Picky, Picky

I learned something the other day.

Okay, so that’s not a new thing around here!  But to start the story, some of my siblings and I were talking about this and that while folding laundry the other day, and we got talking about how picky my youngest brothers, twins TJ and BP, are.  Yes, they are identical (cousins as my father likes to add), but no they do not have identical eating habits.

One dislikes the way tomato sauce and cheese mix with pasta and therefore will not eat baked ziti, lasagna, or goulash (though he does eat spaghetti).  One eats lots of vegetables (currently the shorter one — figure that out!).  Neither are big fans of potatoes in almost any form, enough so that they didn’t eat french fries for a long time (more for the rest of us!).  Like most kids, however, they’ve begun eating more things as they’ve gotten older.  Sister, 3G, and I were the same way, once upon a time.

The thing is, we all remember eating a lot more variety of things much younger than the twins.  I think that’s why we (mostly Sister and me since 3G has been at college) have been giving them a hard time about the portions they eat — or don’t.  With 3G finally home from college now, we have a really good reference for how much a growing boy ought to be eating (the twins are 12, so they aren’t quite at the “eats the horse” stage).  Our resident hollow leg/black hole/bottomless pit can eat two platefuls, and when I say plateful, I mean a plate Full!

Mom joined our laundry conversation to give her explanation for why the twins are still picky at an age when their older siblings were eating just about anything she cooked.  You see, when I was twelve, the twins were two.  3G was 10, and Sister was 8.  And we watched the twins turn their noses up at plenty of different things.  Face it, babies are picky, and my little brothers were no exception!  Of course, Sister, 3G, and I didn’t want to be like the babies, so we stopped being so picky.

Ten years later, TJ and BP have no such motivation.  They eat most things, but often they will eat only a small portion of our main course and then have an extra roll or slice of bread.  3G made a comment that it won’t be too long until they begin eating like growing teenagers, when all you really care about is that it’s food.

He knows all about that!