cytherea

So, the other day, Alpha and I were "reading" Stellaluna, by which I mean flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures; he doesn't have the patience for the story of it right now. For those of you unfamiliar, it's about a baby bat (named, of course, Stellaluna) who gets separated from her mother and raised by birds before she rejoins with her bat family. It's one of the books I received at the baby shower, so it's an old, familiar favourite around here. :)

Right, so, the other day, we were flipping through the pages and got to the one where Stellaluna rediscovers that fruit exists and she doesn't have to eat bugs (hooray!).

"Bat!" I said, pointing at Stellaluna. Alpha looked intently at the bat.

"Mango!" I said, pointing at the mango Stellaluna was eating.

"Mango!" he replied, delightedly.

"That's right!" I said, pleased. It was the first time he'd said the word.

"Mee-no!" he said again, his pronunciation actually a bit worse, but whatever. That happens pretty often, actually, where he'll say a thing perfectly the first time, and decide he likes it better another way and stick with the second.

"Right! Mango! That's a mango! Good job."

"Mee-no! Mee-no! Mee-no!"

He proceeded to flip the pages back and forth, delightedly exclaiming, "Mee-no!" every time he found the page with the mango on it.

As a reward, I figured he should get to eat some mango. Nothing quite like positive reinforcement, right? So I asked Chris to pick one up on his way home. He did so, and at dinner that night, I presented Alpha with the entire mango, intending to just show it to him before washing and cutting it.

Alpha was ecstatic. "Mee-no! Mee-no! Mee-no!"

I took the mango back, to wash it.

Alpha was deeply distressed, nearly crying. "Mee-no! Mee-no! Mee-no!"

I washed it, cut half of it up, and offered him pieces on his tray.

He flatly, angrily refused to have anything to do with them. "Mee-no! Mee-no! Mee-no!"

"Honey, this IS mango!"

"NO! MEE-NO!"

"Alpha, sweetheart, this IS mango!" I tried feeding him some of the mango.

"MEE-NO!!!" He shoved my hand away and started wailing.

In desperation, I returned to the cutting board, sliced off another hunk of mango, with the skin on this time, to show it to him.

"See, love? Mango!"

He saw the piece of fruit, which had the skin on. He grabbed it. And proceeded to shove the entire thing in his mouth, with a huge grin. "Mee-no!"

Cue me frantically googling on Chris' tablet whether or not mango skin was okay to eat. :P (It is.)

He still wanted absolutely nothing to do with the skinless mango pieces, but he happily ate the other mango half with the skin on.

...

Toddlers.