Little Goose is a stubborn one. I know that she gets it from me, and I am trying really hard not to engage in a battle of wills each with her each time that she digs her heels in. Some days I remember not to give in and we move on. Those days I feel this makes things better. On the others, we either have epic battles, or I don’t engage and think she sees my decision as a sign of weakness. Her smug look tells me that she knows she is winning, even if she doesn’t get her way this time. Yes, she is two, but I can read that look in her eyes. I have given it many a time.

Sometimes it seems that we have the same battles over and over until a winner declared. Lately it’s getting fussy about the foods that I prepare. I know that there are some things that are just not to her taste, and I don’t ask that she eat them. I also know that she happily eats absolutely everything that she is presented with at daycare, so I do encourage her to try to eat new things. This week though, she hasn’t even been eating the old things. It’s frustrating, especially when she wakes at 4:00 am with a grumbling tummy from not eating her lunch OR supper. Things came to a head yesterday when we went out for lunch for Father’s day.

We went to Boston Pizza, and she happily announced that she wanted Bugs and Cheese. We have been a few times, and she always asks for spaghetti, but she has seen Woo’s bugs before (and tried them, I am pretty sure), so we rolled with it. Then the food was delivered and she flat-out refused to eat. Refused to try, just kept repeating that she didn’t like it. It’s essentially Kraft Dinner, yet she was not even considering it.  We would have been OK with her not liking it if she had actually tried the pasta. She didn’t, and got by with her veggies and some of Woo’s fries. We didn’t push it, but if she asked for something else to eat, we told her that she needed to at least taste her meal first. She didn’t and we packed up the leftovers.

Dinner rolled around, and I offered the bugs, reheated. She was hungry, but started saying that she didn’t want them, didn’t like them. I was seconds away from offering her the back up meal (even I am not that cruel :), when I asked her one more time why she didn’t want to eat the bugs. She looked down at her plate, filled with red, white, and purple bugs covered in a cheese sauce and said, “I only like the white ones”. One quick sort and she wolfed down all of the white pasta, happily.

Of course that was the problem.