Chicken Soup for the Cold

Vivek and I made homemade chicken soup last night -- not because we are sick, but only because it was part of one of those cookbooks that has you make one dish and then use the leftovers in a second dish.

Well, Kiren's been extremely picky lately (seriously, it is suddenly very hard to feed him anything, even things that used to be favorites), so we didn't think he'd want any soup (or "boop" as he calls it). To my surprise, he tried some of the broth (but certainly not ANY of the chunks of stuff, thank you very much) last night, and while he seemed to like it, it wasn't a big hit by any stretch of the imagination.

Fast forward to today. I picked him up early from daycare because they called to tell me that he coughed throughout his nap, his nose was running non-stop, and he was fussy as a result. When we got home, he saw the soup pot from last night, and said "boop?," as in "can I have some please?" That said, even when he uses just that tone, he doesn't actually want to eat it; he is apparently simply identifying it. However, there is no way to tell until you actually warm up the item in question and put it in front of him. Only then do you realize that he actually meant, "don't you dare try to give me that food I just asked for -- how could you, mom??" This time, however, he actually wanted to eat soup!! He had several "bowls" of broth (let's be clear, a lot of it ended up on his bib, the tray, his shirt, his pants, etc -- he's pretty good with a spoon, but boop is a hard one for anyone).

So, this has me thinking -- do you think he's actually a grandmother/nurse/etc in a toddler's body? How does he know about chicken soup's healing properties already?

Oh, and just to be clear, if I'd ASKED him if he wanted soup (and I am not a grandmother or a nurse or anything like that so it didn't even occur to me!), I would have received a resounding NO. It simply has to be his idea these days -- sigh. Oh well, as long as his ideas keep being healthy ones!