munchkin meals: selective eater
Miles (14 months) has been a fabulous eater from the very beginning. Whether it was nursing or solids, he always ate really, really well. Of course, with a toddler who barely eats anything, it doesn't take much for me to label another child as a good eater.
However, lately, he has become much more selective in what he chooses to eat. I use the term "selective" instead of picky because I just don't feel like he's picky. Again, with an older sister who is the epitome of picky, Miles is FAR from picky. So, we will use the term selective instead because, really, that's what it is. He chooses to eat certain things over others, and some he downright refuses to eat.Let's take, for example, vegetables. Vegetables have NEVER been a problem for Miles. It didn't matter what I put in front of him, he would hoover everything. Now, he barely touches a vegetable. I've tried peas, green beans, cooked carrots - unless it is completely hidden in his food, he will literally spit it out. *sigh* For the mama who LOVES her veggies, it pains me that neither of my kids are fans...
He does, however, absolutely LOVE all fruits. In fact, he begs for them. If he sees a blueberry, he will point and whine until you give it to him. These are always our go-to foods and the first one he eats. I have learned to hide all fruits from him until he eats the rest of his meal or else everything else goes untouched. This is the same for any type of carb. Cheerios and crackers cannot be in his line of sight or else the rest of dinner is completely worthless to him...The one thing Matt + I always worry about is getting protein into these 2 little munchkins. Both of our kiddos are barely on the charts, so we try to make sure they are getting plenty of protein (as well as other healthy stuff) as much as possible. Miles' protein typically comes in the form of yogurt, cheese, and lean meats. He has the occasional beef (we don't really cook much meat in our house, so my parents were nice enough to freeze some hamburger for us) and we have found that he LOVES fish. I guess I will trade his love for proteins for his lack of interest in veggies.
Miles also absolutely loves anything he can feed himself. He prefers pouches (we buy organic applesauce pouches at Costco and then have a few of our Little Green Pouches laying around that we pull out for yogurt occasionally) to spoon feeding, but as I've found, if he doesn't eat it himself, he will if I feed it to him on a spoon or a fork.So, bad or picky eater he is definitely not. But, he is definitely not as great of an eater as he used to be. Here's hoping as he get more teeth and can eat more things, he will start eating better again!