Vegetarian?

Liam, at almost 13 months old, has made the decision to be a vegetarian.  I say be because he’s not becoming a vegetarian since he’s never eaten meat.  It’s not like the other things that he won’t eat in their original forms, the best example being bananas, which he happily wolfs down in massive quantities if they’re pureed but even touching them in their whole form on his plate causes a face that would make an outsider think I’d laced the thing with rat poison.  He has a texture issue for which I take sole responsibility since Matt will eat pretty much anything.  He will eat most veggies and fruits as long as they’re pureed.  I’ve tried giving him shaved deli meat (of course it’s the hormone-free, grain-fed, yadda, yadda, yadda, stuff) because I know I prefer this texture to the sliced deli meat which I’ve also tried, we’ve given it to him in pureed form (although our doctor told us that if he had to choose he wouldn’t feed him that stuff — he’d just wait until he was able to eat the real thing), I’ve tried giving him bits of meat off my plate (everything’s tastier off Mom’s plate).  He won’t touch any of it.

This is a problem.

This is not a problem because I have an issue with my son being a vegetarian — if he was, say 12, and came to me and professed that he wasn’t going to eat meat anymore — I’d gladly figure out ways to feed him in order to get him enough protein without meat (it’d certainly be cheaper than feeding a boy that age meat anyways — and I’ve gotta respect the conviction although I don’t think I could do it myself).  My problem is that I refuse to feed a 13-month-old child enough beans and legumes to get him the protein he needs when I’m still changing his diapers.  In fact —

NEW RULE:  You may not decide to become a vegetarian in my house until you are potty trained.  If this means that you potty train yourself at 13 months, that’s absolutely fine, I’m just not going to change 5 really nasty diapers per day because of your personal food choices.