Toddler Eating Habits

I baited Ava to eat her salad last night by cutting up strawberries and mixing them in.  They say if you present a certain food to your baby/toddler repeatedly that they will eventually accept it.  We have salad almost every day.  She still has not accepted it.  Twice she ate her whole salad because she was very hungry and I gave it to her while she was waiting for dinner to cook.  That only worked twice, never again.

Here she is nearly finished picking out all the strawberries.  Then she asked me for more.  I said no, so she moved on to the cucumbers (pickles, as per Ava).  When she'd finished hers, she decided to pick all the "pickles" out of Daddy's salad.  Occasionally a piece of lettuce would cling to the cucumber and make it down the hatch unnoticed.  Once the strawberries and "pickles" were gone, she pecked around on the cheese for a bit and dipped her fingers in the salad dressing and licked it off.  And that was that.

 

This is how she eats her eggs.  EVERYTHING must be dipped, even scrambled eggs.  Once all the jelly is gone, she'll eat the toast.



But not the crust.  Of course...

The chickens will get the leftovers.

This is how she eats french toast.  This was the first (and last) time I made it for her.



She systematically licked all the syrup and powdered sugar off the toast.  Not a bite of toast passed her lips.  Then she bounced off the walls until nap time.  I put her in the bed and she continued to bounce until she finally passed out.  No more french toast for this girl.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that while she likes oatmeal, she prefers to eat it dry.  Plain, dry, rolled oats.  She will come back repeatedly and beg for more.

Every so often, when I make something she actually likes (or if she senses that I am about to give up and cry) she will look up at me sweetly from over her plate and say, "Mommy, you're a good cook!"