Subterfuge

Things are mostly settling down at home now that my husband's been on his new schedule for four weeks. Bedtime is getting under control, and I've even managed to work in some exercise at night. But we're still having some issues at dinnertime that are making me nuts.

To wit: All of the sudden, Shae claims that she does not like vegetables, and pretty much refuses to touch them.

This is all new to me, because basically since she's been eating solid food, she's been eating whatever we put in front of her. We have had the random phases where she'd eat nothing but pretzels, cheese, and pineapple for days at a time, but nothing like this. It's stressing me out, because I really, really want to make sure that she eats properly, gets all the right nutrition, and looks at fruit snacks and pretzels as "sometimes foods."

I blame school, honestly. I mean, her pre-school provides proper lunches every day, with a fruit or a veggie, but if her friends don't eat their vegetables, and they can get away with it, it's only a matter of time before Shae would try it too, right?

So I have resorted to the same last refuge that every other mother of every other preschooler has resorted to at times like these: subterfuge and camouflage.

This was Shae's dinner last night: homemade soup, whole wheat butter bread, celery with cream cheese, and a Fruitables juice box (fruit-and-vegetable juice blend, like a sweet V8). I made the soup -- it has carrots, celery, onion, and diced tomatoes in it. She also ended up eating two pieces of bread, so all told, she probably had three full servings of vegetables at dinnertime last night, plus two servings of whole grain.

She didn't complain about those vegetables, probably because she didn't realize she was eating them. I don't know how long I am going to get away with this, but promise me you won't tell her she's eating health food, okay?