W-W-Jamie-Do

Since I’ve been home I’ve been catching up on shows I missed. One of them was Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. After watching Z eat french fries all week I was ready to fight to get her to eat some decent food. I just had to convince her father not to give in. He’s great at standing up to her but he’ll give her something bad to eat if she is hungry a few hours later if she skips the healthy dinner which ruins that whole thing.

We had the throwdown last night. She had asked if we could roast marshmallows. I told her that we could if she ate a good dinner. She agreed but I knew she didn’t mean it.

I made Caribbean Corn Bread which any kid should love since it is moist and sweet. She walked through the kitchen while I was cooking and asked what I was making. I said bread. She said that she wouldn’t eat that. I watched this kid chow down on restaurant bread all week. She just wouldn’t eat it because it was homemade. That’s equal to dirty and icky in her mind. She started going through the refrigerator to see what she could eat for dinner. I told her she was eating what was put on the table. She obviously didn’t believe me.

I also made orzo stuffed peppers for the SO and me and a salad. I put cut up cucumbers, baby carrots, grapes, and green beans on a plate so everyone could decorate their own salad. I’ve seen her eat lettuce and she likes green beans. So she had options that she is known to like.

When her father told her that yes she was eating with us she went ballistic. Blood curdling screams started. You’d have thought we were sawing off her arm to have for dinner. She called me every name that a six year old knows. I was also a “bad cooker” and a “mean cooker.” Through the whole tantrum the SO and I calmly ate our dinner and discussed our day. It was funny. She was across the table screaming and crying and trailing mucus in a most unappetizing way while we did a parody of high tea. “How was your day darling?” “Oh just smashing, and you?” For some reason she doesn’t find us nearly as amusing as we find ourselves.

Every few minutes she’d scream, “Fine! I’ll eat the stupid food!” Then she would proceed not to eat it. She’d throw green beans across the table. Her father told her to stop that the first time. After that she’d pantomime doing throwing food and then look at her father out of the corner of her eye to see if she was getting a rise out of him. She wasn’t. “So my dear, after dinner do you think we should commence to beating the child?” “Lovely idea. Is your pepper alright?”

At first she claimed the green beans were too hot. Then she finally ate a few because she was getting nowhere with her tantrum. By this time she declared that they were too cold. Can’t imagine why. She ate all the green beans in a huff. Then he suggested she try a carrot. She ate them all. He asked if she liked grapes. She said that she tried them a long time ago and didn’t like them. He told her to bite one in half and taste the juice. She made all kinds of faces but did it. Then he told her to eat the other half because it would hurt the grape’s feelings if she didn’t. For some reason that worked. Then she sheepishly ate all the grapes. You could tell that she didn’t want to admit that she liked them but she wanted them. We didn’t comment. Afterwards he told her that he was proud of her and sent her on her way. He asked me if that really just happened that she ate a whole plate of vegetables. I said yes. Amazing what happens when you can convince people not to give in to temper tantrums.

Then we had to hold up our end of the bargain and roast marshmallows and do s’mores. I of course had to eat some to show solidarity. I would have been wrong not to.

(Now on to way too much information – Z’s mother has been giving her laxatives since she has zero fiber in her diet and is always constipated. As I was typing this post this morning Z came running to me in a panic saying that she has diarrhea. I think her body is rebelling from the totally unknown onslaught of fiber, vitamins, and nutrients. I told her that she’d live.)

After she went to bed the SO wanted to watch the episodes of Food Revolution that I’d been telling him about. We got about 1/4 of the way through when he paused it and gave me this.

It is really hard to get a good picture of it. He asked me if I was surprised. I knew he was picking it up soon but I answered that if absolutely never expected to get it in the middle of watching Jamie Oliver on the computer. But since he’s been proposing to me on a fairly regular basis for the last two years I guess it is ok. We aren’t actually planning on getting married but getting sparkly things is always good! Then we went back to watching the show. We’re such romantics.