She has very sensitive taste buds.

Which is the tactful way of saying that she is extremely picky about what foods may enter her mouth.

Even as a baby Kenzie never ‘tasted’ everything she got her hands on. With her I simply never worried about keeping small objects off the floor, because she didn’t put them in her mouth so there was no real concern of her choking on things.

That was the good part.

The bad part?

I had a really hard time getting her to put food in her mouth as well then. To this day she will only drink chocolate milk, grape juice or water and sadly I can’t take credit for that. It was not our good parenting skills that taught her not to like soda or ice tea, it was simply her own pickiness about what enters her mouth.

She does love chocolate and whoopee pies though, but even when it comes to desserts, she has a pretty limited selection, she likes gum but most other non chocolate candy gets rejected.

She doesn’t even eat sandwiches. She loves butter bread though, but if it has jelly or peanut butter on it, then it’s definitely inedible.

There is one thing, however, that is worse then any other food out there.

Veggies. This is the worst of the worst in her opinion.

However, every evening for supper, she has no choice in the matter, she must eat her veggies and I am quite proud to say that lately she eats her food by herself, with minimal coaxing, and it gets done within minutes, instead of hours.

Please, do not ask though how many hours, bribes, consequences and whatever else we could think of it took to get her to this place.

Yea, if you knew the answer to that, you would probably give up on your picky eater before you even start! 🙂 Just know that there is hope. This battle can be won. Eventually.

There is one more problem though (we are working on it but we haven’t quite been successful yet.)

She complains.

She eats it, but not without making sure everyone within hearing range knows how terrible it tastes and how awful it is that she needs to eat it.

“MOM, not this again! I don’t like it! Why do you always make broccoli, you know I don’t like broccoli!”

One morning I set their breakfast on the table, “Guys, your food is ready!”

Kenzie walked toward the table and said with a hint of dread in her voice, “Mom, what is it? Is it eggs again, I don’t want eggs, you always make us eat…”

“Ohhhhhhhhh!”

“It’s oatmeal! I love oatmeal! All is well!” She declared, as she sat down and dug in.

What can I say? As a mom sometimes you gotta claim the victories where you can! 🙂

If you’re wondering just how far we came in this food battle here’s an example of how it used to be, The Breakfast Battle 🙂