growth spurt

This is how much Elliot's feet have grown in the last three months. His toes were actually pushing through the fronts by the time we finally realized we better go shoe shopping!

He has now graduated to the bigger boy section of the store, which for some mysterious reason means no more sweet and cute - everything is now purposely ugly and obnoxious. Almost every pair in the store had disgusting green globs splattered all over them. Of course, Elliot loved them. I still get to make the final decision about these things, fortunately, so I grabbed the least offensive pair I could find. They have flashing lights when he stomps them on the ground, so that won him over in the end.

I don't know how he had a growth spurt in the first place, considering all he eats are Lucky Charms and macaroni and cheese. A few weeks ago I finally got desperate enough to buy this:
It's full of recipes for sneaking vegetables into your child's food. You cook and puree veggies, and then add them to your kid's food according to color - sweet potatoes and carrots in mac and cheese, spinach and blueberries in chocolate brownies, etc.

The jury's still out on this one. So far I've had more misses than hits. My first attempt was a disaster. She suggests adding cocoa to plain yogurt and calling it chocolate ice cream. I had serious doubts about this - surely most kids can tell the difference between ice cream and yogurt? - but she's so enthusiastic in the book that I actually tried it. When I told Elliot I had some chocolate ice cream for him, he was so excited and said, "Thank you, Mommy!" He looked so betrayed when he took a bite. My child, at least, knows what's ice cream and what's parental desperation.

I've also tried the cocoa chocolate chip pancakes (with spinach and blueberries) and the peanut butter and jelly muffins (with sweet pots and carrots). He actually said he liked the pancakes and requested them again the next day - even though he only ate maybe five bites total. (I thought they tasted disgusting - I'm sure knowing what was in them didn't help) I thought the muffins would be a big hit, because we made them together and he was super excited about them. We took them out of the oven and he was about to take a bite when I said, "You're going to love these! They're peanut butter and jelly!" He dropped the muffin, flatly said "I don't like jelly," and hopped out of his chair. Didn't even try one bite. (I actually thought these were pretty good. I cleverly substituted nutella for jelly in half of them, which is a good thing since I'm the one stuck eating the whole blessed batch.)

So even the Sneaky Chef can't seem to save my child from malnutrition. I'm not done trying yet, but this is way too much work to give it too much more time!