I’m almost positive that the New Year has come and gone. I can’t be sure, because ever since Christmas it’s just been Sunday, December 90th. And anyways, it’s not officially January for me until the kids go back to school, which is today. I think.

I love the new year, because I love any excuse for a fresh start, and I love making resolutions that I probably won’t stick to. This year, one of my resolutions involves changing something that is entirely out of my control, which feels like a recipe for success. Recipe being the keyword.

When I was pregnant with our first, I read as many parenting books as I could, making grand plans to raise kids that were somehow entirely different than I was told kids would be. One of these books was French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon. An American raising her kids in France, she discovered the secret to why French kids weren’t nearly as picky as their American counterparts. I loved it, though I secretly thought I’d never need it, because my kids wouldn’t be picky. Armed with a baby food cookbook which included culinary delights like pureed cod, I planned to make all my own baby food, never serve my kids any kid-culture food, and raise adventurous, well behaved little citizens of the world.

It actually worked pretty well with my first, and if we’d stopped there I MAY have succeeded. But then we had another, and another, and another. And these children started preschool, where they discovered Goldfish and Teddy Grahams. And these children ganged up on me on the drive home from preschool and so McDonalds it was. The fries were French, I told myself.

And now, breakfast time looks like this.

This is my youngest, Fitz, and he survives soley on Eggos, Nutella and lost dreams. The child has never had a vegetable. He ate his first strawberry at 4, and even then he ate it like a psychopath in training.

Because he’s my 4th, and because I’m over it, I’ve let it go for this long. This past year, however, I decided it was time to do something about it. First, I told him that unless he tries a bite of everything on his plate at dinner, he may not have waffles the next morning. Which worked for awhile, except that his “bite” is basically just touching his tongue to the item and calling it a day.

Next I told him that unless he takes an actual bite, there will be no waffles. “No problem,” he said. “I don’t need breakfast.” And so the kid has been on a hunger strike since September. He skips so many meals I’m worried he may be on Ozempic.

So it is my 2026 mission to figure it out and get him to start eating — and eating a wide variety, preferably of cruciferous vegetables. I know, I know, the only person you can control is yourself, and I can barely do that. Still, as his Mother, I have at least a little control, right?

Enter that long lost book. From what I remember, she took her kids back to the basics — like back to purees. I’ll have to read it again — but that’s my goal — to read it, and, chapter by chapter, implement her findings with my kids, namely Fitz. It will be like Julie and Julia, picky eater edition. Which actually pairs nicely with another resolution of mine, to start blogging more regularly, another thing I used to be really good at when I had fewer kids.

I don’t know if this is timestamped, but it’s currently 5:19 am. I woke up at 4:15, something I’ve been doing for the past month, so that I have at least an hour to write before my kids wake up and demand their breakfast of nut butters straight from the jar.

Tune in next week to see how it’s going … I’m off to throw some Eggos in the toaster along with all my best laid plans.