Margaret and food

We all have a love-hate relationship with food at this point. Margaret wants to eat, but refuses to eat almost everything. Today, I bought some strawberries at the store, but all they got was an emphatic shake of the head. No taste, just a glance and a shake. (Regardless of what Margaret might or might not understand, she clearly knows what a shake of the head means.) Every time it happened, I'd shrug and eat the strawberry myself. This has lead us to engage in some preliminary tricks to get foods into the kid without her knowledge. For instance, I put strawberries in the waffles that she later devoured (waffles being a food that she will, apparently, eat.)

I figure that at some point, she'll have to get past this. Abby read that infants can be very finicky about what they eat since that's one of the few features of their existence that they can actually control. At the same time, they will eat what they need to maintain themselves so we shouldn't worry about malnourishment. (Lots of baby books have lots of advice about baby behavior, for better or worse.) But it is annoying to have EVERYTHING new rejected, regardless of how tasty we know it to be. And the rejection can often be quite unpleasant with lots of vehement vocal objections from the kid.

The primary beneficiary of Margaret's food aversion has been Maddie. After a meal, we plop the tray down for Maddie to clean. She's been the recipient of a wide variety of tasty foods and waits with great anticipation during the whole process.