Rope, end of

I suppose I always knew this day would come. But it still upsets me. Monkey has tired of peanut-butter sandwiches. He is filled with ennui for the sandwich as a meal form. The peanut butter tastes funny, even though it tastes just the same as it always did.

He has also announced that he no longer likes Life cereal, frosted mini wheats, or cheerios. We lost Oatmeal Squares a little while ago when they changed the recipe. (There was no indication of a difference on the box, but I could taste it too. It's not bad, just different. A bit of a stronger honey flavour, I think.) And he's gone off honey milk too.

The fact that he told us he wanted to try carrots (because they make you see in the dark), strawberries and pears does not really make up for all this. I know it should, but he's already tried the carrots and given them the thumbs down. (I got good ones from the organic supermarket, and cut them in various different ways because I know that matchsticks taste nicer than coins to me, and he did actually bite down on two with his molars, which was a great step forward in trying. I was impressed he got that far.) I bought pears but they're not ready to eat yet. I didn't buy strawberries because they were 7.99 a punnet, but they had them for snack at school this morning. He licked the outside of one, and smelled it when I bit into it, but that was as far as he would go.

So I am somewhat at the end of my tether, foodwise.

Monkey has lunch at school three days a week. Ever since he started having lunch at school, he's taken a peanut-butter sandwich, an apple juice box, and a small home-baked good from the freezer (pumpkin bread at the moment). Today he had crackers and cashews instead of the sandwich.

I know that there isn't much difference between straight cashews and peanut butter. I worry that missing the wheat bread will do damage at the other end (if you know what I mean), and I don't think wholegrain crackers are a long-term substitute. I know eating sandwiches for lunch and dinner day in, day out wasn't a long-term solution either, but I had reconciled myself to that. I'm not ready to throw it all out and reconcile myself to nothing but breadsticks and cashews.

Yesterday I was desultorily googling sensory perception disorders, having almost convinced myself that when added to his four-year-old quirks and phases, this eating thing might add up to more than the sum of its parts. But this morning, and having observed the other boys in his class today while I did my co-opping duty, I'm pretty sure that he's mostly normal, apart from this one thing. (Every time I co-op, though, I'm struck afresh by the world of difference between boys and girls at this age. The girls swarmed over the craft table, wrote letters to each other, cut out hearts and pestered me to draw rainbows for them. They skipped hand-in-hand to the dance studio for playtime (it's too snowy to go outside). They had a princess convention at reading time, discussing in earnest the contents of the Little Mermaid book they were huddled over. The boys played with the large wooden blocks and the wild animals for most of the morning.)

So I don't quite know where that leaves us. He's not sick, though he does have a bit of a cold that might make tastes seem different. I suppose I'll give it a few days and see if this really is the new new order, or just a blip. Maybe he'll like the pears, once they're ready to eat.