Maybe I'll win Mother of the Year after all...

Every parent screws up.  Even me.  It appears that I totally screwed up my children's eating habits.

Dinnertime has always been a family affair for us.  In actuality, we usually more or less all sit down to eat breakfast and lunch together too but not as consistently.  Dinner - unless one of us is out of town, we ALL sit down together to eat and discuss life's great topics...every night!  When B was a baby and toddler, she would eat ANYTHING.  Seriously.  Of course, her favorite foods were the usual kid-friendly favorites, but she would happily eat anything that we put in front of her except rice.  For whatever reason, the kid wouldn't touch rice with a 10-foot pole.  No problem.

Well time passed, and yes I'm going to give myself an excuse here...Chris travels a lot.  And it's really hard for me to force myself to cook a whole meal that I will eat - and the girls will nibble at.  So I got really, really lazy over the last year or so.  I got into the habit of cooking for them whatever they wanted (ie. hot dogs, pbj, mac & cheese) and making something equally delicious for myself.  Note to self:  this PROBABLY contributed to my need for weight watchers as well.

So now - we had reached a stage where the girls refused to eat anything that wasn't made of peanut butter or whatever hot dogs are made out of.  Oops.  I screwed up.  But keep reading...'cause I think I fixed it!  Hooray!

We tried lots of stuff...I tried pleading and crying...we tried threatening...we tried "2 more bites"-ing...tried "you just have to try a bite"...tried that thing where you just "put-it in-front-of-them-and-refuse-to-make-anything-else-and-"eventually"-they'll-get-hungry"...all it was doing was making dinnertime a MISERABLE affair.

Yup!  That's MY child eating steamed broccoli the size of her head!

And - we have a sense of humor around here...Daddy paid her for her efforts!  

Finally, I hit on the idea of getting B involved in the process.  The girls already love to bake and cook.  All I have to do is open a cupboard and they come running into the kitchen trailing aprons behind, chorusing "I'll help", pushing chairs ahead of them to reach the counter.  So on Sunday afternoon, B and I sit down with the cookbook and a piece of paper.  I start reading off the names of recipes (I do pick things to read that I think she might actually like...nothing too spicy, nothing too complicated...).  Every once in a while she'll ask "what's that one?" and I'll tell her what's in it.  I have her pick 3 or 4 recipes that sound good to her and I make my grocery list from that.  Then when we go to the grocery store, I let her help pick out ingredients as we go.  I ask, "should we buy a yellow onion or a white one?" and "which box of noodles looks better?" and tell her "walk over there and pick out a package of broccoli".  And I explain to her that we are buying this and that for Recipe A or Recipe B that she picked out.  I get her very involved.  When it comes time to MAKE dinner - in come the girls to don their aprons and wield their spatulas.  Of course, this whole process - choosing a weekly menu, buying groceries and prepping dinner - takes at least twice as long as it needs to, BUT...*drumroll please* Miracle upon Miracles...they EAT!  We've been going strong this way for about 3 weeks and with one exception (B thought the beef stroganoff looked like "mud" and she refused to eat it) the girls have been eating their dinner.  Turns out I might just pass the Mother Test after all!  Chalk one up for me!

B contemplates her broccoli (note that the chicken is already essentially gone!)