Having two little boys, I’ve heard a lot of the clichés that go with the gender.

“They love cars and trucks.” “Be prepared for a lot of tumbles and spills.” “They’ll roughhouse a lot.” “They’ll eat you out of house and home.”

I hate clichés, but I suppose they get repeated for a reason. Some of these are true of Jim. All of them are true of Sam.

Especially the last one.

For many reasons, most of them medical, it was a constant struggle to get James to eat as an infant. He tended to fall asleep during feedings, leading to all manner of tactics used to wake him up and remind him that food was at hand. Once those issues were a thing of the past (whew), his feedings picked up, but even into toddlerhood and beyond he’s always had a strong tendency toward pickiness.

It’s probably a combination of both nature (I’m rather picky myself) and nurture (paranoid first-time parents who were nervous about baby’s ability to chew), but he came by it honestly. We’re working on it, but it can be a battle.

With those struggles in mind, I distinctly remember saying a quiet little prayer during my pregnancy with Sam.

“Please,” I thought, “please, please: Let this one be a good eater.”

You know how they say to be careful what you ask for?

From his earliest days after birth, Sam has loved to eat.

Even as a newborn, removing his food source for a mere fraction of a second while he was in the midst of a meal would lead to a ferocious face and a tremendous wail, loud and infuriated enough that a total stranger at the mall once stopped to make sure the baby was OK.

Once old enough, he took to solid food like a champ and never looked back. Cereal, carrots, bananas, chicken — he loved it all.

The only things to date that he won’t eat are peas (which can be forgiven, since he’s allergic to them) and shrimp, an acquired taste even for some adults. Everything else gets sampled, considered and approved.

And I mean everything.

Spinach? Likes it. Turkey? Yum. Lasagna? Delicious. Broccoli? It’s all good. Yogurt? His favorite. Doughnuts? Give me more NOW.

At my older son’s recent birthday party, I running back and forth attending to various duties when someone asked, “Hey, who gave the baby pizza?”

Sam, the Pizza Poacher, was wandering around the living room and contentedly munching on someone’s unattended chunk of cheese-and-pepperoni.

He was not pleased when I pried it from his sticky grasp — the shriek harkened back to those angry infant days — but since he has a grand total of four teeth at this point, I just wasn’t comfortable letting him gnaw on it. Once he was seated and the pizza (a fresh piece) cut up in squares, it was returned to him and duly consumed.

And then he wanted a cupcake.

I’d be a bit more concerned about his “consume mass quantities” approach if his height and weight weren’t right in the middle range, and his pediatrician wasn’t perfectly happy with them.

Between his high activity level and a naturally high metabolism, he seems to burn the calories as soon as they’re consumed. That’s another thing he comes by honestly: My brother, whom he greatly resembles, as a teenager once put away 10 roast beef sandwiches at a sitting — and, now in his 20s, is still tall and thin and able to consume pretty much anything he wants without gaining an ounce (while sometimes I think I can look at a doughnut sideways and gain five pounds, but that’s another story).

And he’s just as happy to gobble down sweet potatoes and spinach as doughnuts and pizza, so hopefully we’re doing something right.

I’ve resigned myself to the knowledge that, in 12 years or so, I’m going to be one of those people at the grocery store with two tall teenage boys in tow, a shopping cart filled to the brim and a list spilling to the ground. I’m practicing my coupon-clipping and sale-finding techniques in preparation, and keeping an eye out for good, cheap recipes.

Budgetary concerns aside, I wouldn’t change what I wished for last spring. I got what I wanted, a happy, healthy child — and his happy, healthy, if pickier, brother.

And isn’t that ultimately what every parent wants?

Jill Keppeler is a page designer for the Tonawanda News. She can be reached at jill.keppeler@tonawanda-news.com.