The F word that kids hate

It's a word I suspect if Sonny Boy hears, he just understands what it implies, and clams up.

What is it with food and toddlers? Pah!

Right now I'm going crazy. He won't eat breakfast. If the all-powerful almighty that he is, decides to have a mid-morning snack, ummm he may. He'll think about it, he'll decide...he'll see. He may touch it, play with it a bit. But eat????!!

Oh no...one does not EAT food! How ridiculous.

It is something that's best left plastered and pasted on mommy's dress, on her jewellery, in her hair, in his own hair, on his t-shirt and shorts, rubbed on the floor or table, (and yes, smearing ketchup IN his ear is his favourite mamma trigger).

He's been showing an eagerness sometimes to eat his own dinner, which I'm very glad to let him do, because it involves, actually, EATING! But, somewhere down the line, he decides it's so boring sitting in one place and putting food in his mouth.

So he'll settle in my lap, and the plastering of food begins. If i object, he heads straight for the walls and bedsheets!

He wakes up too late to head for babysitting and refuses to have anything but some milk. And when he's done with baby-sitting (where he snacks a bit) he won't have anything to do with breakfast.

So FOOD is becoming my obsession. How do I get in more into him? How do I get in nutritious stuff? He outright rejects fruits and veggies and if theyr'e masked in a milkshake or parantha, he spits it out. He's also a great detective of hidden tastes, I figured.

The Wise One sits on the potty and even tells me that his poop will come out hard if he doesnt eat fruits and veggies. But that knowledge is left behind, I think, in the potty, with the poop, once he's done.

I try to make peas look yummy by popping them sensationally into my mouth and making those "Oh this is so yummy" faces and noises. On that day, he chooses to balk at peas. On other days, he'll eat them just fine.

I read on many parenting sites that you must keep a food journal (tells you if the tot is eating adequate amounts of all food groups. Did it for about a week-and-half and that week he really behaved. (He must have seen me making notes!!)

And if all this doesn't make me sound like a paranoid (and therefore normal?) mum, what else can?