Battle of the Wills

I'm late on a Christmas post, I know. But Packrat needs to download the photos from his camera before I can get going on those ones. So I'll blog about something else first, which doesn't require photographic evidence. Food and eating or rather the lack there of.

We've come back from Vegas to kids who are a little bit different from the kids we left. They're a little bit more cognizant, a little bit more vocal, a little taller and chubbier and a whole lot more insistent on their ways. Call it asserting their independence.

Baby J has had the head start in that department since she was willful in-utero. But Evan is now a close second. Both know how to push and shove and know how to look offended and pout if told to NOT do something. And both have decidedly different outlooks and opinions about food. Evan will eat, almost anything and everything you put in front of him. But come milk time, he will purse his lips, clench his teeth and not let the teat through. I've resorted to tricking him into drinking milk by giving him cold fresh milk. But once the novelty of the cold sets in, he ignores it and runs away from the cup as soon as he catches sight of it. He'll drink his milk when he's going to bed, at night and during the night but nothing in the day. It can't be the milk because I've tried various things, breastmilk, formula, fresh milk, Pediasure. Even if we do eventually pin him down and get him to drink it, he'll drink less than half and he's off again. Part of me is concerned because the boy needs the calcium and despite him eating cheese and yogurt, it can't be enough. The other part of me thinks that he eats well, he drinks milk in the night, I survived on much less as a kid, I should be non-fazed.

Then there's Jordan, my little headstrong Baby Dowager who will let nary a piece meat into her mouth. She's always been a little bit more fussy and a little bit more picky as an eater but recently, she fights at every meal time. She has to be distracted for us to shovel food into her mouth. On good days she will take it and keep it down, on bad days she will go all bulimic on us and we'll see in it reverse projectile. Sometimes she cracks us up by being wise to our ways and suck dry the food we've spooned into her mouth and eject a dried up piece of cud devoid of juices. She is happy to drink plain soup, sans veg or meat and eat plain rice. Once again, that worries me and is grounds for contention between her other caregivers and I. Because she is my daughter and because I'm naturally and instinctively protective over her and because I feel that her temperament is mine, I tend to defend her against anyone who attacks her for it and feel hurt on her behalf when she is accused of a variety of things. I may be the over-protective mother here but who can stand by and watch her daughter be accused of being scheming, of being spoilt, of purposely angering her other caregivers? Who can fault the child when food has become such a big issue and if the girl is anything like me, when pushed into a corner, will push back and won't give in. I read everywhere that food should not be a battle ground. That we should not cause the child to associate food as a stressor.

But it really has become one. Between Baby J and her caregivers. Between her caregivers and I, unspoken of course. Often Baby J is cast in the role of the the conniving, spiteful one who does it on purpose to make the life of her caregiver miserable. That she plots, plans and occasionally throws up on people because she is battling with them. Unbeknowst or beknownst to those who make such accusations, it is often they, who portray her as such. At the same time, I know she can be trying and I have on many occasion, lost my patience with her sometimes to the point where I've had to leave the house or tell Packrat to take over. But I have never spoken in an unforgiving or resentful manner about my 18 month old.

And as with all allegedly guilty parties, when I feed Baby J today, she is good. She feeds herself rice, she eats her veg and meat (in small, non gag inducing quantities) and most of her soup. But come dinner, while I'm out running errands, she's back to being that 'naughty little girl' who will painstakingly remove every piece of meat from her mouth.

Of course, while all this is playing out, Evan seems to be the happy, cooperative child who eats his food, plays contentedly and is not an unfathomable mystery. Perhaps not and I'm thankful for his very easily lovable nature because I could never manage two difficult children, as is, with his milk strike and her food strike and petty tempers, it's more than I can handle. And while I am strong-willed, there's only that much I can battle, even with a battering ram.

If only they could invent an IV drip that we could attach our kids to, that would be great. We won't have to worry about nutrition, calcium for the bones, protein for the muscle and oils for the brain. We'll just give them IV packs like energy packs and be off and running as a matter of speaking.


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