WIC

I don't know what we would do without WIC. Since we first got on WIC shortly after Netty was born, we've been getting gallons more milk than we can drink, cereal to our hearts' content, enough cheese that we don't have to buy it with our food card (which is saying a lot, because we go through a lot of cheese), a constant freezer door full of juice, usually our whole bread supply, and enough peanut butter that we occasionally take a jar to the Reading Center simply because we don't have space in our cupboards.

Once Netty turned six months, she started receiving WIC checks for baby food. Since then, we have only ever gotten baby food with these checks. Just about every week we get 16 jars of fruit and vegetables, and 7 jars of meat, and sometimes we get cereal as well. The problem is that Netty only eats about a half a jar at each meal, which means, rather than going through two jars a day, we go through maybe one. We end up with three half-eaten jars in the fridge because I give her fruit for breakfast, vegetables for lunch, and meat for dinner. I also give her some Cheerios with every meal because she loves to feed herself, and that's the easiest way to accomplish that goal. Last night I organized the 46 jars I brought home from my last shopping trip in which I used two of Netty's WIC checks. I brought the old ones to the front and put the new ones in the back. I'm running out of space in my cupboard! What happens next time I go to the store?

I thought my problems were over yesterday when Netty ate an entire jar of pears in one meal. Pears are her absolute favorite. I thought, "Oh this is great! Maybe the demand will start to pick up with the supply!" And then she ate dinner in two waves last night and finished a whole jar of sweet potatoes. I was pretty sure this was the start of something big. And then this morning I opened up a jar of bananas, and Netty ate only a few bites of it. So then I tried apples. That was a bad idea. She doesn't like apples. before Netty received WIC checks, I fed her applesauce every day because I could just open a big jar and she would eat on it for a week or two at a time. MISTAKE! Now she won't touch anything that has apples in it. It took some great coaxing for her to eat an apple/strawberry/banana mix, and you could hardly taste the apple in it. And she won't drink apple juice. I'm pretty sure she's the only child on this earth who turns her nose up at apple juice. We've tried it three times and every time she pulls away from her cup after one drink.

I thought maybe my baby food storage worries would be over if I simply forced Netty to eat more. Maybe I was giving up too quickly at each mealtime. Maybe I needed to wait. Nope. She throws a fit. Turns her heard. She has mastered the art of whining, screaming, and crying with her mouth closed. This baby will not be force-fed.

And so we get creative. I'm not sure what that means just yet. Maybe I need to dedicate three cupboards to Netty's food instead of two. Maybe I need to build a pantry off the back of our apartment. Maybe we need to move into a three-bedroom apartment so that we have a full room for Netty's food. Maybe I just stop using my WIC checks for a bit until it evens out. But I feel bad if I don't use them. And I should have some food storage even for Netty, right?