Still eating...

Little Man is still an eating machine. He always stuns the wait-staff at restaurants when he really goes after something that he likes and currently wants. The operative phrase being “currently wants.” For clarification purposes, I feel it is necessary to define “currently wants” as “he wants it at that very instant in time.” Okay for more clarification purposes, I feel it necessary to really break his eating conditions into their 2 constituent pieces. Number 1: it has to be something he likes. Number 2: it has to be something that he is currently interested in eating. Okay, so there are many a food choice in his usual menu that he will only eat occasionally and voraciously. So, of the many food items that he does likes, if their availability does not coincide with him wanting them, he eats like a typical toddler. IF the 2 conditions are met, be very careful around his plate and his mouth, you might just get stabbed by a fork or bitten by some non-permanent teeth.

Last night at California Pizza Kitchen was one of those “he’s going to eat his entire meal so keep non-food items away from his gaping maw” kind of nights. On the Kid’s menu at CPK there is this wonderful Fusilli with Tomato Sauce that he LOVES. As a bonus, as long as we tell the staff there that he is allergic to dairy and egg so they do not accidentally butter the pasta he is allowed to actually eat it. Turns out that there is a veritable panoply of food he wants to eat that he can have nothing to do with. Anyway, he will typically take down the entire portion of pasta whilst at the restaurant, much to the wait staff’s shock and awe. By the way, if he doesn’t end up licking the plate at CPK, he wants to finish it off when we get home.

So, we went to CPK to celebrate the little one’s birthday. Another point of clarification: Since Sunday everything in Little Man’s world has been a Happy Birthday something-or-other. Sunday was his Happy Birthday Party where he got Happy Birthday Presents only to be capped off with a Happy Birthday Cake that he just mashed up with his fork. Sure, if the cake had dairy or eggs in it, he would have scarfed down a plateful and broken out in hives, but, nooooo, we go through the trouble of making a special cake that he can eat, and he doesn’t want to touch the thing… Anyway… he did not know why we went there, because we were not going to tell him that Tuesday was his actual birthday because he would have expected another Happy Birthday Party with more Happy Birthday Presents. He doesn’t understand the whole observed vs. actual thing just yet. In a few years, Little Man, a few years.

So, last night, which was his actual birthday, not his observed happy birthday, Little Man ate the heck out of his pasta and stayed up way too late. Sounds like a good way to ring in one’s next year, don’t you think?

To Recap:
Little Man can still pack it away
CPK is a good place for Little Man
Little Man’s favorite thing at the moment are the Hash Browns at Burger King
He loves the darn things
Spellcheck wanted to exchange Fusilli with Fusilier
“On the Kid’s menu at CPK there is this wonderful Fusilier with Tomato Sauce that he LOVES”
Big difference in meaning
Not that Little Man couldn’t love a Fusilier
They are just getting more and more rare, and California Pizza Kitchens typically don’t have them on the menu with tomato sauce