Acceptapple

Over the past few years, the list of acceptable foods for Joseph has become increasingly smaller despite our best efforts otherwise. However, there has remained one bright spot -- apples. He will eat them about 95% of the time they're offered, which is a higher percentage than any other fruit.

But he hasn't eaten the peel. When he was still a baby, we would take the peel off because we didn't think he had enough teeth to handle it. But before we knew it, he thought that was the way he was supposed to eat them.

And so we obliged him, albeit grudgingly. When it might be the only fruit or vegetable your child eats that day, you don't turn it into a battle. One time I moaned about it to my mom and she said, "It's okay. He'll stop doing this eventually. You won't have a 30-year-old who needs the peel taken off."

Small comfort, Mom.

Gradually, we started sneaking little bits of peel in here and there. Sometimes he would examine his apple and notice that it was not without blemish, and we'd go and chop off the remaining speck of peel. But other times he would look at it, see the peel, and eat it anyway.

Then came today. We've been munching on the food of the gods here, aka honeycrisp apples, down to $1.99 a pound (normally $4.99). Joseph just wanted apple slice after apple slice at lunch time, so I had to get another apple out. But I was sort of tired of cutting off the peel. So I offered Joseph one that looked like this:

"Hey!" he protested. "You have to take the peel off!"

So I did, and it looked like this:

Looks entirely different, right?

He examined it, said, "Good," and chomped it down.

I'm not exactly sure how we're going to get down to nothing from here, but at least we're pretty close.

And then maybe we can tackle bread crusts.