If you have been reading this blog for a while now, you will probabaly be aware that Big M does Not Do Fruit.

She went through a phase of eating satsumas, raisins and bananas, but for the last ten months or so, she has refused even these. She’ll eat a fruit puree, no problem but if it is as nature intended it? Forget it. There was a minor success at nursery a few months back when they snuck some stewed apple into her custard. It worked once but then she got wise to them and didn’t fall for that one again.

We haven’t been worried about her not getting vitamins etc, as she demolishes vegetables. And we have kept offering her a variety of fruits to try, only for them to be thrown on the floor spat out rejected.

On Sunday we went shopping to get Big M some big girl’s bedding (she gets her big girl’s bed tomorrow, eep!!). We went for lunch in the M&S cafe. Unfortunately they don’t cater very well for people like me who are dairy free (my only option was a jacket potato, but that would have taken 30 minutes. Not good when you have a  toddler in tow…) so I had a fruit salad. Big M took great pleasure in telling me what I had in my bowl. Each time she named a fruit I asked if she wanted to try some. She turned down my offer of apple, orange and melon. But to our surprise she wanted to try the strawberry and the grape. Whoop! Admittedly by “try them” she meant “put them in her mouth and then spit it out again”, but this is in itself progress.

Then, yesterday tea time, she asked for a banana. Wowsers.

We gave her the ‘nana, and she demanded a knife. She then had a whale of a time cutting up “like at nurseree”. She then also asked for some apple. We agreed to the apple if she tried some of the banana. She tried some, so my man fetched an apple.

He gave her about an eighth of an apple, and she started to cut that up too. We asked her to try some. She did.

I nearly cried.

By now the banana looked anything but appetising, but she kept chopping it up. We bargained with her. For each bit of apple she ate she could do one more cut of the banana (really, it was just mush by now, but hey). But it worked. She ate all the apple she had been given while my man and I looked on in disbelief.

Finally. Finally. Big M eats fruit.