One Bowl Of Chili, Hold The Milk

The boys had doctor check-ups yesterday. They are both growing and doing well and are now up to date on their immunizations. Good news all around. The doctor, probably because he’s supposed to, asked if I had any concerns about either of the boys. And in fact, this time I did. M.I.L.K.

This has become a bit of a four letter word in our household. With Lij, those words are more along the lines of love or life. We therefore had no reason to think it would be different for Dylan. Boy, were we wrong. To Dylan, milk is definitely a bad word. He wants absolutely nothing to do with the stuff. We’ve tried serving it warm, cold, sweetened, non-sweetened, fat free, and fat full. Short of foaming it up and serving it in latte form, we’ve tried everything. And this is my concern. I have one child who only drinks milk (at the expense of refusing pretty much all other foods) and one who won’t even smell it.

My doctor’s advice was, as always, profound. Lij should be limited to no more than three glasses of milk a day. Dylan should start drinking at least two glasses a day. Deep, no? I only wish that his advice had come with an implementation plan. Maybe a twelve step program. Or perhaps a direct-connect line to heaven. Because following doctor’s orders in this case is gonna take a miracle. But no. He just gave the advice.

Today is our second day of limited milk intake for Lij. Yesterday was pretty bad. We had several clashes over the milk cup. However we managed only two glasses: one at breakfast and one at bedtime. Today has been better. Lij actually rationed his morning milk, asking for the rest of the glass as a late morning snack. I’m fine with that. He also informed me this morning that he gets two glasses of moo juice each day. I said, “That’s right. One in the morning and one with books at bedtime.” Hallelujah! It looks like I finally got a point across. Just to make it a slam dunk successful day, Lij even ate most of his chili at dinner.

Dylan, on the other hand, is a redhead. (It should be noted that Alexander is deeply offended by stereotyping of this sort, being a redhead himself, and I really don’t hold by it either. But in a very short – and undisparaging – sentence about my son, you now know exactly how he’s behaving.) So for the time being, we’re back to playing see-how-he-prefers-his-milk-roulette. Hopefully we pick the right combination soon because we’re all a little sick of spit-up milk.

But, hey. One out of two isn’t bad, right?