I’m happy<\/a>. I don’t need to eat my carrots." He smiles to prove his happiness.<\/p>\nYes. Yes, you do.<\/p>\n
"Umm… okay. I’m just going to sit here for a while."<\/p>\n
"Remember the doctor? She said you have to eat at least two bites. Right?" Really, that was the best thing his doctor ever did for us.<\/p>\n
"That’s okay. I’m just hanging out. That’s all. I’m just hanging out." He crosses his arms and looks around like… well, like he’s just hanging out. Where he learned this one, I have no idea.<\/p>\n
I start clearing the table. "You have to eat your carrots. Two carrots."<\/p>\n
"Umm… How about dessert? Ice cream? Please?"<\/p>\n
His little brother perks up at this, "Cream! Cream? Cream!"<\/p>\n
I understand his strategy here – trying to get his brother on his side – but it always backfires. I fix two bowls of ice cream. I put one in front of N and the other on the counter where C can see it but not reach it.<\/p>\n
"Okay, you can have some ice cream – after you finish your vegetables."<\/p>\n
"Awww….man!"<\/p>\n
"Two carrots. You have to eat two carrots." It’s in the daddy manual: when all else fails, repeat yourself.<\/p>\n
A carrot "accidentally" falls to the floor: "Oh no! It fell on the floor! It’s all dirty now. Oh well. Too bad. Ice cream now?"<\/p>\n
This trick got old some time ago. I pick up the carrots, brush them off, and put them back on his plate. "Don’t you want some ice cream?"<\/p>\n
This is the cue that means I’m about to throw out his ice cream, and he recognizes it. He takes two "bites" of the carrots – bites that are so small they just scrape some of the skin off the tip of the baby carrot.<\/p>\n
"Nope. The whole thing."<\/p>\n
With big sigh, he eats the carrots one after the other, chomping them down in seconds. Then he nods wisely. "Two bites, daddy. Two bites."<\/p>\n
That’s about ten minutes of arguing for twenty seconds of chewing. I’m not sure I’m winning these battles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What is it about kids and vegetables? I understand not liking brussel sprouts, but raw carrots? Who doesn’t like those? Here’s a portion of a typical dinner conversation at our house. I remind C that he has to eat his vegetables. "The doctor said you have to have two bites. Remember? Two bites." C nods […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-1z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}