My son is one of those kids who are extremely picky about what he eats ever since he was introduced to baby food. He has a thing for textures and colors that had me questioning early on if he could be on the spectrum for autism. He is on what I call the beige diet, which is a diet that consists of all things beige or yellow, and because he’s adamant about routine and structures, its a bit difficult getting him to try anything he’s not familiar with even if its beige or yellow. Like me, he could eat the same foods again for months until he grows tired and makes a subtle change. For example, he’ll eat only honeycomb cereal for breakfast until he gets tired of it and will then switch to honey nut Cheerios or a complete bate and switch like waffles or pancakes. For lunch, he’ll have me pack him what he likes to call circle pizza which is simply a quesadilla until he grows tired of that and will ask for pizza rolls or chicken nuggets. He’ll have Mac and cheese for dinner until he grows tired of it and switches to taquitos or pizza. He’s even switched his meals around, eating dinner for breakfast, lunch for dinner, etc. One can only imagine how crazy this drives a health-conscious mother
and always worried about her children’s nutrition. Luckily his pediatrician always deems him a healthy boy for his annual checkups. When he’s on his quarterly eating routine, he hates being disrupted under any circumstance, which, on occasions, it will be, especially if I forget to go to the store or don’t have time to stop at the store until the next day. When this happens, my handsome little guy turns into what we call the house’s grumpy monkey, where he’ll complain and sometimes refuses to eat until right before bed in an attempt to get me to run to the store, which fails if I don’t have the time.
A couple of weekends ago, I was in one of my rare and random moods where I wanted to make breakfast for my family to sit down and enjoy together because of how tight of a budget we used to survive on in order to feed five kids without public assistance, I learned how to cook everything from scratch because it was more affordable to feed everyone that way. Now that my budget is a little more relaxed I don’t cook from scratch as much anymore because I’m so busy with projects and running my business that it’s more convenient to buy frozen foods my kids can warm up versus me cooking all three meals for them each day. (All my kids eat a packed lunch) On the day I decided to cook, I noticed there weren’t any frozen waffles left, and I was running too low on flour to make waffles from scratch, so I decided to go with French toast, which worked out perfectly considering there was a loaf of bread sitting on the counter all week that wasn’t touched. Usually, when I make French toast, I like to bake a loaf of bread the night before to use the next morning, but with an unopened loaf at my disposal, I couldn’t let it go to waste. I made my French toast batter, scrambled the eggs, carefully cooked the sausages my family likes and made some maizena (a creamy Puerto Rican breakfast staple), and set up the table buffet styled for everyone to sit down and enjoy a nice meal together. When my son realized he didn’t have his quarterly special of waffles, he wasn’t too happy and quickly became the house’s grumpy monkey. I’ll admit I was a bit irritated that day and a little disappointed in his behavior, so I sat him down and explained how we ran out of waffles, and I ran out of flour and how if he wasn’t able to sit down and appreciate what was on the table the appropriate thing for him to do would be to excuse himself as he sulked in his room until he was ready to move on with the options available or wait until lunch. I kindly warned in my sweet but stern mom voice that if he couldn’t excuse himself and continued acting entitled instead of being understanding, he wouldn’t be able to play the Nintendo switch because he’d be grounded for not being the gentleman I teach him to be. When he’s acting up, and I have to call him out like that, he typically goes to his room for a good 20-30 minutes and comes out once he’s processed his thoughts and feelings and will either want to talk about what’s going on or if he realizes he was wrong will always find me to apologize for whatever behavior and regardless if we need to talk or not he always gives me a heartfelt hug and tells me he loves me. This day was no exception. He went to the room and came out 20-30 minutes later to apologize to me before giving me my hug and telling me how much he loved me. I’m unsure if he’s at the stage where he’s growing prideful or what, but he asked his sister Amora to warm him up the three slices left and sat down at the table to eat his breakfast. I guess he remembered how much he loved French toast (it’s been about a year or so since I’d made it) and tore his plate up. He’s asked for it every day since, leaving me no choice but to buy him French toast sticks for school days, and has now deemed French toast the greatest food of all time to the point where if he does all his homework, cleans his room, and eats his vitamins he’ll ask for it as dinner or at the very least dessert. He drives me a little crazy sometimes but he really is a good boy. Mom Life.
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