Snacktime in the Land of Weird

We have a long standing habit of bedtime snacks in our house. It comes from when Isaac was a baby and giving his mother grey hairs over the fact that he wouldn't eat anything and his doctor grey hairs over the fact that he was losing weight. At the suggestion of his dietitian we started topping him up before bed with a smoothie, bowl of cereal or piece of toast. Now that he is older and we still offer up the bedtime snack and we also offer him a few choices, as long as they are healthy (most of the time!) Tonight after turning down all the usual snacks and staring down the contents of my fridge he announced that he was going to have broccoli for a snack. After I did a quick double take to make sure I was looking at my child, I cursed myself for not having broccoli around probably the one time in Isaac's life that he will actually request broccoli. I am an adult and do eat broccoli, but when I have a hankering for a snack I definitely don't go for a bowl of broccoli. I mean who does? So being that toddlers can be easily redirected I offered Isaac some options that I did have in my fridge. Apple? No. Strawberries? No. Finally I was out of ideas and since he seemed to be in a healthy frame of mind I thought maybe I'd offer him the bag wheat bran in my pantry just to see if he would take it. Common sense did take over and I quickly realized that he was serious about this broccoli business and if I didn't deliver the goods soon I was going to have an all out tantrum on my hands. I upped the stakes. Cookie? No. Ice cream? No. In my mind I was wondering if i had really lost it; was I actually trying to convince my child that he did not want to eat broccoli but have a cookie instead? Fortunately for me Isaac's appetite for the weird and healthy was fixed and in the end we settled on a snack only slightly less weird. A hard boiled egg.