My days used to be spent lacing people up in corsets and helping them pick out fancy costumes. Now I feel like 95% of my day is spent trying to find something my toddler will agree to eat. It’s quite a lifestyle change and takes some adjusting.

Why do toddlers hate food? Or love something one day, or at someone else’s house, so you stock up on it and then they refuse to even touch it? This is how I ended up with a freezer full of chicken nuggets and several boxes of crackers with one cracker eaten.

I clearly remember my great-grandmother feeding me steak piece-by-piece, while I ran by pretending to be a little bird stealing it from her fork. It probably took 45 minutes for me to finish the entire thing but she kept up with it. I now totally understand why. Being a parent has given me insight into certain things from my childhood that I never really would’ve understood otherwise. I also remember her making me a pizza at 10 PM at night just because I said I was hungry. Parents (and grandparents) will do anything to get a kid to eat.

I can tell Keelan is going to be a skinny kid, just like me when I was little. His dad too! But he’s also growing just fine and he does let me know if he is hungry. Sometimes he eats a lot, and some days it’s like he exists on air and a few strawberries.

I hope he eventually embraces our love of good food and cooking. Right now I might as well make him a nice dinner and then dump it on the floor because that’s where it ends up. But I will keep trying! I really look forward to the day he is helping me make gourmet dinners the kitchen and picking out his own sushi at dinner. (Early 20s maybe? Lol)

Until then, I’ll just keep slicing up those hot dogs. Unless he hates them this week of course.

So, what food rejects do you have lingering in the pantry?