Super Eater

As I mentioned in my last post, daycare has turned Joseph into a crazy hungry boy whenever he's with us. His teachers tell us he eats at the mealtimes, but I think he's either not eating very much, or just being really slow. And at daycare, when mealtime is over, it's over, which is totally understandable.

So we've started to learn that even though they serve breakfast, it's better for everyone if we feed him "1st breakfast" before heading out. Generally a piece of fruit, scrambled egg, cereal bar, something to have him walking into school with food in his tummy = a slightly happier little boy. Slightly.

In the same light, whenever we pick him up, it's hours after afternoon snack (we usually can't make it to pick him up before 5:30pm) and he's asking to eat the moment we get into the car. For example, Monday I picked him up at 6 and immediately went to the grocery store to get things for this week. While at the store, he ate an entire banana, handful of grapes, package of fruit snacks, and then still ate his mac & cheese, half a biscuit and a few bites of grilled chicken an hour later at home! 

Tonight was no exception. I picked him up at 5:30 and he was asking to eat. Joe was going to be working late, and I didn't really want to make dinner twice, so I took the easy way out and we stopped at Steak N Shake. I ordered him a kid's grilled cheese, mandarin oranges and a strawberry milkshake. We discovered that he LOVES things like shakes when I ordered a virgin strawberry daquiri last weekend and Joseph drank more than half of my drink. He couldn't get enough!

True to recent form, once his dinner arrived, he sat down and steadily plowed through half of the sandwich, before turning to the oranges. He was so sweet, trying his hardest to scoop up the oranges with a spoon and then a fork. He's getting a lot better at keeping the spoon upright on its way into his mouth and only dropped  1. After polishing off the whole bowl of oranges, he turned back to the sandwich, which he finished! And then asked for more. Are you kidding me? I reminded him about his shake, which he happily started chugging. 

The last bit of sandwich, and a protest about having his picture taken. Usually he hams it up for the camera, but not tonight.

He decided it was much more fun to suck the melted shake off the straw than drink through it, and was having so much fun I had to video a bit of the experience.

You would think all that food would be enough to fill up a two year old. Not this kid. After playing outside with bubbles for a bit, he was asking to eat again, and finished a cereal bar, slice of red pepper and a few more pieces of chicken! He's learning how to stall when he doesn't want to go take his nightly bath and will continue eating, so it's hard to tell if he's really still hungry or not. Probably not, but since he's never eaten this well, we aren't complaining. Except now I have visions of what life might actually be like with a teenage boy in the house....at least that's a long way off!