Toddlerdom and food aversions

The toddler stage of childhood has thus far been both my favourite and most loathed stage of them all…. 

I love that this is the stage where they grow and want to learn to do things by themselves, where they learn new things every day and actually say I love you, thank you and please and know the meaning of the words, in my kids it has also always been the stage where they love extra cuddles and the words I love you mommy fill my heart with so much joy I just want to burst with pride and happiness….

Unfortunately this is also the stage of willfulness, stubbornness and the temper tantrum, when your child begins to understand that throwing a fit in front of everyone is not only time consuming for said parent but also hulluva embarrassing, for the most part Jesse’s tantrums come in the form of him throwing himself ever so dramatically on the fall… well kneeling and then falling onto the floor just to be safe and then pretending to sob oh so dramatically, usually if we ignore him or say no he will get up a minute later and come say sorry problem solved, and usually even though he has become very found of the word no thanks to his father who has the heart of melting marshmallows, he will listen if you give him a stern this is how it will be end of story, so for the most part a really easy breeze of a child.

However over the last week or so he has developed or entered into the food aversion stage, now anyone who has children will tell you that every child goes through this at some stage or another, the stage where they only want food that is blue, or food that is cooked or prepared in a certain way or has a certain texture or taste.

Jesse has now entered that stage and only wants to eat either yoghurt, naartjies, cheese or noodles, the yoghurt and cheese is of course and issue because him and dairy as well as lactose don’t gel very well but he is insistent and won’t eat the dairy free yoghurt so I try to keep that to a minimum but what do you do when you have an almost 2 year old screaming for food and he will not eat anything else seriously not even off our plates I have tried everything all his favourites, he is not having it… so what do I do… I shamefully give in and dish out the noodles and horrid processed cheese that he loves so much, I cringe at the thought of yet another day of crappy non nutritious meals and long for the end of this terrible stage that literally keeps me up at night….

Ah yes the joy of being a toddler mum….