"Dinosaurs eat sandwiches"

"Dinosaurs eat sandwiches", my son said to me the other day.
"oh yes? what do they like in their sandwiches?" I reply.
"Chocolate spread!"
Of course, I thought. Like it could be anything else.
Chocolate spread is the only thing allowed in his sandwiches. In fact his entire personal menu consists of about 15things, half of them of course junk food.
For a long time now, we've been having a battle with food in our house. Because I work evenings, I'm not around for dinnertime so it's hard for me to enforce the household rules (daddy is a pushover). And for a while perhaps I wasn't helping either, being the worried mother thinking he might starve. But the other day a friend kindly pointed out, he won't let himself starve. So I've been trying to be a bit more strict at dinner when I am around.

"Eat your numbergetti." I say to him sternly one evening.
"No!", he replies,  "it's yukky!"
"If you eat your numbergetti, you can have a sticker and a sweetie!" I bargain with him. I can see him thinking it over. Just one numbergetti for a sweetie?bargain!
He lifts his face up to the spoon slightly, is lips almost touching the spoon with the magic number '8' on it.
yes! I think, we're going to breakthrough!
"YUKKY!" he shouts and leaps down from his chair.
sigh...I knew it were too good to be true. I slink back in my chair, defeated.
"No sticker or sweetie for you then if you don't eat your dinner!"
"okay".
and the battle continues...


The thing is, he wasn't always like this. I was relieved when he was 6 months to start weaning him onto proper food,as he was a very hungry baby. He used to eat anything I put in front of him. Potato, leek and noodles was his favourite. But somewhere along the line, he just decided to stop eating my lovely healthy foods. And he's no small child as you can see in the pictures. He's managing to grow fine even without his greens. (which I know will one day be used against me ("I was fine without green growing up,mother!")Is it too much to ask for my son to have a healthy varied diet?! Hopefully, when he starts pre-school in September, he'll want to eat what the other kids are eating, and it'll make my life a hell-of-lot easier!

 --and I said I wasn't going to be "one of those" parents--