A hour ago, I stood in line at Costco, watching the mother in front of me struggle with her 4 or 5 year old daughter. This girl was doing everything her mother was telling her not to; climbing on the cart, pushing it all over the place, re-arranging the items her mother just put on the conveyor belt, grabbing her mother's legs, etc.
I tried not to stare but I couldn't help it. I just kept wondering what was going through this child's brain and what I would do in this situation as the parent (just channeling my inner Janet Lansbury). Then, I saw the Mom throw out a container of strawberry-flavored milk that the daughter had just polished off.
No wonder.
Yes, I'm going to get on my high-horse here, because I drank strawberry milk as a kid and I'm sure a lot of Mothers reading this have given it to their children. BUT I am a huge believer in feeding your body- and MIND- well. Especially when it comes to kids! Our children are SO sensitive to their bodies' cues. They are prone to sugar highs and hunger crashes.... and honestly, I probably wouldn't be this food-crazy if I didn't have a baby with CF. I put a lot of research into her diet (and still do)!
Anyway, back to the point of my post: Watching this empty container go flying into the trash can reminded me of what I fed Avalyn this morning, and THAT is what I want to write about.
Avie's newest obsession right now is cottage cheese. She eats bowls after bowls of it and asks for it after every meal! It's a great way to get fat AND salt into her belly (cottage cheese is good, but cottage cheese with salt is even better). However, it's a white food and I want to make sure Avie gets her colors and variety.
So I went to the all-knowing, Google... and found this
...Which is where I stumbled across the glory that was Avie's breakfast this morning: the breakfast "banana split". I struggle with figuring out what to give Avie for breakfast sometimes... you can read about that here... but this little gem is so easy and so yummy!
I put apricot preserves and raisins on Avie's bowl because that's what I had. I could have chopped walnuts and/or added the chia seeds, or drizzled honey. The sky is the limit with this thing, seriously.
When I put the bowl in front of Avalyn, she was offended that I would put "mana's" on her cottage cheese and actually started hysterically saying, "No mana! No mana!"
So I took the bowl away and said, "I hear that you don't want bananas on this. I want you to take one bite and if you don't like it, you can eat something else"
My kid will try anything once, so she knew this was not a trick... and as soon as that bite went in her mouth I could see her little brain working through the toddler version of, "dammit, Mommy's right"
She ate so fast that her Daddy didn't even get a chance to try it.