Week 69: Rethink the premise

Our battles with food continue.  And by that I mean that Lemon continues to not want to eat much, and Papa Bear and I battle the urge to push him, to coax him, to chastise him, to do really anything that will get him to eat more.  The research is pretty clear that none of those things work, and are actually counterproductive, so we're hanging on at every meal, praising when Lemon puts something in his mouth and holding our tongues the rest of the time.

In case we needed things to be a little bit harder than they are, Lemon has decided that for the moment his favorite drink is water (tons of calories, yay!) and he wants to forgo his former mainstays of smoothies and whole milk fortified with heavy cream and Carnation Instant Breakfast.  So, now every meal consists of me thinking about what choices to offer him, laying them out on his tray, and watching him throw them on the floor, every so often putting something in his mouth.  He even refused to eat for the nanny on Friday, which is totally unprecedented.  Secretly, I was a tiny bit glad he refused to eat for her as well, since I think she views me as mildly incompetent when it comes to child rearing.

We played out this little drama again this evening, when I offered him egg noodles, baked beans, and some cut-up pear.  All that went on the floor, along with the cup of milk.  In a moment of weakness, I decided to also offer him a yogurt, something I don't usually do at dinner.  And he ate the whole thing.  Then I offered him a squeeze pouch of some sort of fruit mixture with beets.  He ate all of that, and all of the second pouch, too.  I was elated.  I hope I didn't do more harm than good by letting him know that it was possible to wear me down to the point of offering him other choices.  But, on the other hand, I got 250 calories into him that wouldn't have gone in otherwise.  So, maybe I just need to rethink the premise on which we start dinner--with a calorie goal rather than a specific food goal?  Who knows.  In any event, a little pro tip: best to change out of your white work slacks prior to feeding the beet puree pouches.

Other than thinking about food, we did some fun stuff this weekend--we went to the Madison Children's Museum for the first time.  Lemon totally loved it, so we got a membership.  Honestly at this age, he would have been totally happy just to hang out in the lobby and look at the amazing kinetic water sculpture that they have.  If you know the one at the Boston Museum of Science, just imagine that but all the balls are propelled by jets of water, and there is a  moat around it and a big vortex in the middle.  It is pretty fascinating.  We also had fun in the room for kids 5 and under, complete with a slide made out of a tree trunk that we rode several times.

We also went to Papa Bear's work holiday party, where Lemon demonstrated one of his favorite new passtimes, "hiding" in very small spaces...