Keep that fruit away from me

So it seems that I have a kid--perhaps the only kid--who doesn't like fruit.

For a week, William happily ate applesauce. He ate it plain, he ate it warm, he ate it cool, he ate it mixed with oatmeal. He liked it any which way; with apologies to Dr. Seuss, I think he probably would have liked that applesauce with a fox, he would have liked that applesauce in a box.

Then, on Sunday, William changed his mind. He's free to do that, of course, but man, that was weird. All of a sudden, he made this horrible moue. He gagged and stuck his tongue out, and if he could have grabbed his throat with both hands, he probably would have done so. Instead, it was a series of gagging, rolling his eyes back in his head, and drooling the applesauce back out of his mouth.

Okay, I thought. You're on strike against applesauce. Let's try bananas. So on Monday, we introduced bananas.

Bananas. Strike two.

More of the "yuck!" face. It didn't matter if I setved the bananas warm, cold, or mixed up in oatmeal. He was like, "None of this stuff for me, Mom. No, sir."

Sigh.

David said optimistically, "Maybe he'll like pears. Or peaches."

Yeah. I hope so. How on earth did we have a baby who will happily gobble down suspicious-smelling green beans and peas but draws the gustatorial line at sweet, harmless fruits? Who knows? I warned William that if he didn't develop a fondness for bananas, he'd miss out on one of the great childhood experiences: eating a banana like a monkey. He was not persuaded.

So I guess we'll try the pears or peaches in a couple of days. I plan to keep offering the bananas for a couple more days, in the silly hope that William will change his mind. But David said that we probably could just put the bananas away and offer them again in a few more weeks. Or we could mush up some real bananas and see if William prefers their taste and texture to the admittedly rather viscous mixture that comes out of a baby food jar. I might try that, too.

But isn't this weird? Who choose green peas over applesauce? Squash over bananas? My son, that's who.

So on to the next fruit. Let's hope the little prince finds one that he'll deem worthy of his time.