Two of my kids are picky eaters. It is the bane of my existence.

Now, I’m not talking picky eaters like, “That’s the wrong brand of macaroni and cheese.” or “This steak is too rare for me.” I’m talking picky eaters like absolutely refuse to eat almost anything. Ever. If Reid and Mack took up smoking and got hair weaves, they would be indistinguishable from the models for Italian Vogue. Food rarely passes their lips.

Yesterday Reid burst into tears in the car because I mentioned that we might go to a restaurant he doesn’t like. “I can’t do it! I can’t do it!” Last night Mack and I had a 20-minute showdown because I wanted him to eat a piece of bread with butter on it. Yes, I know, I’m really pushing the limits on cuisine. We went back and forth, with the whining (him) and the threatening (me) and the begging (both of us) until he finally choked down half of it – by holding his nose for each bite and then immediately washing it down with water. Bread and butter.

In order to get them to eat, sometimes we play a game called Questions. It’s not too hard to explain. I come up with a topic (Star Wars, Presidents, Math, etc.) and then I ask each of them a question related to that topic. If they get the answer wrong they have to take a bite of food. This game works well at getting them to grimace and have a few bites of asparagus or mashed potato. But it is a lot of work. I have to think of the topics, then come up with questions that aren’t too easy or too hard, depending on the age of the kid who’s up.

Byron is no help with this game at all. If the topic is baseball, he’ll ask Reid, “How many hits did Roberto Clememte have in 1969?” When we give him the stink eye, he’ll ask, “What? Isn’t the point to make them get it wrong?”

But that isn’t the point. The point is to make them have fun and forget that they are being made to eat gross, disgusting FOOD. It’s also a nice way to interact because they each get a turn, and they know they will get that turn. So there isn’t as much interrupting and yelling over each other.

The other night, while playing Questions, I did a round of Reid questions. That led to Aidan questions, Mack questions, Daddy questions and finally Mommy questions. For Reid, my Mommy question was “How many brothers does Mommy have?”

This led us into an off-game discussion about all the people we know with two brothers. Mommy has two brothers! Auntie Emmy has two brothers! Grandpa has two brothers! And, of course, I said, “All of you have two brothers.”

Reid started shaking his head adamantly. “What, Reid?”

“I have zero brothers.”

I laughed, “What? You have two.”

“Nope. None.”

“Well then, what do you call these two guys?” I asked, gesturing to the brothers sitting on either side of him.

He looked to the left. He looked to the right. Then he looked back at me and said, “Minions.”

Today, I made Reid his usual peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. As I always do, I asked him how many pieces he wanted the sandwich cut into. The answer was four – which always makes me do a little fist pump at the counter.

Then I asked the question I only ask if I am in a generous mood, “Do you want squares or triangles?” Today, the Universe obviously wanted to punish me, because he responded, “Circles.”

When I cut it into triangles anyway, telling him I couldn’t do circles, Reid disappeared and some sort of terrible banshee-like monster arrived in his place. “Cirrrrrrrrcles! Cirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrcles! Can’t eat this! Cirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrcles!” Oh, the tears. The wailing. The kicking of feet and pounding of fists.

So I used my little butter knife to carve those triangles into four disgusting little squashed, half-oval, half-circular sandwich morsels. That did the trick, and Reid calmed down…then ate, as usual, about one and a half bites of the whole sandwich.