Olives and the Hill I Want to Die On

My littlest is having, we shall call them, intestinal difficulties.  For this reason, he is on a limited and very boring diet.  For most kids, this is heaven.  Days of nuggets and toast, with Sprite thrown in for good measure.  This, however, is a living hell for my youngest. 

I have yet to meet another child with a palette like his.  He is 5 and likes Tom Yam soup, Tandori chicken, jambalaya, and Mexican food.  The more flavorful the better.  It is a food gods miracle.  

So this morning, in the midst of his Mom-medic ordered bland diet, he decides that he wants olives for breakfast.  Not just any olives, but the kind stuffed with roasted red peppers.  Just what a rumbly tummy needs on a Wednesday morning.

And so began our battle of the bulge.  I have to come clean here and admit that I have let him have olives at breakfast before, but today I realized that this was the hill I was willing to die on.

There was no way in hell that I was going to let the boy have olives and then clean up the inevitable nastiness later.  So I spent the next 45 minutes pulling him out of the kitchen, off the stool and down from ledges to keep him from eating those olives.  Forty five minutes of “All I can think of is olives!”  followed by “No.  You are not having olives.  Put them down.  If you open them I am throwing the whole thing away!”  I tried offering him anything I could think of that he might be able to eat and might like to eat.  But there was no pulling that stubborn mind off of olives.  It felt like two gunslingers, out on a dusty street, staring each other down to see which one would blink.

There were those moments when I thought “Oh, just let him have one.  This is too exhausting!”  But I knew that caving would just bring more misery to me in the long run.  So I had to hold my ground.  

I won, finally, with a combo of cereal and Tom & Jerry.  But I don’t think I won as much as he was finally willing to lose.

So today, it was olives.  Tomorrow it might be wearing his bike helmet, or having to wash his hands after using the toilet, or wearing underwear to school, or having chili for breakfast.  More battles, and more hills to die on.