Low pressure system

Cooper is a quirky eater. Matt and I try hard to get him to eat lots of things, and indeed he eats a wide scope of foods, but on any given day it is impossible to say what he might eat. Or what he won't eat. And of course we are constantly attempting to improve the variety of things he will eat.

Last night he ate a passable dinner of peas and rice, and then he refused to nibble on steak. But he wanted to eat the steak- we could see it in his eyes. But he only wanted to eat it on his terms. In the interest of getting him to eat something with protein in it, we placed the tiny steak nibbles on a plate, set that plate out of his reach, and ignored it.

He got down out of his chair and wanted to play with his car and truck collection "Boo boo down. Boo boo trucks." So that was fine. Then he took his truck bucket, set it upside down next to the dinner table, and climbed up onto it. He snagged a tiny nibble of steak delicately off the table, and then ran off with it in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed it in the living room.

This repeated itself about, oh 20 times. Until all his steak was gone. And then he came over to me and demanded to sit on my lap "Boo boo up! Boo boo chair!" and eat MY steak off MY plate. So I let him do that, too.

I think it is really interesting how he sometimes resists eating things until all the pressure is off, and it is completely on what he thinks are his terms. I'm guessing it is normal toddler development stuff. Control, decision making, power, etc. But as a parent, I am still a little amazed by the reality. Steak in front of your cool booster seat, eating like your parents, using your favorite fork? No. Steak 'secretly' snagged off a corner of the kitchen table while standing on an upside down bucket? Delicious.

For the record, sometimes he eats steak at the table like a normal child. It'll be a great day when I can replace 'sometimes' with 'nearly always.'