Abby is overall a good kid. Scratch that. She's an amazing kid. She is so polite, kind, and just not what you would expect out of a two year old. Not that I have much to compare to, but she seriously is awesome. Anytime she does something wrong, she gets upset with herself and knows not to do it again. We rarely put her in time out anymore, although our time out standards have probably only gotten stricter since we started them. She gets maybe one or two a week. That's pretty good considering she's home with me all day everyday (lots of opportunities!). She puts herself in far more "timeouts" that we do!
Anyways, one issue we have with her is mealtime. Our rule is basically, she has to try everything. And she has to finish her plate before she can have seconds of anything or dessert. We keep it within reason....if we know she doesn't particularly care for something, we just give her enough to try and not an abundance.
For some reason in the last few months, she's been getting a bit worse with eating at meals. I think she knows there's really not a whole lot we can do to her if she doesn't eat, except take away her dessert. She didn't even have cake at Audrey's party because she didn't eat all of her noodles! Funny thing.....she didn't even ask for cake. She knew she wasn't getting any. And she didn't whine a bit when I ate my cake in front of her. I was impressed.
Two nights ago, I made a new type of pasta (which was delicious by the way). She did great the night I cooked it, even though it was new. She really liked it.
So, yesterday, I gave her some of the pasta leftovers and carrots for lunch. She gobbled the carrots up (even though today at lunch she now tells me she doesn't like them!). But, then she got to the pasta. She didn't want any. Ok, I thought, I'll just give her a few minutes, and she'll start eating. Well, that didn't happen. She kept telling me that she didn't like it. I didn't even put any of the meat on her plate!!! She's not a big fan of meat, but will usually eat a bite or two (and she usually realizes that she likes it). So, I let her get down, thinking she would be hungry enough to come back in a few minutes. She kept asking for other snacks. I told her that she wasn't getting any snacks until she ate her pasta (I wouldn't normally have done this, but I knew she liked the pasta, so she was just being a stubborn two year old!). If I knew what was to follow, I would have never told her that!
I tried my best, but to no avail. She took her nap with just two carrots in her belly. And my conscious started to eat away at my insides. But, I knew that this could be just the start.
We do our best as parents to never go back on our word. It drives me crazy to see parents threaten this and that, and never follow through. You know, the "I'll take it away.....I'll spank you.....stop that or else.....etc" Yeah, we don't believe in that. When we tell Abby to do something, she does it. It's as simple as that.
I think because of that simple philosophy, we have a really good two year old (or we just got lucky....I guess we'll see with Noah in a couple years!) The hard part is making sure you follow through EVERY time. Peggy and I realized this working at Picture People. We saw it all there. And I continue to see this from working at Fox.
So, there I was, feeling awful, but knowing that I already told her that she had to eat it multiple times. When she got up from her nap, she was crying that she didn't want to eat her noodles.
The conversation went like this:
Me: "Ok, do you want to go eat your lunch?"
Abby: "No, I'm not hungry."
Me: "Are you hungry for pizza?"
Abby: "Yeah, I'm hungry for pizza!" (I made pizza for dinner last night)
Me: "Well then you need to eat your noodles first, then you can have pizza"
Abby: "I'm not hungry."
Me: "Are you hungry for cake?" (Peggy made me a bday cake, which we were going to have for dessert that night)
Abby: "Yeah!"
Me: "Ok, then let's eat your noodles first."
Abby: "I'm not hungry."
Haha, ok, so we got up. I tried to get her to eat, but to no avail. She played for the next hour or so, occasionally complaining that her belly hurt and she was hungry. So, I kept offering noodles, but she refused. I felt awful, but I kept my ground.
So, I did what any good daddy would do.....called mommy. This picture was when she was on the phone talking to Peggy. It doesn't do the meltdown justice. Mommy suggested that Abby ask me to put some cheese on top. So, Abby turns to me (in the midst of crying) and says "I have some cheese on my noodles, please?" It's so funny when she's so polite, but crying at the same time. Mommy told her that she would be very sad if she didn't finish her noodles. Abby was now determined to eat her noodles! Hooray! I knew mommy could fix it!
So, we went to eat the noodles. I sprinkled a generous helping of cheese on top of the noodles. And she hesitantly ate the first one. FINALLY!!! That only took three hours! She proceeded to tell me "I like these noodles!" "Wow" is all I could think. So I asked her why she didn't want to eat them, to which she cheerfully replied "I don't know! I like them now!" Awesome. I was a happy daddy. I won! Haha......not so fast.She ate about five of the noodles, and then apparently decided she didn't like them anymore. You have got to be kidding me. This post is already far too long, so I won't bore you with the details, but what followed was an hour of sitting in the hallway pouting (and starving no doubt) and about two hours of crying. All over some stupid noodles. I was at my wits end. Where did she get this willpower from? I swear, my little spy was captured, she never give up any information!
So, finally Peggy got home around 5:30. By this point, I'd been dealing with this for 6 hours. Yes, 6 hours (minus the 1.5 hour nap). So, Peggy took over. I thought that she would for sure eat them then. Needless to say, Peggy's luck wasn't any better. So, another 30 minutes of crying, followed by a 30 minute nap/cooling off period in her room while we were eating our pizza.
This is Noah trying to take a nap during Abby's screaming. I don't know if it was a coincidence or not, but I've never seen him sleep covering his ears before:
When I went to get her up from her nap, I tried to do a bit of a reset. Things were getting kinda crazy before her nap, so I switched tactics. I tried to be as nice about it as possible. So, she came downstairs. When I walked by the plate, I threw two of them away! Hey, it's not cheating unless Abby sees me, right? Peggy helped her eat her noodles (1/4 of a noodle at a time). It took forever, but she did finally manage to get them down.So, after 7, yes 7 hours, she finally ate her 10 noodles from lunch. She then proceeded to eat a bunch of pizza, a piece of cake, and popcorn later in the night. She was hungry....
And the parenting goes on.....
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