What's for Dinner?

Ethan is a healthy eater. I don't mean that he only wants healthy food, I mean that he has a healthy appetite. He's certainly not starving - his weight is definitely working hard to keep up with his height.

(I know I post way too many pictures of messy-eating-Ethan - but they're so cute! Until he has to be hosed down....)

However, he is picky picky picky these days. We are so lucky that he loves fruit - he'll almost always eat lots of apple, banana, pear, grapes....it's just the other food groups that don't seem to exist. (Actually, it was hilarious tonight - I brought home some oatmeal cookies from a meeting I had been in, and he kept picking away the cookie part so he could eat the raisins!) And we're in a position of trying to get him to eat more meat...both Ethan and I had our blood tested recently for various reasons, and the two of us are drastically low in iron stores. So doctor's orders are to eat more red meat (and other iron-rich foods) as well as take supplements. Ethan's great about taking medicine, but it would be great to get his vitamins in some food as well! Proteins? Well, there's cheese. And then cream cheese.... and maybe cottage cheese.... He seems to really dislike the texture of meat, so he won't eat meat. And as far as veggies go, he's good with carrots most of the time, and that's all, folks. Not even sweet potato, squash, or other sweet vegetables!

So I'm opening it up to you all out there - ideas for getting your kids to eat a more varied diet?

In my blog-free weeks, we haven't just been sitting on our butts. Really. :) We've done some really fun things - the Little Gym just gets more and more fun every weekend, we're planning Ethan's birthday party - yeah!, and we still get together with our playgroup friends once in awhile. Unfortunately, we've also had some sad moments, too. One of Brian's best friends, Ed, has moved away from Champaign-Urbana to (so selfishly) live with his wife and cutie pie daughter in Columbus, Ohio. We got together with them on Ed's last day here so that Ethan could visit with his future wife one more time....but had a very difficult time taking a non-blurry picture! Two mobile toddlers makes for a tough photo op.