The struggle with food continues.

The Monster’s summer one-on-one has been very good about writing us decent notes every day, outlining what the Monster’s enjoying or not enjoying, where there are pain points and where he’s figured out things with the behavior… and one of the recurring pain points in the first week of camp has been food.

As I mentioned last week, what he’s been eating has been slowly narrowing – we thought we caught something of a break when he became willing to eat yogurt, but that’s apparently gone to the back burner for the time being.  He no longer eats peanut butter sandwiches or rollups, and he won’t conscience a lot of the things we’d otherwise send in his lunch.

So last night, the wife baked muffins.

Frankly, it’s a good use of bananas that are slightly overripe and would otherwise go to waste around our house.  (R doesn’t always eat them all in time, and getting the Monster to eat a banana at breakfast is hit-or-miss.)  It’s nutritional, it’s familiar, and it’s a room-temperature-friendly food that doesn’t necessarily need heating or cooling to enjoy.  I have yet really to see him turn down muffins on a regular basis when he’s presented with them as a food option – there was the one time, when the recipe was substantially changed to try something out – so for the moment, it’s a good option.

One of the major things we’re going to be looking to do is more of the sneaky-chef kind of things, hiding more nutrition in the muffins as we can without tipping him off to the fact that there’s something more besides applesauce, bananas, flour and eggs in the baked goods.  (For camp, they have to be parev, so that also limits my wanting to hide meat in them.)  We have some pureed pumpkin around, and there’s probably some sweet potatoes we could sneak in as well… and then there’s getting more creative still.

I feel a little bad for being a “bad parent” and letting him have banana muffins for lunch along with his regular snacks… but what matters most to me is that he’s eating.