Whose Child is This? Eating Changes

I have written for months about my daughter's difficulty in gaining weight and poor eating habits. Mealtime has been a battle ground for some time as my wife and I try to get our little one to open her mouth and eat something. Anything!

Now I think someone body snatched my little girl. My wife called me at work one day this week to say that our little girl didn't want to eat the breakfast my wife had fixed her. That was no surprise but the next part was. My wife was having a bowl of oatmeal while she was feeding our daughter. Every time my wife would lift her spoon to take a bite, my daughter would make her little "Aaa" sound. It wasn't that she didn't want to eat. She simply wanted to eat what my wife was having. That morning my daughter ate a big oatmeal breakfast as fast as my wife could shovel it in.

We've been working for a while to introduce adult table foods with mixed success. But the more we try the more my daughter really seems to be enjoying them. She ate a ground up breakfast burrito yesterday. That'll stick to her ribs. I really think this 20 pounds by 2 years goal is going to go great!

I should mention that the few signs she's picked up are all food related as well. First, my wife worked very hard to get our little one to say "more" to ask for more food. Our daughter picked this one up pretty well. Next we worked on "want". So she could say that she wanted something when offered. That's coming along okay. Then yesterday my wife went to the grocery store for some final Thanksgiving items. Up and down the aisles they went putting things in the cart. My daughter kept signing "eat" and "food". She's definitely putting the signs and meanings together. It's great to see her enjoying mealtime and asking for things she wants. Pretty soon she'll be throwing tantrums at the grocery store like a typical child.