Eating Habits

Now that Elliot has settled into somewhat of a regular eating habit, I'm starting to see the differences between how Scarlett and Elliot eats. I spent the first 3 years battling Scarlett's lack of eating and now that I have Elliot to compare to, I'm starting to see how different they are. For Scarlett, eating seems to be a chore for her. She always seem excited about eating at the beginning of mealtime but by the 3rd or 4th bite, she seems to have lost interest. (Believe me, it's not because I'm a poor chef.) It's amazing though how much and how little she can eat. If she really wants to, she can really eat. Sometimes, I even want to say that she is too "lazy" to eat.

Elliot on the other hand, seems to focus on shoving food in his mouth until he is mostly full then he's off to play. He's a much better eater, in general, than Scarlett. It's amazing how much food he shoves into his mouth for each mouthful. He seems highly motivated to eat until he has had enough. With him, I have a much easier time letting him tell me that he's done and not pushing him to eat more. With Scarlett, it was always hard because she ate really well once in a blue moon. So it's not like if she doesn't eat well today, she will eat a lot tomorrow. Therefore, I found myself pushing her to eat even though I've read that I shouldn't do that. It's just hard to deal with how little she eats, meal after meal. I have definitely come to much better terms with it but it took a really long time.

Lately, we've noticed that as soon as Elliot is done eating and is off playing, Scarlett will want to get down and be "done" with her meal. It doesn't really mean that she's "full" or is truly done with eating. When we're in a good mood and willing to cater her request of us feeding her as she runs by while playing (definitely not something that we want to encourage), she will eat just about her whole meal. If we insist on her feeding herself, she will simply walk away from it, as if she's calling our bluff. As an example, here's a replay of a recent dinner.

Scarlett: I want to be done with dinner.
Me: Well, you haven't eaten most of your dinner. If you eat your dinner, you can have ice cream cake afterwards.
Scarlett: Ok. (a bite later) I'm done. I don't want anymore.
Me: Well, you can't have any ice cream cake then.
Scarlett: Ok, I don't want any ice cream cake. I'm done.
Me: Fine, Elliot, baba, and I will have some ice cream cake then.
Scarlett: No, I don't want any of you to have ice cream cake either.
Me: We're going to have ice cream cake because we all ate our dinner.
Scarlett: Ok, I'll eat my dinner.

So she nibbled a few more bites and managed to eat two-thirds of her dinner, and got some ice cream cake.