Like all parents of toddlers, we struggle with the whole “eating” thing. The key to survival is to stay relaxed and offer only healthy choices. Be flexible, as in, when your child goes for 48 hours ingesting only raisins, you stay flexible, The toddler does not. Sara is generally considered an OK eater, because she loves fruits and vegetables. Protein continues to be a challenge. If protein ever becomes illegal, we’ll rent her out to the police, because she can sniff it out, no matter how cleverly disguised. We have found a slightly odd protein that she will consistently eat, making Sara the only child in America who’s baby book reads under the header, “The One Food We Could Always Get You To Eat: Imitation Crabmeat”.

Greg came up with a great solution: we’ll start referring to her meals by COLOR. For example, the night she ate two bites of corn and 3 bites of air, she ate “yellow”. The night she licked ketchup off of every protein in the house, she ate “red”. It feels somehow, more fulfilling. We’ve found she’ll generally eat blue, as in blueberries. She’ll request “boo”. I’m thinking of buying blue food coloring and dying the turkey, if I thought she’d be fooled. I read in a parenting magazine that we should cover her food in rainbow sprinkles! Genius! As in, my child is a genius. We bought the most gorgeous pastel sprinkles shaped like little flowers. Sara, who barely has the coordination to walk and hold a doll at the same time, deftly picked every sprinkle off her wild salmon and rice pilaf dinner. She ate those sprinkles like they were flavored with Oreos. And then gave us a look that seemed to say, “Oh, excuse me. I can’t possibly spare the gastric space by eating this deliciously prepared salmon. Even a grain of rice would take up precious room that would be better occupied by these sprinkles.” That night for dinner, she ate ALL the colors.

So when we get really desperate? We’ve found a color that is both dairy and high in calories: the color of Ice Cream!