Life with a Frances

Did your mother ever read the Frances books to you?  I mean specifically Bread and Jam for Frances.  Am I the only one familiar with this particular book o' irony?  I know there are other titles, but I'm having a Frances problem and it just so happens to be the EXACT same problem that Frances' mother faces in Bread and Jam.

I am living with a Bread and Jam Frances kid and it is making me INSANE.

And I come here with my insanity because it's literally taking ALL of my patience to keep this child among the living. 

I confess, I loathe the dinner hour.  I'm not good at planning a menu, and I can't even blame the fickleness of pregnancy for that one, because it's a constant, unwavering part of my natural M-ness.  I just suck at it.  Inevitably, four o'clock rolls around and it occurs to me that people will be hungry in a couple of hours and perhaps I should come up with a plan to deal with that hunger.  And then it's the mad dash to the fridge and pantry to attempt to assemble something from the odd bits of staples that we keep on hand.  It's not so bad the first few days after I grocery shop, for there's a lot of fresh stuff in the fridge, but as the week wears on and the fridge thins out, things become decidedly more experimental and haphazard.  Never good words to describe dinner.

But lately, I've been wondering if my apathy towards the dinner hour isn't at least partly the Boy's fault.  He went from being a relatively laid back eater to The Pickiest Child on Earth. 

Even when I plan, people!  Even when I start early!  When there's a nutritionally balanced meal, beautifully presented to him at the table, he doesn't even SMELL it, he takes one look and then declares himself, "Don't like it, Mama.  Do. Not. Like. It." 

And of course, I insist that he TRY it.  Just TRY it, child.  And most evenings I can get him to put a microscopic spec of food partical into his mouth and then he just reiterates the "Do. Not. Like. It." declaration.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I've tried everything!  I've tried the whole, "You have to sit there until you eat it." routine.  I've tried sending him to bed hungry--no good.  I'm not Dickensian enough, of course, when he woke up crying and hungry, I got him up and made him toast and milk.  I've tried the Children are Starving in Somalia, but he's not entirely sure where Somalia is, it might just be another planet for all he knows, so he doesn't particularly care, or rather, he might care, just enough to send them HIS dinner that he has flatly refused to EAT!

So I come to the internet to lay my parental frustration on the alter of the almighty Internet.  Please, help me.  How to I get my child to eat more than yogurt, cereal and cashew nuts?