For the love (or not) of veggies

I've been struggling with how to get Annabel to eat vegetables. She absolutely refuses to eat them! If I mix them in with her food, somehow that talented tongue of hers swallows the rice (or soup, or pasta or whatever) and pushes out the carrot or pea or broccoli or whatever. Or, she'll just push the whole bite out of her mouth. So, unless I go back to pureeing her veggies and just mixing it in that way, she won't eat any sort of vegetable. I guess I could do that, but I feel sneaky doing it. And I want her to experience food, the different tastes and textures. I know kids are going to be picky, but I want her to at least TRY new things.

She'll be two in less than two months, so am I trying this too early? Does she even understand that when I make a certain meal and she doesn't eat it, that's all she's getting? I'm not doing the short-order cook thing. Nor do I plan on making a separate meal for her different than what I'm cooking for Chris and me as she gets older.

Ugh, this is stressing me out! I know, it's probably a silly thing to stress out about. She eats plenty of fruit, so she at least gets the fruit half of the "fruits and vegetables" servings that she's supposed to get. I just would rather be pro-active about food pickiness and head it off at the pass... if that's even possible.

Does anybody have any advice for me? Should I just continue with the status quo and not pressing veggies until she gets a little older? Or should I go ahead and include them in every meal even though she rejects them? Post in the comments, please! I'm beggin' ya!

I don't have any pictures or video of Annabel rejecting veggies... usually my hands are full trying to catch it coming out of her mouth to minimize the mess. I'll try to remember to capture that, or maybe have Chris do it to post at a future date. It's pretty funny, when you're not her mother and irrationally freaking out cuz your kid won't eat veggies. :-)

So, in lieu of that, I'll post a picture that I didn't post before from one of those crazy snow days we had this winter. The weather's been so Spring-like lately, it seems a little paradoxical to do so, but I love this picture.

"No, Mommy. I won't eat those yucky veggies."

Cheers,