Eat Your Peas!

And butter. And cheese. And bread.

I don't want to have to say it, but I've got a skinny daughter. I'm wondering where I went wrong. Has it already started, the culturally prescribed rite-of-passage body-obsessed diet-crazed habits of girlhood?

I mean, she's only fifteen months old. And I'm standing over here like an Italian grandmother practically pouring lard down her throat. She walks around on legs like a new born fawn, straight shoots from the hips down. My son, on the other hand, had rolls you could hide your cash in, say, if you didn't feel confident enough to put it in the market.

Well, if you want an exercise in futility, tell a burgeoning toddler to eat her dinner. She is too young to bribe with dessert, too clever to simply take what you offer--if she doesn't like it, she spits it out--and too good to be left in her high chair until she eats what she's been given. I could not even get her to eat bread and butter. Until I put jam on it. And while she wouldn't eat yogurt before, she will eat it now with honey in it.

You can feel free to give me advice, but I'm sure I don't need it. If I want to fatten her up, I'll have to put her on my diet: chocolate, baked goods, and chocolate, for variety. But what do they say? Girls are made of sugar and spice? They are certainly not made out of peas.