Cheeseburger in Hell

What do you get when you cross two strong willed or better yet down right stubborn people? You get a child that is off the charts stubborn as hell and will not budge for shit that's what.

A2 has always been a somewhat picky eater. By picky I mean he pretty much stopped eating anything at all by the time he was a little over a year and a half old. If it weren't for milk the child would have shriveled up and blown away. We tried to give him a variety of things but he wouldn't take a bite of anything. This is a child that ate very good when he was a baby and I can remember a time when he would eat green beans, macaroni, and several kinds of fruit. It went from that to zilch, nada.

I, of course, freaked out at first and asked the doctor what to do and scoured the Internet for ideas or insight into what was going on with this child. A1 never gave me this problem. I was happy to find that there were other parents out there that shared in my misery and dilemma of children that are sustained on milk alone. I figured I'd let it go and when he got hungry enough or moved past this phase he'd eat something.

Sure enough, time goes by and he starts to eat a couple of things here and there. His list seems to be growing slowly but it still disturbs me and the hubby that he refuses to try anything. I'm not going to force him to eat things he truly doesn't like but come the fuck on, how can I get him to at least try something??!! There is only so much nutritional value that can be gleamed out of fish sticks, toast, dry cereal, chicken nuggets and fries, and the occasional grilled cheese sandwiches. Those are pretty much the only things I can get in this child's gullet. Oh, cornbread is another thing. He loves it.

Sweets are another story. He's a sweet freak. I'm pretty sure he's going to grow up to be the guy that shows up to anything involving cake. You may not even know who he is but if you have cake at your event he'll be there. I truly believe you could roll shit in sugar and give it to him and he'd have his doubts but somehow manage to hoover the sugar off.

I've tried to be devious and sneak things to him that are "healthy" but he's not an idiot. He can tell I'm up to something before I even start. About the best thing I got him to do was drink a concoction I made up with my juicer that had carrots and oranges and apples and pears in it. I didn't want to give him too much at first because I was sure he'd break out in hives for having an actual vegetable in his system. He liked it but after about two tries with that he was done with it anyway.

I've tried not giving him anything at all and having him come to me and ask for something instead of automatically giving him milk when he wakes up. That doesn't do much good either. He can hold out a lot longer than I can and I feel bad once it starts getting on up in the morning and he hasn't had anything. We tried giving him one Pediasure (teddy bear milk) a day since it says on the bottle that it can be supplemented for a meal and has a lot of vitamins and nutrients in it and that had to be better than nothing but that was borderline crazy too. Do you know how expensive that crap is? You'd think it was damn liquid gold or something. Now they are just given as treats since even though they seem to stink like poo to me he likes the flavor.

All of this is very frustrating and it's gotten to the point of being downright ridiculous. I'm at a loss for what to really do. I can remember having to sit at the table for hours until I finished whatever was put on my plate. I can remember being stubborn and refusing to eat and opting to take an ass whipping at times to be able to get up. I don't recall ever being physically forced to eat anything but wouldn't put it past her if I had been. I'm a pro at repressing a lot of shit that went on when I was younger but I digress. I'm beginning to wonder if those type of tactics are what I'm going to be forced to try myself. I'll never make him eat something again if he at least tries it and THEN decides he doesn't like it. Right now he claims he doesn't like what we offer him before he even gets a look at it on the plate.

Yesterday the husband was off work for Veteran's Day and we decided to go out and pick up some supplies to finish out a room that the previous owners started above our garage. I made muffins before we left and thought that A2 would like them because he usually all about that and they had chocolate chips in them. He wouldn't try even one at the time so I did the typical mom thing and put two in a Ziploc for him for later and headed out the door.

We talked about going to lunch while we were out and that today was going to be the day we get him to eat, and by eat we mean at least take one freaking nibble of a cheeseburger from McDonald's. I mean come on, he eats plain hot dog buns and calls them hamburgers and he eats cheese sandwiches so it's really not that far of a stretch to move on to an actual hamburger bun with cheese and a paper thin hamburger patty on it. I even told them to leave it plain so the ketchup and stuff wouldn't freak him out.

That fucking cheeseburger was almost the death of me yesterday.

We went to McDonald's like any other time. We got our food and his happy meal and sat down. I talked it up and acted excited as I opened it up and sat it all out in front of him but he wouldn't try it at all. He spent his time driving one of his Thomas loaders on the top of it. He wouldn't even eat his fries which he usually likes. We stuck to it and didn't give in and let him have any of our drinks or his apple juice that came with the meal. When we were finished I packed his stuff back up in the box and told him that he could have it later but until he tried at least one bite he would get no drink, no candy and no Toys R Us. Didn't phase him.

A little time goes by and I know he's got to be getting hungry but he's still not budging when I ask if he wants a bite of burger. I was starting to feel bad but little did I realize the reason why he wasn't was because I forgot I had left those damn muffins back there with him and he'd chowed down on one of those while the husband and I were tying down the stuff in the back of the truck. Cleaver little boy. He now had the argument that he ate the muffins we were trying to get him to eat earlier. In his head he'd done a good thing. He ate. (Don't forget this child only turned 3 in July.)

Defeated a little we let that go and he got a little bit of drink to wash it down and was told that even though he got around it for now he still had to try some cheeseburger before he got anything else. He shrugged it off and said OK. We had several more things to do so we went about the day and by the time we were done and got back to the house it was close to 6 and since I was hungry by then I figured he had to be too.

I usually cook his grilled cheese sandwiches on our George Foreman grill. I had the bright idea that I would put that cheeseburger on the grill to heat it up and to make it resemble the cheese sandwiches a little more so that maybe he would eat it. At this point I knew he was hungry because he kept hovering around in the kitchen asking for a sandwich but he was nervous because he knew something was up and he hadn't forgotten about that cheeseburger. I took it off, cut it in half and put it on a plate.

Cue hell because it's about to break loose.

The husband put some chicken on the grill, A1 was hanging out in the kitchen with him, and I started putting up some things we had gotten while out that day. We just left A2 to look at his plate and decide what he was going to do. We didn't make a big deal out of it and would only glance over there at him out of the corner of our eyes. He would pick up a piece every now and then and then just drop it back on his plate. The rest of us went about dinner as usual. We ate our food and it was time for dessert.

Enter hell.

A2 was getting pretty happy at this point because he figured he'd skip the whole cheeseburger thing and just go ahead and have dessert too. Wrong. Husband and I told him that if he took one bite he could have whatever dessert he wanted. Just one bite. Seemed like a deal to me. Hell, one bite for a chunk of brownie seems like a win win to me. Then again I am a little further along in my reasoning than a 3 year old. He wasn't giving in. He was getting pissed though. He decided he was going to throw the cheeseburger and pitch a fit. That got him his first spanking.

He did it again. That got him taken to the corner in the hall away from everyone else to think about it. He was pissed beyond belief at that point and refused to stay in the corner and was screaming he wanted a brownie at this point. That got him his second spanking. Didn't phase him. He then tried to climb up on his daddy and grab something from his hand. It's safe to say he was loosing his damn mind and there was nothing we could do to chill him the fuck out.

We couldn't spank him anymore because at that point it would have just been pointless and wrong so I decided to go into the hallway with this child, sit down in the floor and physically block him from going back into the other room where his daddy and A1 were watching TV. That killed him. He tried to bulldoze his way past me but I wouldn't budge. I pinched off a piece of the cheeseburger and told him that all it took to get passed me was to eat that one bite. He threw it off of the plate and onto the floor. I told him that I didn't care if he threw it on the floor that he'd just have to eat it from there. He WAS NOT giving in. At this point I'm thinking "Who in the hell is this child and where is my sweet baby??" All of this over a fucking cheeseburger. Seriously!

This went on for at least two hours. Two. Long. Ass. Hours. He kept coming up with excuses like he doesn't like cheeseburger, he needed to go potty, he wanted to go night, he wanted to be saved by his daddy or he needed to check and see what Bub was doing. At this point it wasn't so much the fact that I wanted him to try something new it was the fucking principle of it all and he was NOT going to pitch a fit that massive and get away with it. Come hell or high water he was going to eat that bite little does he know I myself can be one stubborn bitch. Where in the hell does he think he gets it from??!!

I had resigned myself to the idea of sitting in the floor all night if I had to and if he fell asleep then we'd get up and go right back to that spot as soon as he woke up. Finally after my ass cheeks had both gone numb from sitting on the cold tile floor, sweat was all around his ears and his face was streamed with tears and was blotchy red from all the crying......he took that one bite.

I made him open his mouth so I could see, told him great job and let him by and that was the end of it. Of course his daddy was jumping and clapping like a monkey and after shooting daggers from my eyeballs into his skull I warned him not to praise what we just went through and stop all that nonsense. Yeah it was good that he took a bite and he could certainly be praised mildly for that but not to the extremes my goofball husband was doing.

At this point I'm stressed the fuck out and exhausted. I had to go dust bust the crumbs from the hallway where he pitched that damn cheeseburger all over the place and clean up the mess that he made from digging that gel shit that is inside a wet diaper out. I change him and he hugs me and tells me sorry for being ugly. I hug him back and he lays in the floor to watch his brother play Wii. Within about 20 minutes he was asleep. Around 20 minutes later I was asleep. He had worn the both of us out.

Today he's up and running around like nothing ever happened. I've decided that I'm going to put him food out for breakfast from now on and until he finishes that he gets nothing else. Today I gave him a cup of milk, two pieces of toast, and some dry cereal. He drank the milk and ate the cereal and one piece of toast but until that other piece of toast is gone he's out of luck. I told his dad on the phone just a little while ago that if that toast is still sitting there come supper time then that's what he will eat. Nothing new is going to be given out. I'm tired of throwing away perfectly good food because he refuses to eat and fills up on junk he cons out of everyone to open for him.

I'm considering taking him to get another cheeseburger tomorrow just to see what he will do. I'm hoping he'll realize that it wasn't so bad and that he might actually like it but if he truly doesn't then that's that and I'll try it again later down the road.

As of last night though I'm pretty sure it would be safe to say that if he could A2 would tell Jimmy Buffett to kiss his tiny little ass but for now can somebody pass me the daiquiris and don't be stingy with the frickin' rum.