Sometimes Parenting Is Tough

This post may be a bit.....jumbled and unclear, because it's difficult for me to put all of my thoughts in coherent order, so forgive me.

Over the past couple of months, Tyler and I have been incorporating 'big people food' into Alex's diet, so as to transition him to eating regular food instead of baby food after he turns a year old. He will be a year old this Friday. Alex loves eating 'big people food' so much, though, that he has pretty much stopped eating his baby food. He turns his face and screams when I try to give him something pureed. This would be fine and dandy in my mind if he would eat his fruits and veggies adult style, but he just won't. Well, he will his fruits, but not his veggies. He's a lot like his mother in that respect. So the pureed version that we have (which he has always loved) is his only option from me. Plus, it's cheaper for me to give them to him that way because I get it through WIC and I don't have to pay for it. So in other words, when you're poor, you eat what you have.

So, here's the dilemma. I'm trying to teach the little bugger that he's to eat what I present to him WHEN I present it to him, or else he can just go ahead and be hungry until the next meal. This is difficult to do for a couple of reasons: 1) I previously would just try to find something he liked until he ate, so he has gotten used to being catered to, and 2) It absolutely BREAKS my heart to make him be hungry. It kills me. I literally was on the verge of tears this morning. I love my little man, and I don't want him to suffer like that, but I also love him so much that I don't want him to learn to be a little brat just so he can get what he wants. To further the dilemma, he only does this when presented with baby food that has been pureed. If it's baby food that I pay for that I can't get through WIC (anything with chunks in it), he'll gobble it up. He just hates pureed food. BUT, he needs to eat it for health and financial reasons.

As a result of the things listed, I keep going in a loop of thoughts in my mind. It pretty much goes like this; "He needs to eat his fruits and veggies, but he hates to eat them this way even though he's almost ALWYAS had them this way. So why is he too good for them NOW? I should just buy whole fruits and veggies and prepare them differently for him, but we can't afford to do it that way. Well, not daily, anyway. We could do it three times a week, I guess. Does he need to eat fruits and veggies more than three times a week? Tyler wants me to teach him to eat what I present to him, and I want the same thing, but if he can't verbally communicate with us, then I hate to force anything like that on him, because he can't tell us exactly WHY he won't eat it. But I'm also confused because he won't eat the containers of pureed food, but he will eat the pureed food out of the pouches that he can suck on, so what's the difference? The delivery?"

It's quite the conundrum. So, I need opinions and advice to sift through until I find something I feel will help. Please let me know what you think.