Picky Eaters

I don’t know quite how we arrived at this point. I’ve been growing my own herbs and vegetables since we lived in Oklahoma (okra, anyone?). I’ve been a farmer’s market fanatic, well, ever since they did become trendy and more plentiful. Larry’s Produce is a dream of fresh and local, peaches, grapes, tomatoes, green beans; you name it, they have it. I bring the kids with me and we pick out fruits and veggies together and they actually love it.  My husband is an excellent cook, especially with pasta and middle eastern dishes.  We eat well and we enjoy food.


Or rather, we did.


I think my husband and I are both to blame. Some combination of our genes inspired a picky, picky, finicky little eater...times two.  Somehow our toddler morphed from a lover of gourmet chicken sausages, homemade carrot, zucchini and turkey meatballs, kiwi fruit, and spinach pizza with whole grain crust to “what do you mean you don’t like hot dogs?...you don’t like grilled cheese?...you don’t like MILK?” The only vegetables (other than peas) I can get in him are disguised in smoothies or “snacky snacks." There was a time when he didn't even like smoothies! Okay, okay, I may have gotten a little zealous with the kale, which caused major suspicion with all blended drinks for months.

One of our favorite "snacky snacks." I guess I should consider myself lucky that this is a highly coveted treat in our house...I know it's good for them, but it's still not real food.

Yep. I have tried everything...hiding veggies, dipping veggies, growing veggies, involving the kids in cooking and grocery shopping, planning one family meal no exceptions, bribery, towing the hard line, and then finally throwing my hands up in the air and adding Cheerios to every meal.


In my desperation, I did a lot of Internet research. Searching for the perfect kid friendly yet parent pleasing recipes. Sorry, but my toddler isn’t fooled by a skewer of grilled vegetables just because it’s on a skewer.  He doesn’t even like regular macaroni and cheese, so butternut squash mac and cheese is definitely out of the question. Actually, he doesn't like cheese. Most of what I found online was actually not helpful. Reading Bringing up Bebe was also not helpful as we are just not French enough.  But as I was feeding Amelia her banana Stonyfield Yo Baby yogurt (the only one she doesn’t gag on), I found the following website on the back of the carton and was intrigued:


www.stonyfield.com/products/yobaby-yokids/feeding-advice-dr-sears/picky-eaters-guide


Check it out if you have a picky eater. It’s from Dr. Sears and isn’t going to make you feel like a bad parent because you can’t get your kid to eat broccoli. The 20 pieces of advice are pretty similar to what you’ll see elsewhere, but the way the advice is offered is less preachy and more understanding. The best advice: #19. Count on inconsistency and #20. Relax.


Oh. Relax, eh? Hmmm. Okay then.

My new approach is now the following: something familiar, something new, something difficult, everything relatively healthy.  There’s still fussing and it’s still frustrating, but I can’t blame them entirely. If my memory serves me correctly, I was a pretty frustrating eater myself as a child (no pasta sauce, no pizza, no soda- a very good thing, of course, etc.) and although I was a pain at birthday parties, I turned out just fine and healthy.

It's not kale, but I'll take it.

Kelly, Kelly, Kelly…so much to say about this post, yet so little time. We have some very picky eaters here on the East Coast too. I would say this is my biggest parenting challenge so far. Which I suppose is very lucky, and I should be counting my blessings-which I am-but it is INCREDIBLY frustrating to make a meal, and nobody eats it. Worse: it ends up on the floor. So, I am always seeking out advice on this topic, and hearing what works for others. That link is great! Definitely some interesting insight on the mind of a toddler.

Over the last 6 years, I’ve had at least 1 if not 2 picky eaters in my house at any given time. When Chad started eating solids, he ate everything under the sun. Charlotte was basically sustained on fruit and mac and cheese. Then suddenly she’s been venturing out and eating more things, meanwhile I can’t get him to eat a bite of mac and cheese if my life depended on it. Or even plain pasta. Who doesn’t like pasta?! (I’m Italian, which makes him part Italian, so this is boggling to me. Pasta and sauce should be running through his veins) Now, at 6, Charlotte is eating escargot. Ok, maybe that’s a stretch, but I did hear these words uttered out of her mouth recently: “Mom, can I have some more of that amazing Shepherd’s pie?” I’m not sure if it’s her age, the fact that she’s exposed to new foods at school, or her palate is changing, but she’s crossed over the picky eater threshold, and I’m thankful. I’m hoping (praying) Chad will follow suit.

The best advice I got was from my pediatrician: Dinner is dinner, and if he doesn’t eat it, he doesn’t eat. He won’t starve to death going to bed without dinner. The theory being this is the age (18-24months-ish) they start to manipulate, and if we constantly give in, pretty soon their diet starts to look, well, "beige." It seemed a little extreme to me at first, but you know what? I practice it. I know it's not for everyone. And yes, at first I did feel like the MEANEST MOM EVER. But she was right. He didn’t starve to death. And I really think he’s catching on. Now, I always put one thing on his plate that I know he’ll eat; yogurt, cheese stick, fruit, etc. But the rest is filled up with what we’re having for dinner. Sometimes he eats it, sometimes he doesn’t. And if he doesn’t; no separate dinner for him, and definitely no dessert. There are great days: “More peppers! More peppers!” (Insert me jumping up and down and clapping) And there are bad days, when Pete (the dog) eats an entire meal off the floor. Because it was thrown there. But I’m ok with the inconsistencies.

Before

Tonight's dinner. Not one of my best meals, but dinner nonetheless. I knew the blueberries would go. The sandwich had a 50/50 chance.  Everything else was a wildcard.

After

I was pleasantly surprised to see the corn had a few bites out of it. Carrots got a quick nibble. The tomatoes are on the floor. Not even Pete is eating those.

And Kel, I don’t remember you being particularly picky, but I do remember thinking it was SO WEIRD that you didn’t like soda. Now, I shake my head when I see kids drinking it. See how ahead of the curve you really were?!

Lay off the Lilly

I feel like I need to make a small amendment to my last post. No sooner did I talk about being more frugal, living more simply, clearing out my closet, etc…when I came across this on my facebook page.

Splash of Pink - Lilly Pulitzer

 

If there are two things I find hard to resist:

1. A Warehouse Sale

2. Lilly Pulitzer

Put them together!? It’s like crack.

Ok, ok, obviously I’ve never done crack. Please. I’ve never even smoked a cigarette.  

Let me set the scene: It was 7am on Friday morning and I was getting started on my hubby’s bday dinner celebration. We already had one dinner for him on his actual birthday, but he’s the type that likes to have a week-long extravaganza. Yes, even at 36. SO, I had half of a homemade chocolate birthday cake leftover, and I decided to make cake pops out of it. I heard you can only make them out of box cake mix and store bought frosting, but I’m here to say my friends, that they were AMAZING with the scratch cake and frosting. Decadent, really. And what a great way to repurpose leftover cake! (Leftover cake. Is that an oxymoron?)

Anyway, I had a whole morning planned of baking, running errands, getting ready for company later. That’s when I did a quick Facebook check and saw the post about the Lilly Warehouse Sale…15 minutes from my house. I’ve seen posts about their Warehouse sales before, but they are always at the Lilly headquarters in PA (near my old college stomping grounds). That’s a good 4 and a half hours away. One of my HS besties, Cathy, lives down there now and is always inviting me to go, but the timing has just never worked out. This one was so close I could taste it.

My hubby is fully aware of my obsession…and my daughter’s obsession too. She’s been able to spot a Lilly dress or bathing suit out of a crowd since she was 4. It’s really quite impressive. We each have maybe 5 or 6 Lilly pieces, all that I’ve gotten on sale in different boutiques or on Ebay. I refuse to pay full price, because, the prices are just ridiculous.

Matching Lilly Dresses for my brother's wedding weekend in Newport, RI. My mom bought Charlotte's at Lord and Taylor, and I found mine randomly at the In The Pink store in Boston. It was on the clearance rack.  Originally 178, then marked down to 80, with an additional 50% off! That's my kind of bargain.

So I sent him a text.

Me: “Hey, there’s a Lilly Warehouse Sale going on today in Glastonbury. I shouldn’t go, right?”

I wasn’t sure what his response was going to be. I imagined something like “But it’s MY birthday week…we should be focusing all the gifts on ME.”

Jeff: “You should go. Please don’t go crazy.”  (He's a keeper!)

So I dragged my little man, and off we went. Stopped at Munson’s candy store for some swedish fish to occupy him while I made a mad dash thru the sale. I grabbed a bunch of stuff, tried it all on in one of those shared dressing rooms. You know the kind... a big open area behind some flimsy curtain. (Never been a fan of those. And not sure the other ladies were fond of a 2 year old boy running around them while they were basically…well..naked)

I could’ve bought the whole store, but I settled on 3 things: A maxi dress, flip flops, and cute top for work.

The prices were insanely cheap. All 3 things were less expensive than the original price of the dress alone. And I will wear those pieces until there are holes in them. Literally. One of my favorite green Lilly shirts has a little hole forming under the sleeve. I got it during the Midnight Madness sale. That’s the one when I went to bed, and set my alarm for 3am to capitalize on the first few hours of the online sale.  Wow. Reading that back to myself seems a little extreme. Or crazy. Or extremely crazy. I’m sensing an intervention if my hubby reads this post. I think I better lay off the Lilly for a little while.

Closet purging resumes tomorrow....

"I just need to grab a few things at the store.."

Why do those infamous words always seem to turn into this?

A  stroller (double, no less) so full of groceries, I actually had to put a bag on Chad’s lap because the baskets underneath were overflowing. Those few things turned into, well.... a full-on week’s worth of groceries.

But I'm getting better. I swear.  Though, not sure Charlotte would agree. “Mom, you always say you need a couple things and then we’re here forever!” In a very dramatic 6 year old voice, of course, when 45 minutes is suddenly forever. But seriously, I am trying to live a little cleaner, a little more simply and a little more frugally.   I want to waste less. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve thrown out uneaten cold-cuts and expired yogurt. You’ll notice my fridge is emptier, and the pantry is bearer. I’ve been shopping more in the periphery of the store, rather than the aisles. (yes Dr. Oz, I've been paying attention) I’ve been saying “No” a little more to all the excess stuff we really don’t need…another box of granola bars when we already have 2 at home, princess soup that might sit in the cabinet 'til someone is sick, M&M’s on the way out when they’ve already been snacking on Goldfish in the store.

Even though those things are only a couple of dollars each, you’d be surprised how much that adds up each week, each month, each year. Believe me, I was. Until I really looked at the receipts. “How did I spend 78 dollars, when I just came in for milk?” Well, that’s how. And don’t even get me started on Target. I was hard pressed to leave there without spending $100. Terrible, I know. My solution? I just stopped going. Same thing with Marshalls. I ran in the other day to grab some tights (it’s still a little chilly here in the northeast, needed them for work) and within 3 minutes of entering the store I had a maxi-dress in my hand and was eyeing up a Michael Kors purse. I just put everything back, and left. Even though the dress was only 17.99, I definitely didn’t “need” it. 

It was sort of like this, only stripes. Cute, right? If I'm still thinking about it in a week, I might go back for it. I learned that trick from Oprah.

So I’m starting the simplifying process in the kitchen, and in my closet. But I’m hoping to expand to the basement. The garage. The attic. Places where we seems to collect things we don’t know what to do with. There is sooo much stuff we never use; some we haven’t touched in the almost 9 years we’ve lived in our house. Which reminds me of an email I just got from one of my best friends Nancy. She and her hubby live in Colorado, and are also trying simplify and save money. They’ve been selling a TON of stuff, and clearing out the clutter.

“We really got into it because we want more time and money to live our life the way we want to. Stuff takes time to take care of and money to upkeep and ultimately, what do we do with it? We could better spend our cash paying off debt, traveling, and spending time with people we care about.”

Thanks Nanc, that’s some really good perspective. I couldn't agree with you more.

Now-here’s where it gets a little extreme. She even proposed living in this:

I think my kids playhouse is bigger than this!

It's called a Tumbleweed House. Have you guys heard of this!? Nancy saw it in the Denver Post, and my hubby said he saw it recently on 60 Minutes. Not sure it’s for me, ok, I KNOW it’s not for me, but it’s worth a read.

www.tumbleweedhouses.com

I’m not sure how seriously she’s considering this, but the fact that’s she’s even considering it at all is enough to inspire me to sell stuff, donate stuff, free myself of the clutter. It all sounds so liberating!

So yes, my stroller was full this week…but it was really full of some good healthy foods. Including spaghetti squash, which is the main reason we went to the store in the first place. Stay tuned for a Pinterest Review on that coming up soon. I already know the title. “Spaghetti squash, where have you been all my life?” Seriously. It is one amazing vegetable.

The Power of a Nap

I DROVE AROUND AIMLESSLY FOR 1.5 HOURS, JUST SO MY TODDLER WOULD SLEEP…

Let me first preface this post by saying I’m not a huge fan of talking about poop. Kid poop, adult poop, animal poop…I mean, I know Everybody Poops, but I’m just not one to get into the gory details. That being said, against my better judgment, the p-word does come up a few times below. Consider yourself warned :)

In my house, if poop happens during naptime, well, there goes naptime….

Little Man usually does his "business" in the morning, and if he doesn’t, like clockwork, it’s after lunch. Usually while enjoying a little quiet, winding down time, perhaps reading a book…(I can totally see how the whole man-reading-in-bathroom phenomenon began)

I came home from work around 1, fired off the usual questions to my babysitter: How was he? Did he eat? Did his congestion get a little better? How many munchkins did he have on the way home from Dunkin? But of course I forgot to ask if he pooped… and he was already down for his nap.

All was quiet, so I thought to myself, Great! I can eat lunch, catch up on some emails, maybe flip through the new Antropologie catalog...

Then, I heard it. Some rustling coming from the upstairs. I ignored it at first, hoping it would go away…but it continued. I heard Lamby and Giraffey hit the floor. Then “down”….”down”…..”down”…

I went up, and sure enough, poop. Changed him, re-tucked him in, knowing full well that there was a 2% chance he would actually re-settle for a nap. He didn’t.

So, in the car we went. The one place that does to him, what Benadryl does to me. About 3 minutes into the trip I could see his little head go from looking out the window, to tilting sideways on the carseat. Fast asleep he fell for the ride. 1.5 hours just driving aimlessly on the highway, letting him snooze, while I listened to the radio and just had some quiet thoughts to myself. He woke up just in time to greet his sister off of the bus, with a wave, and a big smile on his face.

I know that I wasted gas on this trip, driving with no particular destination. But for me, and for him, it was well worth it. It’s not that I didn’t want to spend that time with him, awake and playing, but he still really needs that sleep during the middle of the day. If he didn’t get it, we’d all be paying for it later. So, he got some much needed rest, which saved us all from a super- cranky- melting –down- dinnertime toddler, while I got to recharge my batteries from work mode to mom mode. And we were all much better off because of it.

See? I told you it wouldn’t all be about poop.

A scene from our favorite book!

Skinny Chunky Monkey Cookies

Pinned them, made them, loved them!

We’ll call this “Healthy Cookies-Part 2”, as Kelly recently blogged about hers here.

If the cute name doesn’t hook you in, the short ingredient list will. Who doesn’t  have a few extra ripe bananas and some oats laying around? And they contain chocolate! Yes, a healthy cookie with chocolate. Sign. Me. Up.

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas
2 cups old-fashioned oats
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. vanilla extract

They were extremely easy to make. Preparation was about 5 minutes or less. I’m not going to post the picture of them after they came out of the oven…you can use your imagination as to what they sort of reminded me of….but they were good. Really good. I loved them, and so did the kiddos.

Now, not only are they healthy, they can be pretty allergy free if you sub out the peanut butter for Sunflower Seed Butter, or Soy Nut Butter. Otherwise, they don’t contain eggs, butter, milk or flour.

So here’s the million dollar question. When does it go from being a healthy cookie to just a regular old treat?  Remember the whole Snackwell’s craze in high school? “Wait, these cookies are Fat Free?! Let’s eat the whole sleeve. They won’t make you fat, they’re Fat Free!” Oh, on the contrary my friends. On the contrary.

 I figure I probably ate about 6 or 7 within a 12 hour period. A couple when they came out of the oven, a few after dinner, and one as a before bedtime snack with my vitamin. And don’t forget about the batter. That always equals a cookie or 2 whether you like to admit it or not. At 47 calories each, according to the bloggers post, I was up to about 330 calories in “healthy cookies.”

So I compared it to my all time favorite cookie: Mrs. Fields Semi Sweet Chocolate Chip

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 11.00000 cookie (60.0 g)

Amount Per Serving

Calories 290 Total Fat 14.0g14.0 290 126

Hmm….calorie for calorie, one Mrs. Fields is actually less than the 7 Skinny’s that I ate.  But the overall fat content is much higher. So what’s a gal to do? I think I’ll stick with the healthy cookies, and try to have a little more self restraint next time I make them.  I mean, I really made them for the kids. Who knew I’d be the one eating the most!

So here's the Pin, in case you want to try them out for yourselves.

And don’t be surprised if you see Healthy Cookies Part 3, 4, 35, etc…as we’re sort of, and always have been, obsessed with healthy treats. Just ask Kelly about her mom’s famous low fat brownies….

The Toughest Job

I always thought I'd be "mommy."  I wasn't raised in a family where we said "mama." All of a sudden, my little boy has decided that I am Mama. As in "OKAyyy MAMA!" and OooooHHHH, THANK YOU, MAMA!" Or if his one-year-old little sister is chasing him, it's "Mama, mama, mama, mooooooommmmmmm, mama." Also, as in "did you toot?," "Oh yes, Mama." I really wish I could convey the tone of voice he uses to say this, but my odd choice of caps and lower case will have to do for now.  We'll come back to this point in a bit.

 I once had a job where the slogan was "the toughest job you will ever love." It did require trekking through mountains, not having consistent running water or shower or indoor plumbing at all, and combating a language and cultural barrier to try to build a sustainable health education program in rural Guatemala. It certainly was  tough...and I didn't love it. I learned from it, but I definitely didn't love it. As a matter of fact, after what I considered enough, I quit it and went back to my running water, comfy surroundings, and lattes. I wasn't normally a quitter, so admitting defeat was difficult. My reasons for quitting that job were complicated: safety issues, boredom, and being somewhat uncomfortable in my own skin and having trouble with the slowness of life. However, that's not the point of what I'm writing either...and I'll get there, I promise. 

What got me thinking about both being mama and my "toughest" job was the following video,  posted by Melissa today on Facebook: 

I just got sold. Or bought, as the case may be.  Or bought and sold. On motherhood, on the Olympics, perhaps on powerful advertising. I haven't had a commercial make me feel since, okay, not very long ago (I do love those Liberty Mutual ads where everyone helps each other by witnessing a small act of kindness...I think the point was to consider what a wonderful world it would be if everyone acted like that, ie: like Liberty Mutual). But you get it. This one got me all choked up.

The title of this ad is "Best Job." And yes, it is the best. Arguably at 2am or in the middle of a public meltdown (take your pick of tantrums: me, the baby, or the two year old), it's quite possibly the worst, but most of the time it is the best. You can't quit it and to succeed you have to be comfortable in your own skin. Being mama, mom, or mommy is the true toughest job you will ever love...and here comes the cop out:  If I had more time tonight and wasn't looking at a night of crying-it-out (me and the baby), I would eloquently draw all the parallels to my previously mentioned "toughest job" and  my "best job" (don't even get me started on the safety issues and the language barrier in motherhood) and have a perfectly edited, A+ essay.  But, I'll let you make some up.

I think my point is the following: watch the ad. If you have kids, if you don't. It may not send you running out to buy Proctor and Gamble products but it will for a few moments make you feel what we all want to feel: Hopeful. Moved. We all want the best for our future generations (Olympic hopefuls or not).  Happy Mama's Day.

- West Coast Mama

A Bit of a Mad Men Mystery...

Anyone else a big fan of Mad Men? I don’t know if it’s the clothes, the characters, or the time period itself, but I just love it. It’s one of the few shows my husband and I actually agree on.  (Real Housewives of Bev Hills, Guiliana and Bill, and Bethanny are all DVR’ed and watched during naptime-if there’s one thing he can’t stand, it’s girly reality tv) We save the show for Friday nights since honestly, 11pm is too late for me to stay up on a Sunday night; throws my whole week off.  We make popcorn, sit back, and for that one hour, we’re totally transported to the 1960’s.

There was something that I couldn’t stop thinking about in the first episode. It surprised me that Joan was exhausted, emotional, and frustrated with her new baby. This shouldn’t have surprised me at all, since I felt those exact things after my kids were born. But for some reason, though I know they had many more challenges in life than we have today, I still see women back then as somewhat invincible, unruffled, and kind of perfect.  I guess I see my own mom that way too. When I was at my wit’s end with exhaustion, sadness, and crazy hormones about a month after having my daughter, I, teary-eyed, asked my mom how she got through it all. She basically said “she just did.” And that was it. She didn’t elaborate, she didn’t have tips to share, she just made it through.  Not once, not twice, but 3 times.  They didn’t know what to expect when they were expecting. They didn’t have Babywise, or The No Cry Sleep Solution. There were no fancy swaddling blankets, ColicCalm drops, white noise machines hidden in baby sheep, and “Magic” Swings, as my friends and I like to refer to them. The 5 S’s hadn’t even been invented.  And they intentionally put us to bed on our stomachs, yet we somehow survived. So my question is, is all that “stuff”: information, advice, and actual stuff really necessary? Is a book telling me my baby should be sleeping 12 hours a night by 12 weeks helping me, or setting me up to feel like I’ve failed as a mom when it doesn’t happen?

I went to visit my grandmother the other day at her nursing home. She’s 93, but looks and acts much younger. I love that little lady to pieces. And boy do I hope I inherit her genes. I never tell her when I’m coming, but I try to make it over there once a week with one, or both, of my little ones. Every single time I get there she looks at me and says “Am I dreaming, or are you really here?” She’s THAT excited to see me.  We were sitting having coffee the other day and she got a little choked up.  She told me she thinks I’m doing a great job with the kids, and went on to say she wished she had done things differently when she was a mom. She kept saying “Things were different back then, we just didn’t know what you girls know today. All the books, all the stuff you hear on the news, what’s good, what’s bad…we just didn’t know.”  Yelling was often, bedtime stories were rare… there just didn’t seem to be a lot of mom/child interaction.  I could tell she had some regrets, and I couldn’t help but get emotional listening to her talk.

So even though I think I drove (and still drive) myself a little crazy interpreting and practicing all the “stuff” I read in books, online, or see on the news… I admit, I once drove to a store 45 minutes away to get another Miracle Swaddling Blanket because I misplaced mine, and couldn’t bear doing bedtime without it…I’m glad we have so much knowledge at our fingertips.  Everything we need to know (or at least think we need to know) is a literally a click away. And I’d rather be on the side of too much information, than none at all.

Which brings me back to Mad Men. Those scenes when they are smoking and drinking while pregnant? Makes me CRINGE.  And don’t even get me started on Betty’s parenting. Again, cringe. Speaking of the ex-Mrs. Draper…where did she go? She finished Sally’s ice cream and we haven’t heard from her since. What seemed to be a budding plotline as she almost faced a life altering diagnosis, seemed to disappear as quickly as the sundae itself.

Hmmm…I wonder what those writer’s have up their little vintage sleeves….

-East Coast Mom

A visit with Great Grandma Marie