Little victories

No recipe today, but a confession turned celebration:

After story time, we often go to the drive through at Wendy's. Kids are starving, it's almost nap time, and I just want to have something ready to feed them as soon as I get them out of the car so that I don't have to corral cats to the table after I prepare something.

I would order a salad to share with Virginia, Noah would order a cheeseburger. Without fail, he would eat MAYBE a couple bites of the burger before deciding he only wanted to eat the top bun. I didn't like that he always chose a burger, but I wasn't willing to have the argument with him. But then he wouldn't eat it, he was still hungry, and he would end up eating part of my salad.

Just recently I decided to stop buying the burger. He felt like it was a very mean thing for me to do. But the funny thing is, he always wanted my salad more than he wanted his burger. After the initial fit about wanting the burger that I refused to buy just to toss in the trash, he has begun to get excited about the salad and cups of water that I get for us all to share.

The little things matter. I expose him to salad and veggies all the time. He gets grumpy and whiny quite often and would much rather eat other things if I presented them as options. But when it comes down to it, kids will eat what they're exposed to. Virginia is starting to use utensils, and just this past week she was stabbing at the lettuce and chowing down (usually she just eats the berries and chicken in the salad). It warmed my heart :)

Raising veggie-loving kids in our starch- and fat-saturated world is a battle at times, but it's one worth fighting.