Eat THAT!

Over the past few months, Mira has been surprising us. She is, and has always been, extremely sensory defensive when it comes to food. The smells are too much, the textures overwhelming and god forbid whatever we are eating is the least bit messy- Mira can not abide by messy meals. Lately though, my persnickety princess has pressed for new foods. Towards the end of the school year her preschool worked on learning the food groups and talked about healthy eating. The lesson seems to have stuck with her.

Trips to the grocery store have turned into an adventure. Mira walks up and down the isles, wide eyed at the selection. She peruses the fish counter and is giddy in the produce section. I am happy to accommodate her newfound adventurousness and we bring home parcels of Mira's choosing. I do my best to make her picks appealing. I marinate salmon in maple syrup, turn down the fire on my arroz con pollo, and saute apple slices with our chicken sausage. Mira eats. The first forkful is cautious but she soon is shoveling it, leaving dinner guests to wonder if I starve her all day long.

Last night I set Mira's plate down with trepidation. At her request I made tacos. When she begged for tacos, she had no idea what they were but a friend had spoken so passionately of his love for tacos that she caught the fever. Even with her new found food adventurousness I was afraid that tacos were a deal breaker. For starters they are MESSY and Mira can not cope with messy. Her usually reaction involves some serious hand flapping which spatters all bystanders. She dances around on her tip toes, squealing and grimacing and her speech deteriorates into a repetitive sound that signals NO WAY NO HOW MAKE IT STOP! Combine this reaction with a separate, yet equally disruptive, freak out over the texture of red meat and tacos start looking like the Antichrist. I did it though, I made them and set them down in front of her.

I briefly considered diving behind the couch for cover should taco time take a turn for the worst. Before I had made up my mind, I heard an astounding sound:

"Oh yum mama, tacos are sooooooo good!"

With another food victory under my belt, I am now on a quest to up her meat intake. Poor vegetarian readers, avert your gaze before you lay eyes on what may possibly be the best use of meat for the purpose of enticing small children to partake:





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Also if you have a moment check out Levi's digital scrapbook, aka scrapblog, in the post below. Every view is an entry for me to win a trip to BlogHer so all of you already going can meet Mr Levi (and his much less adorable but still pretty fun Mama)in person. Bonus, those of you doing the BlogHer scavenger hunt could totally score a picture of you with a nursing momblogger nursing (that alone is worth 15 points!). Everyone Wins!