Golden Pig Tales

I think he liked my ceaser salad dinner because he ate it. Ezra even said, ,,Thank you for dinner, daddy,” for the first time.

When I got to pre-school yesterday, the kids were playing with these little multi-colored plastic toy animals. Ezra had a small family of bunnies and 1 gorilla. The other kids had their own little zoos. I noticed that one kid Ax was putting the animals in his mouth and chewing on them, but that wasn’t a surprise because this kid puts everything in his mouth and chews on it. Ezra and I went home and started to think about dinner. I asked what we should have, and Ezra said that he wanted eggs. So I got out some eggs and started to cracking. As I was whisking the eggs, Ezra looked at me and said “don’t eat animals”. And I said….”hmmm”. I was wondering whether he had gotten some go veg literature from someone somewhere. I asked him who told him not to eat the animals, and he said “Ax no eat animals” Then he went to the fridge and pointed at the cow magnet that he got from Grandma and Grandpa T, and said again “don’t eat animals”…”eat food”. Maybe he was thinking about how Ax was chewing on the animals at pre-school, and maybe the teacher told him not to eat the animals? Because I don’t think Ezra realizes yet that meat and eggs are animals, because he happily sat down to eat the eggs I made for him.

It was a rare moment today when Ezra didn’t have a peach or plum clasped in his sticky fingers. It was just as rare for him to have fingers that didn’t pick up fur and dirt particles because he wanted to play a game of run around after eating a peach or a plum.

Good thing is that his skill at washing hands in the sink by himself is improving after being asked many times these past days to wash his hands after he has devoured another peach. He can preform all the needed tasks to wash hands, but he still needs to be reminded sometimes that he can’t play with the water for it is wasteful.

Ezra likes to try new things, and will eat a lot of things, but he really is kind of a picky eater. He doesn’t really like meat. He doesn’t really like things that are mixed up, like rice and beans and vegetables. he generally prefers to have things all separate, and prefers that all those things be fruit. or maybe cheese, and sometimes eggs, and sometimes even cheese eggs. but mostly fruit. I think Ezra will be excited about the coming bounty of fruits in our yard. today he finally cleaned off the fruits from the honeyberry bush. 

Put two Newman’s Own Organic Chocolate Alphabet Cookies on bottom of snack container. Then cover cookies with Annie’s Homegrown Cheddar Bunnies and raisins. Layer and spread 12 Grain Mini Snack Crackers, Barbara’s Bakery’s Puffins and a few more Annie’s Homegrown Cheddar Bunnies. Then peal a slice of Naturally Delicious Dried Mangoes to pieces an put pieces on top of Puffins and cheddar bunnies. Then break apart a graham cracker and put in snack container. Fill in remaining space with some raisins and a few more Annie’s Homegrown Cheddar Bunnies leaving some of the graham cracker exposed.

If there is a fruit in the house, Ezra will eat it. It can be fresh, previously frozen, canned, dried, freeze dried, dehydrated, or just dropped behind the couch and discovered 2 weeks later (well, maybe I made that last one up, because I’ve never seen him eat anything but cheerios he’s found behind the couch). Ezra likes bananas, oranges, kiwi, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, grapefruit, lemons, limes, raspberries, blackberries, mulberries, peaches, nectarines, pears, cherries, plums, pomegranate, jackfruit, rambutan, papaya, mango, mangosteen, pineapple, and he will eat an apple, but usually only if it’s been sauced. He also really likes tomoatoes, peas, beans, and olives, which are also technically fruits. I bet Ezra would even eat durian, which is known for being the stinkiest fruit on earth.  I will let you know when I discover a fruit that Ezra does not like.

Call ‘em Cheerios or Joe’s O’s. Whatever brand of cereal it is that is made from toasted whole grain oats shaped like an O, Ezra is in to them again.

He use to love the toasted whole grain oats then months ago he stopped wanting to eat them. He expanded to different types of grains and foods. His snack bag had cheddar bunnies, wheat crackers, multi grain crackers and graham crackers instead of a snack bag full of Cheerios. Months ago he would toss aside toasted whole grain oats like he was insulted then suddenly, one day last week, he pointed up at the box of stale Cheerios on top of the fridge until we selected the correct box, the Cheerios box. We thought he was mistaken, but he wanted some Cheerios, so we gave him some. Ever since then he’s been wanting some form of toasted whole grain oats shaped like an O in his snack bag and during morning snack. Fortunately, he’s a little more competent with grabbing and eating his food, so I am not finding trails of toasted whole grain oats shaped like an O all over the house.

For some crazy reason, it seems, when Ezra eats hot dogs he has a span of time after when he gets crazy. And I mean crazy by running around talking and playing and generally trying to practice to become a stuntman. This is behavior -v- and I have witnessed and noted during the past months and monitored closely during the past weeks. This behavior and our belief hot dogs juices Ezra to excitement was proved again tonight after I fed him a hot dog for dinner. As usual, he ate all the hot dog then he began running around, wanting to fall backward on the couch without concern of if he will land on the couch. He ran here and there. He chased the cats around. …Of course, this behavior isn’t too far from Ezra’s normal behavior. It just feels that after eating a hot dog he is a little more excited or juiced to take the playing to the next level.

Ezra likes the big metal spoon. He is now putting more food into his mouth from the big metal spoon. He wants to use the big metal spoon, and he has since he reached for it, and -v- gave him a big metal spoon, and he ate with the big metal spoon. He seems to like the big metal spoon because he can use the weight of the spoon to scoop deep into food and the size of the big metal spoon to scoop more food than he ever did scoop with the small plastic spoon, as he demonstrated with the big metal spoon this morning while eating rice-cereal-plain-yogurt-apple-sauce cereal and the Puffins with milk (there were drops of milk on the floor after the Puffins were ate).

-v- found and bought blue berries yesterday for Ezra. Now Ezra is once again addicted to blue berries. He can’t have enough. He doesn’t even like oranges or clementines this much. At least I don’t believe he does. An orange or a clementine will tame the blue berry fuss of Ezra after we don’t give him more blue berries, but after the orange or clementine is ate he will seek the last know loaction of the blue berry container and fuss for it.

Ezra likes to first bite a piece of rind; pull the rind from the clementine; then pull the rind piece from his mouth; and set rind on table or drop it on the floor. Once there is a large enough hole in the rind to push two thumbs into the clementine, he pushes two thumbs into the clementine and he tires to pull it apart. After finding the clementine doesn’t pull apart because of the rind, he then bites more rind from the clementine and tries after each bite to pull the Clementine apart. If it pulls apart then he will pull apart the clementine and pick the fruit from the rind and eat. …Then let the parents clean up the juice and rind.

Ezra calls food Apple. It is a universal word for that food object he is starring at or pointing at that he wants to eat. He wants, ,,Apple.” And then he points.

While we name the things we give him like bread, eggs, peanut butter, beef, pork, sweat potatoes. And if there are pieces we count them out with the name of the food like clementine wedges, peach slices, carrots pieces, peas. But still everything is, ,,Apple.”

Apple is easier than clementine, peach, carrot, potatoes and banana to say.

Some day Ezra will get to eat more blueberries. He was very happy to have a lot of them recently. They were in the big red colander on the counter. Ezra would point at the colander and make the noise he makes when he wants something. It’s sort of a grunt. The other day though, the colander was empty and hanging on the wall again. Ezra pointed at it and grunted, but I had to tell him that there were no more blueberries. He looked sad and blue.

Some day Ezra may be thankful to me for writing fewer blog entries. Kalab gets upset when I don’t write, but I bet Ezra will be happier when he’s a teenager that I didn’t write sometimes. He’ll look at me and point to the blog and grunt like all teenagers do, and I’ll know that he is happy I forgot to write about an embarrassing moment or two.

Applesauce, oatmeal cereal, yogurt. A banana and Cheerios. Beans and vegetables.

Ezra loves bananas and cheese. Bananas and cheese make a food-playing Ezra drop a ball of unwanted food and reach, pinch and lift a chunk of banana or cheese into mouth. Banana or cheese are never foods that he will push to the edges of the high chair tray and never foods that he picks up and drops on the floor (an obvious way Ezra has for showing us he is bored with a type of food or full of food). The sight of a banana or a piece of cheese can cause him to raise and lower legs hanging from chair and incite him to slap the smeared-food-covered-high-chair tray with both hands and let out a baby shout.

Ezra is continuing to put on a fussy tantrum at dinner time. He seems hungry, and he will eat, but seems to be very particular about how and what food gets in his mouth.

I gave him a teething biscuit, which made him happy for a few minutes, then it made him cry. Maybe it was too hard? Then I gave him some avocado, from a spoon. That was OK for a while, but then that made him cry. Then I tried giving him chunks of avocado to feed himself, but that wasn’t OK because they are slippery and he had a hard time getting them into his mouth. I gave him a stick of string cheese, which made him happy until I took it away from him because he was trying to stuff the whole thing in his mouth, so then he cried. The only thing that didn’t seem to make him cry was eating  organic toasted Os cereal.

Then Ezra sat and watched Kalab and I eat our cinco de mayo tacos. Ezra seemed like he wanted to be eating tacos. I gave him a little tomato and some black beans, which made him happy, until he was sad that he could not eat the taco meat that I was eating,  and then he cried.

Maybe someday soon we will figure out how and what to feed Ezra for dinner so that there are no more tears with the food.