My daughter the Peanut or Skinny Toddlers Suck

We call our daughter the Peanut because she is small. Short and very skinny. Like a pixie or a midget heroin junkie. As my wife says, she's the only two year old you'll meet with a six-pack.

Developmentally she's doing very well cognitively and well enough physically. For a while she was in the tenth percentile for height and third for weight. And although we're talking jockey and Tom Cruise stunt double as future career possibilities we were ok with that. Our doctor told us as long as she stays at those numbers, there is no problem.

So, we fed her very healthy stuff. As my wife's blog (yeah, that's right, one couple, two blogs. Sue us.) will attest to, we started out feeding her all the right stuff. Organic, locally grown, high fiber, blueberry, and brown rice soy balls with an organic cane sugar glaze cooked using renewable wind energy in an oven made out of hemp.

And then the doctor said that she had "fallen off the (weight) chart" and used terms like 'failure to thrive" and "tube feeding." And we were lost.

"This isn't our fault. She's got a fast metabolism. Everything will be fine." we told each other over and over again because the one was sure that the other was always lying.

We didn't discuss this with many of the people around us. Personally, I was a little worried about being judged. In my own defense a lot of these people were not exactly up on the latest in infant nutrition. By way of example, the Peanut has a great aunt who tried to give her both lemon meringue pie and honey when she was 8 months old. So she had to be talked to about what she could and couldn't feed our baby daughter:

"Yes on the dry cheerios, auntie. No on the peanut brittle. "

We found ourselves with precious little in the way of a support system and scared out of our minds.

Then, we had an epiphany. Doughnuts! O Happy Day. Or more specifically, Donuts. The Peanut loves donuts.

From that moment on she has been on a 6 chocolate munchkins a day diet. That, along with recommended supplementary additives to most of her food (read: Butter, cheese, cream, butter flavored cheese with creamed cheese butter and butter. And cheese.) has put on, "as much weight as I could've hoped for," to quote her pediatrician at the last weigh-in. So we will continue.

An added wrinkle is the use of one M&M per bite as a bribe when she is being stubborn about eating. Which happens pretty often because she can feel our tension at meals which to her means power. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Plus, the Peanut is a little on the bossy side. Sometimes it's like eating diner with Augusto Pinochet.

But, all in all, things are going better. We've relaxed our rules mostly around snack time and at dinner we still try to mostly give her the organic stuff, just soaked with organic butter.

So to those of you who have had the same problem, you can handle it. And for those who like to judge, don't hate. It's unbecoming.