Pro tip: children, plants and animals must be fed. It sounds rather simple at first blush: feed living things food. If it were only that easy with my child. At first, it was easy: my boobs supplied 100% of his nutrition until Lefty gave up on me. When boychild’s teeth sprouted, it was still easy: soft foods, pouches, milk and still a little breast milk from Righty.

Now that boychild has a full mouth of teeth and a head full of opinions, it’s pretty difficult finding things he will eat. Maybe because I fed him some slow cooker pork one time and he hated it so much he gag-barfed. Maybe that experience made him reluctant to try new things. What he exists on primarily is chicken nuggets, organic pouches, blue corn chips and hot dogs or kielbasa.

On the plus side, the nuggets and hotdogs are from the Co-Op which means they’re organic, free-range, Ivy-League educated hot dogs & nugs that have been blessed by Nepalese priests or somesuch. On the minus side, these foodstuffs cost a lot of money, so when we’re waiting for payday the quality of hotdogs and nugs diminishes slightly. Now they’re non-organic caged hot dogs and nugs who’ve gone to a state school. Or as my mother would say, they’re made of “lips and buttholes.” She didn’t say “buttholes” exactly . . .

He does eat fruit, though: fruit mushed up in a pouch with other fruit. He will eat one actual hand-fruit: Bananas. We try apples, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, grapes- all are adorably rejected and the offending fruit is either thrown or spat upon the floor. We’re lucky if he spits it out because at least he put it in his mouth. Progress.

On his first birthday, our local baker made a tasty carrot cake for him. I presented it to boychild, who looked as if I had just served him a fart on a plate. He did not smash the cake like a regular 1 year-old. He barely tolerated its existence. Incurious, disgusted, he stared at it until I cut a slice and broke it up into bits for him. Even then, the thought of icing on his hands really put him off of the whole “birthday cake” experience. He took one sad bite, then began to cry.

The pitiful irony of it all is that he really digs un-food or not-food. That child loves to put a penny in his mouth (or any kind of coin) and then he’ll run like hell when you try to retrieve it. He loves to sneak off and eat some Play-Doh, no matter the color or level of dryness.His epicurean palate craves plastic as well, and he will eat fake carrots/ tomatoes/ eggs, etc. We have a great time in the fake kitchen at the local children’s museum. Our contribution to the “yuck bin”, where you put all items that have been tasted, is legendary. He also yearns for the complex flavors of bath water, bubbly or flat and drinks it happily from his toys. He does shots from his Waddle Bobbers (little penguin toys that are about the size and shape of baby espresso cups) and sucks the juice from his washrags. Meanwhile, I’m confused and a little grossed-out.

I don’t really know what to do at this point other than keep offering him food that we eat and then dying a little inside when he refuses to eat it. On the plus side, he is very generous and loves to feed us and the cats. Sometimes aggressively so. I’ve caught him trying to shove a piece of cheese in the cat’s mouth more than once. So here we are, at an impasse. Perhaps he’ll grow out of it. I hope so. There are so many tasty things to eat out there, and I’d hate to see him resigned to a life of chicken nuggets and tube meat.