Pizza

I forgot one thing yesterday when I was writing that long post about all the ways Nina's like my brother: pizza. She's not too fussy about food, certainly nothing like the stories you hear about toddlers needing their peas not to have touched any other foods, or anything like that. I know one guy whose child only wanted fish sticks and chicken fingers, although I suspect he was exaggerating. (I wanted to say: just don't BUY those! but I didn't). But she's not exactly going to eat whatever we make, either, and until now we haven't ever been sure if it was her teeth bothering her, so we haven't insisted on it, and maybe that's been a mistake. But ... I don't like the idea of forcing or coercing children to eat. She'll survive if she skips meals now and then. And frankly, if she doesn't love food *quite* as much as we do, it's probably just as well.

Anyway, we've been trying to introduce her to the idea of cooking. We both like to cook (and we like to eat). So a few weeks ago when we were making pizza, we got her to help roll out her own dough, and spread sauce, olives, tomatoes and cheese on it. She loves olives, tomatoes and cheese, so much so that she kept just taking them off the uncooked pizza and eating them. Anyway, she was a bit worried when we took the whole thing away and put it in the oven, and then I'm sure she wondered why we put it in there if it just got too hot to eat anyway. But then: she loved it. Can a 21-month-old eat an entire 12" pizza? Yep, pretty much. 

Oh, the bliss! And then she said "I LOVE pizza" for about 3 days.