Just EAT Already!

I am shocked, on a daily basis, by how little my child eats, and by how difficult it is to get him to eat. I am wondering if I need to be concerned about this, and will probably end up calling the ped this week for a chat about it...I guess I expected him to WANT to eat solid foods. I mean, breast milk can only taste so good, I imagine. And surely the tummy gets bored with a liquid diet, and craves the digestive challenges of a more varied and textured meal? He's always trying to grab our food. Doesn't that mean he wants to, you know, eat it?

Apparently not.

I will make him some baby food fruit and mix it with barley or rice cereal and cinnamon for breakfast, and he will maybe eat a tablespoon, on a good day, if I get lucky and if he doesn't boycott eating altogether after rubbing said breakfast mixture into his eyes and screeching. He doesn't breast feed that much during the day anymore, although he gets plenty of chances to. No, now instead of gobbling mommy's milk up he will lazily nosh on one side, and before he gets to the other he will start looking around, trying to get down and play. Lunch is a baby food meat, a veggie, and fruit for dessert. The meat is still frowned upon most of the time, and I end up mixing it with the veggie, which is at least looked at as a neutral entity, though not yet an ally.  And I can manage to trick him into eating a few bites of that before he gets disgusted with my shenanigans, and refuses to eat anything else but some fruit, which he loves, but still only eats in small quantities. More offerings to nurse in the afternoon, most of which are accepted half heartedly. And then dinner, a repeat of lunch with cereal thrown in, rarely ends with more food in his tummy than on his clothes.

How can he be growing when he only seems to consume about 17 calories a day?! How can he not be starving all the time? Why does he HATE sitting down to eat? I did not expect this. They don't tell you about this, you know. It's one more way that society tricks you into having kids. They show these happy babies eating their Gerber purees and you think "That's going to be a piece of cake! Yay solid food!"

Pshaw, that's all I have to say.