Our 17-month old used to be an okay eater--we could frequently get him to eat veggies and the food we eat. He'd sit in his high chair and we'd feed him bites and some bites he'd feed himself, thought everything was fine even though it was a lot harder to get him to focus than some other same-aged babies we know. As of maybe 15 months, it's gotten progressively harder and harder to feed him--he rejects everything, throws things on the floor, screams, and when we can get him to eat it's only if he has toys to play with at the table and we can basically sneak in bites while he's playing with a tupperware or box or something. He also has started rejecting outright a lot of the healthy food, unless he's in an exceptionally good mood in which case he'll sometimes eat it. Around Christmas we stupidly started keeping those applesauce pouches around, and we've always kept the Earth's Best cereal bars (I call these baby snickers) for road trips and stuff. Anyway, at some point he decided that that was ALL he wanted to eat. We went cold turkey last week and every meal since he screams and cries and points to the cabinet and yells "apple! apple!" or "baaaaarrrrrrrr". He becomes completely hysterical and it takes 20 minutes to calm him down, at which point he's exhausted because we're late for bedtime, and ostensibly he must be starving. Even the sight of the cabinet where we kept that junk is enough to send him into a complete tailspin. I do think it has something to do with fatigue because breakfast is easiest and dinner is by far the hardest. Even removing the junk food demands from the picture, feeding has gotten so tough--he just won't eat unless he's being entertained and coerced with every bite.

The kicker is that he goes to daycare and I always pack a veggie, a protein, a carb, and a fruit, and he eats FINE at daycare. I have asked them so many times how his eating is and they're like, he's great, sometimes he tries to throw food on the floor but he usually finishes or makes a pretty good dent on what I send.

Does this sound typical or normal? Love to hear how you got through a phase like this--I am *hoping* this is just a phase. Any experience with any of this behavior?