OK, let's talk food. Nutritious food. The kind you want your children to eat.
The problem, I'm realizing, is that your children won't eat it if you don't seem to eat a whole heck of a lot of it yourself.
A little background.
I grew up in a food-obsessed household. My mother was always on some diet or another. In fact there was a time in my childhood when I was certain that the way you lost weight was by eating a lot of dietetic food because my mother always seemed to be overdosing on grapefruits or carrots or Weight Watchers meals. Also, my eldest sister was overweight as a teenager and never had a date. I quickly linked the two in my mind and I remember thinking that the absolute worst fate in the universe was to be fat.
So I began dieting, probably at the age of about 13. When I weighed maybe 105 pounds soaking wet.
The flip side of my food-obsessed household was that when my mother wasn't on a diet and had a craving for her ultimate treat - a
vanilla Carvel ice cream sundae with hot fudge and chopped nuts (I can barely type the description without trembling with desire ), my father and my siblings and I piled into the stationwagon to soothe the craving and, naturally, take part in the sugar orgy, too.
Suffice to say, I grew up with a fairly unhealthy relationship with food that lingers into the present day.
When my twins were born, I swore I'd change my bad food habits for them. I even bought a book on making my own, healthy baby food (yeah, I was pregnant and starry-eyed at the time). I started out like gangbusters, too - nursing J (with some formula supplementation) and pumping for Lily for just about six months before I nearly sank into the floor from exhaustion - not to mention extreme hunger.
I remember weakly asking F's blessing to stop breastfeeding after L came through with flying colors from her open heart surgery. I was still at the "I'm going to be a perfect mom" stage.
Once the girls started eating solid food, the baby cookbook got relegated to the dust bin (like a working mother of twins has time to strain her own peas and then pour them into ice-cube trays), although I did stock up on the organic baby foods and introduced them to baby veggies and fruits like the books recommend.
But somewhere between J refusing to drink milk after we graduated to sippy cups and our pediatrician's office offering lollipops to any child whos could spy them at the reception desk, the battle was lost.
Here is a list of the foods that J will not eat, and may never eat, if her inborn stubborn streak
Pasta, couscous, beans - of any variety, shape, flavor or color
Anything green (unless it's clearly a lollipop and even then she'll hold out for a red one if she suspects it's lurking in the back of the cabinet)
Soup
Most fruits
Seafood
Nuts
Basically she lives on pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, strawberries, chicken fingers, cereal, breakfast bars, ice cream sandwiches and candy.
L, thankfully, would eat broccoli for breakfast, craves raw mushrooms and milk and lights up when she sees dried tofu in her chicken soup ("Tofu cheese!" she squeals delightedly, warming her mother's heart).
The good news, I guess, is that it can't just be nurture, because nature gave me these two children at the same time and we really did feed them the exact same food.
And in an effort to not perpetuate the unhealthy relationship with food that I grew up with, I don't force J to sit at the table and eat or to try new foods (although I do encourage her and reward her when she even takes a bite of something new). I don't diet myself, either. But my girls don't see me eat a whole heck of a lot of veggies or fruits, either.
And that gnaws at me.
Like the carrots and celery they rarely see me eat.
