I loved seeing a glimpse into how much Mrs. Hopscotch’s 19 month old daughter eats on a normal day, so some of the Bees are going to share what their little ones eat as well!

We’re very lucky that Charlie and Olive don’t have any allergies that we know of, and that they don’t suffer from selective eating disorder (or severe pickiness). Some other parents deal with far more difficult feeding challenges than us!

But I must admit that Charlie and Olive’s general fickleness when it comes to food usually make every mealtime very frustrating. They often won’t eat foods that they like. They’re more than happy to skip entire meals on a regular basis. We usually have to read books, tell stories, and try to convince them to eat just 5 bites total. I don’t think there is a single food or meal that they will eat with gusto (with the exception of olives for Charlie). It’s nearly impossible to get them to try new foods. I think they just don’t like eating! It also makes cooking for them pretty discouraging, and a lot of food gets wasted. Hopefully this is a phase!

This is what a typical day of meals looks like in our house.

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This morning the kids split 1/2 a cup (before we cooked it) of oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins on top with 2 strips of bacon. When Olive saw me putting bananas in a green smoothie, she asked for one.

Typically the kids don’t eat much, if any, breakfast these days — 2 pieces of bacon and Charlie’s usually done and one small pancake (half the size of my palm) and Olive is done. I think they may just not be that hungry when they first wake up (I’m not either!). I especially hate sending Charlie to school without breakfast because he won’t eat until lunchtime, while we can always send something with Olive to daycare. But they both ate really well this particular morning. Olive ate most of her banana and half of her oatmeal. Charlie ate half of his oatmeal and his 2 pieces of bacon.

I pack big lunches because the kids eat best at school when they’re around other kids. We can never get them to eat as much at home. This was actually a special day because Charlie went to Olive’s daycare since his school was closed. Olive’s lunch is on top (packed in a Boon Elephant box). I also pack a brothy soup w/ rice in her lunch every day because if she doesn’t eat her lunch, she always has her soup.  This day she finished her soup (a beef bone broth), ate half the cantaloupe, a couple pieces of sausage, and drank the yogurt (a special treat). She didn’t touch the salmon, pasta or corn. She’s eaten the pasta and salmon when I’ve packed it in the past, so I can never predict what she will eat or how much she will eat.

Charlie’s lunch is below Olive’s. It doesn’t have salmon and has kiwi instead of cantaloupe. I also pack olives or pickles into his lunch every day because they’re his favorite food, and he tends to eat better when he has them. Because he was going to Olive’s daycare I packed him some soup, but I wouldn’t if he were going to public school because he won’t eat it there. In this lunch Charlie ate all his soup, kiwi, yogurt drink and olives. He didn’t touch the corn and pasta and ate a couple pieces of sausage. What I miss most about Charlie not going to daycare anymore is how great they were at getting the kids to eat.

I should also note that the kids ate two donuts this day because it was Charlie’s birthday. On a typical day, Olive gets two small snacks at daycare consisting of crackers or fruit. Charlie gets one small snack like crackers that the parents bring in on a rotating basis.

Dinner was seaweed soup with rice, potatoes, cucumbers, tofu and diluted soy sauce (kids love to dip!). We give a straw because it’s easier for the kids to drink the broth. Charlie will only drink the broth but Olive usually eats some of her rice. They eat a lot of soups because they’re easier to eat than food, but because they are broths they’re not very filling. At this dinner Charlie drank all his broth, ate all his cucumber and the tiniest mouse nibble of tofu, and that was only after 30 minutes of Transformers stories. Olive didn’t touch her soup but she ate two pieces of the tofu and a couple slices of cucumber. Both kids refused to eat the potato.

Charlie didn’t want to eat the tofu, so I offered to make him something else, which I almost never do. He asked for eggs so I cooked two and he ate one and Olive had a couple bites. I used to give them fruit after dinner regularly as their dessert, but mealtimes have been exceptionally challenging lately so I haven’t been giving them fruit because I don’t want them to fill up on snacks. They only ate 2 small pieces of apple each anyway.

Here’s a dinner from another night where they ate really well. Charlie finished all his broth (you can see that he left all his rice) and ate 4 pieces of asparagus and 4 pieces of broccoli. He might even have had a piece of turkey. Olive drank most of her soup and ate 2 pieces of asparagus. On a bad night, they will drink their broth and not eat anything on their plates.


they’re in their pj’s with wet hair because they got a bath before dinner

Charlie also drinks 5 ounces of hemp milk before bedtime. Olive never took to milk so she never drank milk in any form. But when I saw how much other kids were eating in addition to drinking 15+ ounces of milk a day, I decided to try getting her to drink milk again. So far she’s had a couple ounces the past two days! It’s very promising not only because she’s getting extra calories, but also because I think it will be helpful when weaning!

Overall this was a really good day of eating — they typically don’t eat this much! They also eat much, much less on the weekends when they’re not at school and are home all day with us. They’re happy to eat a couple bites at each meal and be done, even if we don’t give them any snacks. And getting them to eat the small amount that they do usually requires a huge effort on our part — storytelling, entertaining, coaxing, etc. Hopefully one day they’ll magically love eating, and we won’t have to convince them how awesome eating is at every single meal.