The Game I Play Three Times a Day

Big Bro will eat most anything, especially with a bribe. The bribe is usually fruit. If you finish your spinach, you can have strawberries. If you finish your chicken, you can have grapes. It works most of the time.

The other day, we bribed him with broccoli. No, really. "May I have more broccoli, please?" "If you finish your rice, you can have broccoli." It's actually quite common for him to be bribed with a vegetable. Sometimes I start to pat myself on the back, as it's so obviously my amazing parenting that has created this healthy-food-loving child.

But then I remember Little Bro, and my ego deflates a bit. Little Bro will eat most things, but not willingly. If he had his choice, he would eat only fruit and bread. What he eats has largely to do with how much energy I have for tricking, distracting, and disguising. If I alternate bites of asparagus with bites of cottage cheese, he will eat it. If I distract him while I feed him a bite of turkey, he will eat it. If I put his green beans in applesauce, he will eat them. If I walk around with a bowl of peas, pretending they are MY snack, he will eat them.

But Little Bro's getting smarter, and Big Bro's getting stubborner, and my games have to evolve. And even when I think my mind has been forever dulled by the eighth consecutive reading of Thomas Gets Tricked, these games I play keep my mind sharp.

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