Mommy and Emma

So, I think my daughter is an average 3 year old. She loves dolls, and she doesn't like to eat........unless it comes from a box with cute characters gracing the front, or it is a pop tart, particularily chocolate, or brown sugar and cinnamon. Now, you must understand, Emma would eat these two items all day long if I would let her....and often enough, she has worn me down to cereal at night. Now, she absolutely refuses to eat what I cook for dinner, declaring it "disgusting" before it even hits the table. I am trying to hold the hard line: when she is hungry, she will eat, and to make sure that she only has access to healthy things. I think though that it has gone too far.......here is a conversation that happened last night: I was upstairs stripping paint off of her bedroom walls (she has slept in the nursery long enough, so she declares) and she was playing with her barbie dolls. While she was brushing one of the dolls hair, the head popped off. Emma said that she could look into her dolls head and see her brain. I asked her if the brain was big or small. She said it was small. I immediately said, "well, she must not eat her vegetables at dinner time"......how quickly these innocent conversations turn into the power struggle issues! Oh, and no dolls were injured during this exchange, as Emma was able to get the doll's head back on, intact with the small, non-eating brain.