Chow Time!

What is it about kids and food? You'd think that my kids would do nothing but eat, with the metabolism they have. Unfortunately they are never, ever hungry. Unless there's candy in the room, anyway.

Today at lunch I heated up some leftover cabbage rolls. Jeremy started off pretty well. He ate about half of it (I'd only given him half of a small one) and then suddenly decided it would be more fun to walk around the house with greasy fingers. I tried sitting him on my lap and feeding him, but he squirmed so much the turkey-tomato filling flew all over the floor.

Megan wouldn't touch her food at all, even though it was her idea to break out the cabbage rolls when I asked what she wanted for lunch. I gave her the other half of the small cabbage roll I'd given to Jeremy. I could have eaten the thing in two bites, but Megan's minuscule mouth could only handle a molecule of food at a time.

At every meal, Megan eventually gets tired of feeding herself and asks me to feed her. I usually refuse for a while, trying to get her to feed herself as least one or two more bites on her own. After a few more minutes I give in, but insist on "teaching her a lesson" while I help her eat. She started realizing this one day when I shoved a huge mouthful between her nearly separated teeth-- accidentally causing her to gag. Today when she asked me to feed her the rest of the cabbage roll I warned her first, "You know I'm going to shove a huge forkful into your mouth and make you gag, right?" She nodded her consent and so I went ahead. I balanced as much on the fork as I could and as quickly as I could, shoved it into her mouth before she could close it. I was able to get her to finish her food in three bites and she only gagged once, so that was good, I guess. It might have been nice if she'd gagged on each bite so she'd better understand that she needs to feed herself. Maybe one day she'll get the hint.