Joie ate Vegetables!

Anyone who knows Joie knows of her dislike for veggies. Since she's lived here we've gone through milestones with food. First, finding a list of 6 things she would eat. Then moving on to requiring her to try one new thing at meal time. Somewhere around late winter/early spring I remember her eating a lot of meals we were eating without much complaining, but when it comes to veggies, we do everything to get a few servings a day in her. She did better at fruit, so we relied heavily on fruit hoping she'd get vitamins from fruit and supplemented with carrots, one of the only vegetables she would eat. Mealtimes haven't been much of a battle so we just take what we can get and then....

Then finally tonight a most amazing thing happened. We had Shepherds Pie. One of Joie's favorites. For whatever reason tonight Tim made it with frozen peas instead of her other favorite, canned french-cut green beans. She saw it on the table and said how much she loved Shepherd's Pie. She scooped it onto her plate, and noticed there were peas in it. She said, "Oh well. I still love Shepherd's Pie." Inside I was falling off my chair out of shock, but I was a good parent and didn't make a big deal out of it. She took her first bite. She was looking over her nose at those peas like they would jump off her fork and gag her, but she put the spoon in her mouth. Chewing...silence...more chewing (noticable absence of gagging)...more silence, then, "Hmmm...I actually like peas in Shepherd's Pie." Again, there was a huge, huge celebration going on inside me...the inner me was dancing on the chair, but the mom me just commented, "You found a new food you like." She asked for seconds. At our house we have a rule you have to eat vegetables before seconds. Tonight it was raw cauliflower (an attempt to get rid of some we had in the fridge) or baby carrots, but you had to eat at least 1 piece of cauliflower first. She picked the teeniest, tiniest piece of cauliflower she could find to go with her carrots, which is fine. She'd eaten peas. Who was I to complain? Next thing I know I look over at her plate and it is absent of carrots, and this time about half filled with cauliflower. I had to do a double take. I said, "Are you really eating a plate full of cauliflower?" She said, "What? I like it," with a huge smile on her face. That time, I didn't hold back. Months and months of altering family eating patterns was erupting out of me and I celebrated. Everyone else did too, while she sat there all the while eating her small mountain of cauliflower. Raw cauliflower. I declared a holiday and said the whole family gets ice cream tomorrow. You'd have to have lived with us for the past year to know how really, truly BIG this is, but WAAAAAHOOOOOOOO!!! On this day, November 9th, 2008, Joie ate 2 different kinds of vegetables in one meal, and liked them both. Whatever will we do with those bags of baby carrots in the refrigerator?