I put my foot down!

Jaxon has never been a big eater...and that's an understatement. His Dr. said kids eat when they are hungry so don't push it,...so we never did. But lately he has been complaining of being hungry, I mean- SOBBING, right as we are putting him to bed. I'm about 98% sure it's a stall tactic, which he is excellent at, but the other 2% of me knows how little he eats during the day, and it tugs at my heart.
Also, Jaxon rarely eats any dinner. He has to sit at the table with us, but he usually says he doesn't like what we are eating. I say it's that, or nothing, and he happily choses nothing and just waits until we are done.
WELL- NO MORE! I told Dave last night that from now on, he WILL eat some of what we eat for dinner, no matter how much he says he hates it, and if he doesn't eat anything, he will not be allowed ANYTHING else, until what I plated for him is finished. (Man I sound like a mean mom!) Also, once we head upstairs for bed, we ARE NOT going back down. PERIOD!
So tonight we had a very delicious, and simple, and not too fancy for him to complain over meal, grilled chicken with whole wheat penne pasta and stir fried veggies. He had to eat 4 pieces of chicken, 10 penne noodles, 3 tiny zucchini pieces, 3 tiny yellow squash pieces, 1 sugar snap pea pod, and one red pepper strip. Bless his little heart, after realizing that we meant business, he got to work.
I have never seen such awful grimaces (and they were not just for our sake) and more gagging in my life. It almost made me start gagging...but he never once spit it out. He still mostly loves to eat with his fingers, but made me pick up the zucchini and squash for him becuase he said it was too "slimey!"
We told him that if he plugged his nose (he couldn't figure out how to do that, breathe, and eat at the same time) or took a big drink of water and just swallowed everything (couldn't get the water to wash down the food) it would be easier. He probably drank 10 ounces of water trying unsuccessfully to wash down the zucchini!
He was a real trooper, and from here on out, that's the rules!

One last cute thing...but let me prefice it with this- Jaxon gets his way around here...A LOT! I really don't think he's too spoiled...it's just that there is no one else to contend with. So when he wants to do things a certain way, and we don't have a reason not to...we do it. Okay, so back to the cute thing- he loves to race us to the top of the stairs for bedtime, and really loves it when we pretend to fall. He ONLY loves it if he wins, and gets quite mad if we forget and beat him. Tonight Dave headed up ahead of us to fill Jaxon's humidifier, and boy was J ticked. He sat at the bottom of the stairs and yelled,
"THAT MAKES ME SO MAD DADDY! DATS YOUR UH-SPONSIBILITY!!!"
Pretty sure he didn't know what it meant, only that it was something big and important.