There are picky eaters, there are picky eaters who border on neurotic and there are wannabes.

Big Guy's the neurotic type. Part of it has to do with his food allergies, but mostly it's a gift from a caregiver who used to dump part of his lunch every day and feed him just fruit because she "knew" he wouldn't eat vegetables. If his lunch had no fruit, she'd just feed him a bottle. I changed care-givers as soon as I found out this was going on.

Boots is strictly a wannabe — fussy because that's what the cool kid does in this house. The problem with poseurs, though, is that they just can't maintain the pretense.

In our most recent misadventures, Wubbzy delivered the blow that cracked the facade.

Looking back, it wasn't so much a facade as it was an attempt to play me. Despite vows of silence, we still probably make more than we should out of Big Guy's fussiness, even though our efforts have fallen to ask him nightly if he wants to try something.

Boots decided he wanted a piece of that action, too.

"I don't like macaroni and cheese," he pouted at dinner one night. He always picks on macaroni and cheese first, because it's one of Big Guy's favorites. I could see thoughts of "if you really loved me, you wouldn't cook that crap" running through Boots' head.

Which was curious, since he'd just eaten macaroni and cheese at Burger King a few nights earlier. I reminded him of that.

"That macaroni is skinny. This macaroni is fat. I don't like fat macaroni," he said.

I shrugged. "You're going to get awfully hungry before breakfast."

The truth is, he wouldn't. I always make sure I serve at least one thing they'll eat at dinner. If Boots wanted to subsist on applesauce until morning, so be it.

A few nights later spaghetti was the new poison, except this time it was the sauce, not the noodle.

"I don't like potato sauce," he said.

"You did when we had pizza Monday."

"I don't like that anymore either. And I'm not going to eat it."

"OK," I said, serving him a plateful of unadulterated pasta. It's not exactly nutritionally balanced, but he'd eaten a ton of corn at lunch and apples for his snack.

And so it went for three weeks, until the guys saw the Wubbzy episode about a fire at a spaghetti factory. Spaghetti with marinara sauce.

"Mommy, could you make marinara sauce? I like it."

Whatever you say, my love.

He happily gobbled the "marinara" that night. Lucky for me, he didn't see me transfer it from the jar — the exact same ones that I happen to can the potato sauce in.

I passed the word to his teacher the other day when pizza was on the snack menu at school. Please assure him that it's marinara sauce.

Oh, and his fat macaroni aversion? That's over, too. I guess he finally got tired of applesauce.

Debra Legg is a writer and mother of two boys, Big Guy and Little Guy. Read more of their adventures in chaos at debralegg.com.

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