My Picky Eater

So Oliver is the most picky eater in the history of picky eaters. This is a typical (ok this is every single day of his life because he won't eat anything other than these things)

Breakfast: Cereal and milk
Snack: some kind of fruit or crackers
Lunch: Either a quesadilla with jack cheese (no yellow cheese) or chicken and some fruit or carrots
Snack: Yogurt, fruit or crackers depending on what else he's eaten that day.
Dinner: Whichever he didn't eat for lunch either chicken or a quesadailla (and sometimes a hot dog because he will eat those and sometimes I'm just tired)

That's it. The ONLY veggie he'll eat are carrots. Fruit he'll eat apples, bananas, grapes, pears, watermelon and cantaloupe. (And today FINALLY for the first time EVER I got him to take a bite of an orange and he was begging for more up until JUST TODAY he has refused to try orange).

He won't eat past, he won't try any kind of meat other than chicken, not ground beef, not pork, not fish. He won't eat eggs. He won't eat toast. He won't even eat pizza.

I'm venting this because from time to time I get a bee in my bonnet to try and get him to venture out and "try" something new. This morning I was at the grocery store and thought I'd get something fun. I bought bagel bites. I thought they might look fun and new to him and maybe just maybe he'd want to give them a try. I even decided I would eat them for lunch too. (Sometimes not often though that works!) So I sat and ate my bagel bites and he munched on his carrots. When he finished his carrots I convinced him to TRY the bagel bites. He does this thing with everything he eats... before it goes in his mouth he touches it with the tip of his tongue. I don't know if that is to see if it's too hot or what but he did that about three times to the bagel bite and then I got him to take a bite. You would think I had given him dog poop. He started spitting and gagging instantly. It was ridiculous. He doesn't have a gag issue he has NO trouble chewing and swallowing. It's not a developmental problem... he's just picky. So of course I want him to have a nice full belly and take a nice long nap so I went down and prepared his usual chicken (guess it's a quesadilla for dinner).

Oliver will NOT ever eat what we eat for dinner. I just don't know what to do. It drives me crazy. I'm sure he's fine. Obviously he's a healthy growing boy. It just drives me insane that he won't eat most foods.

But on the bright side we did have a huge breakthrough today. We have tried several times since his first birthday to get him to try oranges. For the past two or three weeks Berto and I have been on an orange kick. We just can't seem to get enough of them so I've been trying every time I eat an orange to get Oliver to try some of it. He has refused every single time to even take one little taste. Well today before he "tried" his bagel bite I had one segment of orange left on my orange and he snagged it and devoured it.. and begged for more! That was a good thing! So happy he tried something new!