Wouldn't You Like a Banana Canoe?

Sarah has issues with eating dinner. Bascially, she doesn't. She tantrums. Every night. And spends the rest of dinner in her room screaming and carrying on. Most nights she goes to bed crying, "No Sarah just be hungry!" and still she will not eat what's put in front of her.

Last night we had strawberry shortcake for dessert and a very sad Sarah couldn't have any because she hadn't eaten her dinner. She's been talking about whipped cream all day long, so I decided to make a really fun dinner that she would for sure eat so that she could have some dessert tonight.

I consulted my baby food book - the fun toddler recipe section. I made a canoe out of a banana peel, with yummy mashed banana mixture inside (I even pureed it to make it extra smooth so she wouldn't be grossed out by the texture), carrot stick oars, little ball-shaped toddler hors d'ouvres for rocks, and Goldfish swimming in the sea of her favorite blue plate. Colin and I had baked potato "canoes."

Sarah was impressed by the idea. She gobbled up her crackers ("Wow, you ate all the fish in the sea!"), and then proceeded to make "waffles" out of the banana stuff (which means she drops it in dollops on her plate without eating any). She wouldn't even try it. She just globbed it onto her plate until it was all a big gooey mess and then asked to get down. I cried. Seriously. I spent SO much time, and tried SO hard, and even made Rebecca wait to nurse while I worked on dinner, and Sarah wouldn't even put it within an arm's length of her mouth. And she missed out on dessert again.

At least now I don't have to feel guilty about not being more creative with her food because I know that it doesn't make much difference to Sarah - she won't eat it either way.