When Your Words Come Back to Haunt You

I spent a lot of the time during Ivy’s early eating adventures bragging about what a good eater she was. She’s not picky at all! She’ll eat anything. Green beans? Peas? Bring it on! My little girl loves her veggies!!

Well, it seems that now all that bragging is coming back to bite me in the ass. Because these days? Ivy refuses to eat anything green that isn’t avocado. Her beloved peas? Forget about it. Even if I try to ‘sneak’ them in with her absolute favorite food of all time, pasta with marinara, she will eat around them. If she does miss one and it ends up in her mouth? Right out. There was a time when she was really fond of broccoli as well. Now? Even when I mash it into the tiniest of particles and try to ‘hide’ it in something else, she refuses it. She will, occasionally eat green beans but they have to be chopped up into tiny little pieces or else, no dice.

A hilarious thing happened last week. In the morning, Jon and I had a random conversation about how Ivy never got into throwing her food or food bowls. That night, I made her some chicken sweet potato and green beans, a dinner that in the past would have been eaten with enthusiasm. But oh no, not these days. She was kind of picking at it, mixing the food around and eating bits of chicken here and there. I went into the kitchen for a minute, and got distracted by a phone call. When I came back in to the living room (which doubles as our dining room) I saw that the entire contents of Ivy’s dinner had been thrown around. Like all over the damn living room. It was hard not to laugh, I actually had to go into the hallway to laugh for a minute. I mean come on we JUST SAID that morning she never threw food and here she had emptied to contents of her dinner bowl all over the floor. But I composed myself and gave her a stern talking to about not throwing food. I asked her if she wanted anything else to eat and she said no, and that was that. We have not had a food throwing incident since.

That particular incident aside, she is still a pretty good eater and does not shy away from really flavorful stuff like curry but it’s just the green that she is growing to dislike. She is also still willing to try out new things which is good. This could have less to do with her palate and more to do with those new toddler personality traits she seems to be possessing. You know the ones that think normal everyday activities like hair brushing and diaper changes are THE WORST EV-ER and must be accompanied by screaming, screeching, crying and occasionally trying to headbutt me and/ or thrash herself right off the changing table. I really hope she outgrows this phase sooner rather than later, but something tells me that the toddler years are going to be a challenge.