Tristan is becoming far more opinionated when it comes to food – oh my!

First of all, he’s decided that he ADORES nuts. This is fairly stressful because nuts? Someone once told me they were choking hazards. Anyway, I’ve been nail-slicing cashews down to ice cream sundae size and he’s been gobbling them as quickly as I can break them. We have some chopped pecans that he’s also been demolishing whenever they’ve been added to his plate. The good news is that this kid obviously does not have any allergies to nuts!

Second of all, he’s getting persnickety on his fruit choices. He’s starting to recognize packaging at a ninjalike rate, and he’s rejecting foods based on it. His little fruit pouches – if the design on the front is GREEN (apples and pears) he’s been just tossing them straight aside in negation. He’s also been not a fan of grape, which he used to like before. He still gobbles up all of his old favorites – the berry flavored one, anything that’s primarily banana, strawberry. I suppose that we might have to alter our buying habits in order to not create so much waste if this continues. I’m actually not sure how to proceed, since he usually operates more like me with regard to food: “if it’s generally non-offensive and doesn’t contain certain things, I’ll eat and like it.” I have no intention of forcing him to eat foods he rejects, but I do want to stagger the offerings so I’m not throwing money in the trash at every mealtime. (I suppose this is something toddlers just DO, but in Tristan’s case, should I approach it like “toddler” or other, y’know?)

And we’ve been watching our weight around here as per usual, with the weight-loss portion of the diet back in full swing. This means that as an evening ‘meal’ I usually prepare a piece of cooked mozzarella that rather resembles the top of a pizza, complete with tomato powder ’cause I can’t handle sauce. Guess who eats this stuff as fast as I do? Did you guess Tristan? If not, I suppose Samurai would also be technically correct but I don’t indulge him as readily as I indulge Tristan. Anyway, Tristan loves the stuff so much that he sees me preparing it and tries to eat it AS I am preparing it, and then continuously asks for help accessing it from the microwave during the 3 minutes it needs to cook. After THAT, when it’s done cooking and needs to rest and cool the fuck off, he pretty much wraps himself around me much like any of the pets do when dehydrated chicken is available. I actually had to give him a bit of a time out for groping the stove in the meantime – see, stove’s off limits in all situations to him but he was holding it to get a better look at the cheese substance, and like any of the pets, you never feed as a ‘reward’ for misbehavior. (Think about it – would you tell your child “no, don’t do that” and “thank you for doing that” with regard to the same behavior? Food is a powerful motivator in animals, including humans.)

And he also actually asked me for a piece of chocolate a couple of days ago. Tristan notoriously does not care for chocolate much. He liked this piece, though (we’re talking half a fingernail sized piece, like the nuts) and asked for more. Since it was sugar-free chocolate (very useful in low carb dieting!), I didn’t really want to feed him much – that stuff notoriously causes the farts and shits. I shoved the rest of it into my mouth so he couldn’t “logically” ask for more.