2 year old blues...

[1mamacita]

Okay, my 2 year old, Papi is giving me the blues.  We went to the doctor for just a regular check up and it's been determined that he needs to gain weight.  He is 29 months and he only weighs 22.8 pounds and his iron is low.  Now I do feed my child, but the only problem is that he doesn't like to eat and I am fresh out of ideas how to get him to eat.  He has always been a picky eater, even as an infant on formula, he would never drank an entire bottle.  I have tried every trick I know to get this little rascal to eat and it isn't working.  It's like he doesn't like food or something, which is weird because my husband and I love food.  At dinner time, he runs and hide so that he doesn't have to eat.  As long as he has a cup with juice, milk and even water, he is a-o.k.  I've tried feeding him fun things like french fries and chicken nuggets and hamburgers and pizza and what's crazy is that he may eat pizza today but hate it next week.  It's like he forgets that he likes it or something.  I've even gone as far as to give him cereal for dinner.  It worked the first 2 days but after that he seemed to not like cereal anymore.  I've even tried taking his cup away and not giving him anything to drink until he eats but the only problem with that is that he's a stubborn as a bull and doesn't care if I take his cup, he still won't eat.  The other day I made him bite his chicken nugget and we sat a the table for an hour because he refused to swallow it.  That's right...he held that chicken in his mouth the whole time and still had it in there when I gave him a bath.  Finally I got tired of looking at his fat cheeks with slobber coming out of his mouth from it being stuffed with food that I just told him to spit it out already.  He may have won that time but it's not over.  I will win this food war that I'm having with him.  I give him vitamins with iron so to help out since his iron is low but he really needs to break bread with us on a daily basis.  Until I can get him to eat I will just continue to give him pediasure and harvest blend juice for nutrients.  I bought him a special plate and cup and placemat for dinner time, now lets see how that works...wish me luck.