When Riley was still a few months old, I thought that eating out with a baby was hard because of all the things you have to worry about when in public (germs, heat, poop explosion). What I did not expect was that it was going to be much harder to dine out with a toddler.
 |
| Ordering food at 8cuts... Looks can be deceiving |
Being a picky eater, Riley is one hard-to-please customer. He cannot stay put in his seat, wants to touch and play with everything he can get his hands on, and when he finally touches the food, he will say yuck.
At first, we picked out the restaurants where we know he can eat the items on the menu. After gaining so much weight from all the fastfood restaurants and being so stressed out from forcing him to eat, I told myself that enough is enough.
 |
| Jollibee is his happy place |
 |
| Guess where? Jollibee! |
Now, instead of letting him dictate where we eat, we get to choose which restaurant we will try next. It's a hit or miss. He doesn't always eat the food. We order the stuff that we think he might like or recently he will be the one looking at the menu and base his order from the pictures. Sometimes I also make a plan. If I know he will not like the food in that new Thai place, I will feed him at home before we leave so that when we are at the restaurant, I will not be forcing him to try to eat the food there. He can just taste it if he wants to and if he does not want to eat it, I will not stress myself about it and just let it go.
It works for us since we can enjoy a simple meal outside our home with the whole family. And Riley gets to try a variety of food from different places without any pressure from us. Sure he eats his rice with french fries and drinks his milkshake with a spoon. We're embracing his uniqueness (with food!) instead of fighting it.
 |
| yummy ice cream with cookie at Bono |
