The Elephant is coming!

A rare occasion, Matt left work early last night and was able to get home by 7:30pm. While he was commuting home, Ethan and I were making dinner. Ethan was so eager to help me. He pulled the dining chair to the counter and hopped up and handed me potatoes as I peeled them. Then as I diced them, he threw them into the pot. When it came time for the chicken, he wanted to help me batter and fry them. He was sooo cute. By the time Matt made it home, dinner was ready and we were able to sit down to a meal as a family for once. It was quite nice. Ethan gobbled his chicken and corn up immediately and decided to use the mashed potatoes for finger painting. Brian complained and said he thought he needed to throw his food into the trash and have a piece of toast with peanut butter on it instead. Brian's diet is GFCF and it's so hard to find something that we can all eat together and that he will like. His diet basically consists of toast, pizza, pretzels and chocolate chip pancakes. That's all he will allow his palate to enjoy. So last night, I made sure that I cooked everything GFCF. The chicken I coated with rice flour and potato starch, the mashed potatoes were made with rice milk and earth balance butter and the corn was seasoned with some sea salt. It was not appealing to Brian. After trying to get him to taste just one bite, finally, I told him I heard an elephant coming and if he didn't eat it, the elephant was going to clean his plate. He's really frightened of an elephant eating his food. He got protective over his plate. I told him just to try a bite. He did and his face let go of the animosity it had. I asked if he liked it and he said yes. I told him I think I heard the elephant leaving. He continued to eat his chicken. I discovered his fear of the elephant eating his food when we were in the Bahamas. I had made him a hot dog to take to the restaraunt for him and when he wouldn't eat it, he asked if the elephant would eat it. When I told him yes, the next second the entire hotdog was in his mouth! Matt was quite impressed with my ability to reference an elephant so he thought he would try it to get Brian to get dressed into his pj's for bed. Brian wouldn't change. I told Matt not to abuse the elephant and the elephant is to only be used at meal times to get Brian to expand his diet to things other than bread. :)