Our little Lunchbox is not really living up to his name lately. Like. At. All.
He won’t eat anything composed of fruit or vegetables. Except for applesauce (must be in a pouch) or celery (with peanut butter) or edamame. (We start sushi early in this house and edamame always goes with. He also eats rice. Big surprise.)
But otherwise, he’s carbo-loading like a triathlete or abstaining altogether. And evidently the kid didn’t get my sweet tooth, so threats of missing dessert don’t faze him.
The Major jokes that he’s part of the Breatharian society. Have you heard of this? Here’s an informative link to the description on Wikipedia. (It’s on the Internet so it must be accurate.)
I swear the kid exists on fruit rollups (which he smashes into a festive little ball and shoves into his mouth in one fell swoop) and the occasional pistachio. (He only eats nuts so that he can make jokes about “touching his nuts” “stealing his nuts” “hiding his nuts”… you get the idea.)
Anyway, I do what all good moms do and make sure he eats sugar-loaded gummy vitamins in the morning to make up for the fact that his diet consists mainly of vitamins S (sugar) and B (bread) … but I’m hoping soon he’ll give up his subsistence on only air and return to our dinner table. Because I’ll be honest…dinner is my LEAST favorite time of day. I’ve been known to stand up and carry my plate into the dining room just to escape the mayhem that is family dinner at our house. Between Lunchbox insisting that everything in front of him is “yukky” and Turbo wheeling and dealing to see how much he has to eat to earn dessert, I’m too exhausted and annoyed to eat. (if only this were true, I’d lose 15 pounds. Sadly, I just eat elsewhere. And drink. Don’t forget the drinking.)
How do you get through the difficult days of food abstinence and junk-dependency? I have two boys, so I know there will come a time soon when I won’t be able to keep food in the house to keep up with their appetites. But I’m hoping that when they start grazing through the kitchen, they’ll make a few healthy choices, too. And how will that happen if all I ever present for dinner is Kraft Mac’n Cheese? (don’t get me wrong. I worship at the altar of the M&C regularly.) But I want the boys to know that real food is good for them and will make them feel better in the long run, and that crap (as most of their preferred snacks are called around here) will only sustain you for so long. We talk about protein and sugar, about how our bodies work and what food does for us… are these messages getting through?
I’ll let you know in about ten years.
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