Ivan's Diet (Cream Cheese Sandwiches)

For the last few months, Ivan's staple food for breakfast, dinner and any snack in between has been cream cheese sandwiches.

It's been some four months or so that he's been eating cream cheese sandwiches for breakfast. He'd wait for me to open the fridge door so he can get the cream cheese and bread out of the fridge and then we'd go to get a "spate" (eg. plate) and "mali noz," which is a spreading knife, so he can spread the cheese himself. He knows that he can use the "mali noz," but that the "veliki noz" (big knife) "mamma and dadda have. I can't have it," he says.

Our breakfast routine used to be that he tries to spread the cheese, but then I have to take over and spread it better, covering all "bups" (holes) and cut the sandwich in half. He'd eat one half, leaving the crust, and I'd get the other half, which I was required to eat. Then he'd get another piece of bread. We'd repeat the process. He'd eat his half and I'd have to eat my half. Then he'd get a third piece of bread, if he was still hungry. I'd offer him my half of the second slice, but no, he wouldn't take it. That was my half. He'd get himself a third slice of bread. So he'd eat his third half, and I'd been stuck with the other half. I ate so many cream cheese sandwich halves in the fall, that I couldn't take it anymore.

Now he can open the fridge door himself so he goes to help himself to cream cheese and bread whenever he likes. If we serve something for dinner he doesn't want to eat, he goes to the fridge to get the cheese. He'll also eat both halves of the bread although I still need to help him spread the cheese and cut it in half. He tries hard to spread the cheese himself, which is fine with me, since it's a fine motor skill he's practicing (cheese spreading) but he still needs help to finesse it and spread it out evenly.

Cheese

Then for a few weeks in November, he had stopped eating cream cheese sandwiches for breakfast. Instead, he'd grab the jumbo shredded cheese, request a place and spoon and eat that. That was his preferred breakfast for a while. Unfortunately, I coudln't really pretend that such cheese eating was unacceptable considering that I used to do the same thing: eat spoonfuls of shredded cheese.

Fruits and Veggies

On a healthier note, he added another fruit to his diet: clementine oranges. So now, he eats two fruits: bananas and oranges. I'm thrilled about it. I don't know whether he decided to try an orange because he sees me gob down 4-5 oranges in one sitting, but one day I asked whether he wants to try it and he did. I was shocked. Now he goes to the orange bowl and gets several oranges for me to peel for him. I'm definitely not complaining. If he wants to eat 4-5 clementines in one sitting, I'll cheer him on.

He's still pretty much anti-veggies, unless it's peas and beans (are beans veggies?). He has, however, on a few odd occasions zestfully taken a forkful of lettuce and ate it. I assume he'd see Andy and I eat the lettuce/salad with gusto and he just couldn't resist.

Then he also tried baby carrots with hummus. But eventually, he'd just lick the hummus of the carrot and wouldn't actually eat the carrot (or would chew it and then spit it out).


Chocolate
His sweet tooth for chocolate, cakes and cookies continues unabated. He constantly wants them, and my parents, my dad, actually, continues to indulge him over my loud protests and annoyances.

And now, since, he's slowly becoming a sly three year-old, he knows that we won't give him sweets, so he puts on the sweetest, cutest, most mischievous expression he can muster to ask us in a sweet, smiley voice "cookie?" Unfortunately, this strategy usually works.