Sorry I haven’t written lately.  Between life at work chasing deadlines, and life at home chasing an uber-tall, uber-fast 2 year old, this summer has FLOWN by and suddenly, it’s Fall and I haven’t written a single blog about my bouncing baby little terror.

So, here’s what you need to know to catch up:  He’s two – he’s over 3.5 feet tall and weighs about 35 pounds.  He’s smart, he’s starting to talk and he’s FAST.  He never sits down for long, and has his own page of apps on our iPad that he knows how to use better than I do.

And can he eat! We stopped the breastfeeding (a mutual decision) at about 22 months – pretty good, considering how challenging it was at the beginning!  Every so often, he likes to be fed, but mostly, he likes to try to jab his fork into whatever is on his plate – hysterical when it comes to cereal, less so if your hand gets too close to the plate.  We’ve given up on the dull, rounded-tip forks for little guys, and moved to small salad forks for big ones.  The fussiness comes and goes, too.  We can generally get him to eat anything – and we know he eats TONS at daycare, where our provider makes him wonderful, nutritious meals, with a taste of every continent, it seems.

But sometimes, he likes to revert to old staples.  Who doesn’t like comfort food?  Among his favourites are grilled cheese, and macaroni and cheese. So, the challenge comes in balancing the keeping of his favourites, adding more protein, pulling back on the cheese a little and ensuring a wider range of foods.

Here’s what I’ve been doing on the chicken front:

• Adding cubed chicken and tomatoes to the macaroni and cheese
• Adding chicken and broccoli to the grilled cheese sandwich
• Making a cheesy dip for dunking slices of chicken and cooked carrots
• Making homemade pizza – with rainbow colours (veggies, shhh!)
• Serving grilled chicken with sweet potato fries

The great thing about chicken is that it can be included in almost any dish to make it just a little more healthy – to round out the food groups. Now that I’m not puree-ing anything anymore, it’s so much easier to just use my imagination and ensure that he’s getting the right amounts of the right foods.

I got my reward last night.  We were super late getting home, so we opted to stop at the grocery store and pick up a rotisserie chicken.  I got home and all I had were some ‘oven-bake’ french fries and grape tomatoes. I drained the chicken and popped it into the oven to cook off some of the excessive moisture, while I shoved some fries into the toaster oven and sliced up some tomatoes (he’s still young enough to warrant slicing them).  He ate all his chicken, left some fries and asked for more tomatoes.

During the meal, a friend came over, fast food in hand (there was gravy, lots and lots of gravy) and tried to tempt my little man away from his dinner.  Little Prince took one taste, spit it out (on said friend’s plate, no less) and went back to his own meal.

Nice…