed it pizza night. Ethan was busy constructing the world’s largest lego snow-speeder-fire-police-blaster ship, and so I enlisted Jocelyn’s help. She helped me “paint” on the pizza sauce and was not quite so helpful putting the cheese on (more went into her mouth when she thought I wasn’t looking. Toddler sneakiness is so cute though).

It made me remember when my mom had us make our own pizzas with english muffins. Talk about easy! And there has been a dearth of home meals that have not consisted of PBJs and chicken nuggets, so I picked up the stuff next time I was at the store.

It’s amazing the progress this child has made. The child I once spanked because I was so frustrated with his inability to taste ANYTHING new, not to mention his inability to NOT provide a running commentary on how yucky everything was and how no morsel would ever pass his lips, NOT EVER, I’M NOT GIVING UP EVER.

So it started out pretty predictably. I opened a jar of sauce and gloped a spoonful on each side of an english muffin half, and told them to “paint” on the sauce.

“Can’t we toast one with butter mommy?” Ethan said,
“No, we’re having little pizzas tonight.” If ONLY that was the end, but now, he kept asking again and again until I thought I would scream. That was not the worst though,

“This looks DISGUSTING,” he would state as he spread the sauce around. I didn’t bother to answer, except to tell him if he couldn’t say something nice, not to say anything.

“I’m not going to eat it!” he informed me in a sing song voice! Again, no comment from me. Instead, I think I told them both what good “painters” they were.

By the time cheese sprinkling came around, he was having fun, and then I popped them under the broiler and they both had to turn the oven light on and off and check them and recheck them.

I set them down in front of them both, and Ethan again stated that he wasn’t eating any.

I dug out my standard line. “You just have to have 1 bite. You don’t know if you don’t like something if you never try it.”

He tried it. I turned my back on him and finished emptying the dishwasher. By the time I turned back around, the innards of his english muffin pizza was gone, with just the bones (what we call the crusts) left. I debated making him eat the bones, told him he had to eat least eat 1 of the bones to get dessert. He complied pretty easily.

I couldn’t help it. I tried, but I couldn’t help but verbally poking at him a little,

“I thought you said you wouldn’t try it?”
“I was KIDDING mommy!”

I’ll take it 🙂

This sort of scenario happens more and more often. He will talk big about something being so revolting that he wouldn’t ever put it in his mouth, but then when it comes time to eat, he will at least try it. I knew with teh pizza, he would eat it all, but even with less kid-appealing food, he will at least try it out.

It would have made me cry with happiness at one point.. but in my experience the trick to getting your kids to eat is learning to give up caring whether he eats or not.. (and careful bribery!) It’s worked. Of course, I do care a little, enough to post this post, for example.. but not enough to cry with happiness over it 🙂

If he eats, great. If not… oh well.

Is this what zen feels like?

I’m exagerating the laissez-faire attitude, because I’m pretty sure if this happened again, I think I really would cry in happiness!