2003-05-14-1:10 p.m.
Ro baby has bizarre and inscrutable eating habits, which is apparently par for the course with toddlers but still amazes me. He will pass up a perfectly good French fry and instead eat the paper off the straws. I thought all kids ate French fries. Ro baby primarily sees them as dipping sticks for eating ketchup. When we ate with parents yesterday, he put ketchup and mustard in my water stirred it around and eventually started dipping dill pickles slices in it and nibbling them.

I used to be so into cooking for Ro baby. I'd make him fancy baby food like steamed butternut squash mixed with sweet potato, a tiny bit of fresh ginger and a dash of cardamon -- and he'd wolf it down and beg for more of mommy's yummy healthy homemade organic baby food. Those days are loooooong gone. At 14 months he started getting picky. Now that he's approaching 22 months, he won't eat anything green at all. Green is very bad. The only healthy thing he likes is fruit but other than that he only wants to eat fish sticks, cheese and the like.

So, I don't spend a lot of time making food for him anymore. It's too demoralizing to whip up some super baby meal and have Ro baby push it away in favor of foraging around on the floor for whatever dried up bits of food might be leftover from dinner -- Yesterday! Sigh. I think he'd eat better if I bought a dehydrator and dried up all his food and then chopped it up into tiny bits of things that look like they've been sitting under the kitchen table for a week. I think that would be his ideal meal. In truth, I'm really just happy when he eats food at all, because I know he'd rather eat Q-tips or something. I can't believe he'll eat some random black thing that he'll pick up off the sidewalk and turn his nose up at green beans.

If Ro baby were to miraculously gain chef skills but retain his current and eccentric food interests then his avant-garde restaurant would serve things like sautéed kitchen sponges with nylon fiber garnish, and Q-tips flambé with a poly-fill salad and scrap paper mélange. I seriously think he'd eat it. Also, he's really into sharing these days, so he'd want me to eat it too.

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