Kids' eating analysis and food progression photos

aka: "more than you would ever wish to know about the eating habits of any child that is not your own"

every night, i ask for forgiveness for my infinite parenting fails and i pray for the ability to be a better mother to my children and know the best way that i should parent them.

my biggest struggle right now with abigail is her eating (i'm happy to report that the potty chart is still working wonders in that area of our lives) and specifically, the amount of food that she eats... or doesn't eat.  today was a really great day with the kids and i really wanted for us to end on a positive note.  i feel like the last few hours of the day are often my most difficult because i've run out of patience and energy and i really want to just "finish strong" since that's the phrase that's always in my head when i feel like i'm about to lose my temper ten minutes before bedtime.  basically, my honey is out of town and i knew i was doing dinner and cleanup and bedtime by myself and if dinner took the last of my patience, there would be none left for bedtime.

so lately i've been making mental notes of my childrens' eating habits.  brady, i've noticed, prefers bland foods above flavorful foods.  he strongly prefers banana and avocado above strawberries and tomatoes.  also, i think he doesn't like the texture of cheese.  he can eat cheesy scrambled eggs or cheesy pasta noodles or grilled cheese sandwiches, but he doesn't like shredded cheese or sliced cheese when it's offered to him.  also, oatmeal is by far his very favorite food and he will eat indefinite amounts of it.  hot, cold, fresh, old, dried and crusted on his highchair... he loves it all.  the boy could live off of oatmeal.  and he's got a crazy intense sweet tooth.  concerning brady's eating habits, these things i know to be true.

abigail has been harder to read.  i'm still trying to decipher her eating habits, but one thing i've noticed is that she doesn't like to eat a large amount of any one food.  she will ask for a lot.  i hear cries of "but i want A LOOOOOOTTTTTT!!!!!" a million times a day, but really, plan to bet all your money on "won't finish" because she'll lose steam about three or four bites in.  occasionally she'll shock me and eat more or even finish what's on her plate but the typical scene is that i'll constantly remind her to "take a bite" while she'll spend an hour playing on her chair while chewing her fork or anything else inedible, and the food on her plate will just get colder and staler and soggier until she insists "I'M DONE!!!" a million times over.

ten minutes later, she wants a snack because her belly is hungry.

it's frustrating when she throws a fit because she wants "A LOT" of food because i have two options.  i can give her a lot of food and throw away basically all of it after she decides she's done.  or i can just give her a small amount of food and have her be angry and annoying the whole meal and not even finish the tiny amount i've given her.  i frequently try both and nothing works (although we have dubbed brady the "human garbage disposal" because i just dump the rest of abigail's plate onto his tray and he finishes it off) so it's a pretty no win situation.  the idea kept coming to my head "maybe she only will eat three bites of a particular food before needing to move on to a different food."  so for breakfast i'll give her a small bowl of oatmeal, a little bit of eggs, a little bit of toast... it's working better than just one food... aside from her throwing a fit about only getting small amounts of things.

randomly, tonight i decided to break out that pinterest muffin tin idea.  i was pulling a million things out of the fridge for dinner anyways because i was having taco leftovers and brady was being picky and throwing everything off of his tray.  why not put a little sampler plate for abigail?  sometimes i try to create the muffin tin concept on a plate with a bunch of different items, but typically i get lazy after four things and they all blend together.  having twelve spots stretched me to fill them all and i knew abigail would think it looked cool.  and it would look like " A LOT!"

i told her i was making her a surprise dinner and that she couldn't look and had to go away.  i started to tell her to go play in the great room but got smart and instead, asked her to clean up all of the toys.  it was a disaster since my visiting teacher had been over and i'd pulled out alllll of the toys to the center of the room so her daughter could play with them.  there was stuff everywhere and it was all mixed together.  but my all star cleaning kid had it spotless in no time.  i really like when i come home after being out and christopher has cleaned up all the toys... but i can always tell because it's kinda lazy a little bit and he doesn't really know/care where things really go.  with abigail... that girl does it right.  i mean truly exactly as i would.  for all of the power struggles i have with her about eating or going potty... i'm thankful she's awesome about cleaning everything (i mean, if i leave her clean laundry on the stairs, she'll see it and put it away without being asked) and is really good at it.  anyways, that bought me time and actually probably saved me time in the whole course of the night.

i created this masterpiece.  it could have been cooler but i only used food that i already had out of the fridge for myself and/or brady.  we prayed and then she dug in.

after a few minutes i was curious to see what she'd chosen to eat first.  corn.  she completely wiped out her corn.  then, spinach.  both spots of spinach.  then a little bit of cheese and some strawberries.  what kid eats the corn and spinach first?  i totally thought she would go for the tortilla first.

next... tortillas, then avocados, then carrots.

and then when she declared herself done and asked to be excused...  left behind was one chunk of roast beef, half of the shredded cheese, and half of the strawberries.  and trace amounts of corn and tortilla.

overall, totally not what i was expecting.  in order or amounts.  i honestly expected her to eat all of her tortilla and all of her cheese.  likely most all of her avocado and strawberries and maybe corn.  and then none of the spinach or roast beef or carrots.  it's a good thing i don't bet.

it was a happy night for me.  it really helped my mood and was a great break from preparing food for one kid that i'm in yelling matches with trying to force feed her into eating something and another kid that throws everything on the floor the second he sees something more appealing.  sometimes i can handle that but sometimes i can't.  tonight i didn't have to and it was great.  

also, in case you were wondering, natural light is important to quality photography.  because did anyone else notice that progression?  you can tell how far we were into the meal in relation to the sun setting based on how yellow our food looks from the yellow lighting above our kitchen table.  amazing huh?

does anyone have experience with doing this on a more long term basis?  how soon does the novelty fade?  and how much variety do you have from meal to meal?  nurse amanda... i'm lookin' at you.

library, costco, baby oil

i had a conversation with weed a while back about waking up in the morning and being insanely tired.  so now when i wake up tired, i think of weed.  this morning i woke up so unbelievably tired that i texted weed immediately.  she mentioned that minus being mormon, she'd be a huge coffee drinker.  which made me want hot chocolate.  so i made some.  i love when you just want something and then BAM you can make it happen.  had i wanted doritos that would have been annoying because i would have had to go to the store for that.  

i actually got a shower and did my hair and makeup this morning and still made it to the library for storytime!  i turned in our reading card (one of those things where you read a bunch of hours and you get a prize) and helped abigail pick out a book (although she had no idea what was going on... i wasn't about to explain "we read 12 hours so you get to pick a book from the library that you don't have to ever bring back" especially because she hasn't stopped asking me when we can go on another easter egg hunt.  some things are better just glossed over.)  she picked start saving, henry! which made me smile, because i'm pretty money conscious, and i'm pretty sure my honey will appreciate it too.  then jodi and elle joined us.  baby girl is obsessed with elle.  i kind of am too though.  she's adorable.

 

 

 

blurry pictures because they were sooo hyper.  seriously make me think of monkeys.

swinging on the rails and everything!

and then we all went to costco.  baby girl ate her entire bowl of oatmeal for breakfast but that didn't stop her from eating every bite of every sample.  basil chicken and cheese sandwich, cheeseburger, bacon wrapped steak, ice cream with frozen cherries, broccoli salad, chicken alfredo, pasta with olive oil and parmesan cheese, and a few other things i can't even remember right now, SHE ATE IT ALL.  i don't even try to share samples with her anymore because she eats every bite.  also because she refuses to touch it if i've even so much as sniffed it.  she is very particular about having her costco samples all to herself.  brady was awake and fussy the whole time but finally drank his bottle and fell asleep as we were checking out and walking to the parking lot.  

 

 

 

baby girl learns so much from elle.  she ADORES her.

 honey ditched texas this morning and arrived in boston and sent a few pictures showing me "rainy boston."  so i sent him this picture of "sunny parker."  i seriously have to pinch myself sometimes.  i can't get enough of my view.  don't feel bad for honey though.  the pictures he sent me of harvard were gorgeous.  even if he did look slightly frostbitten.  

i try a lot of cleaning tips from pinterest.  today i had a few fails and one major success.  i always scrub and clean my dishwasher door so i know it's clean but there are water drip marks and finger print smudges on there that never ever go away like they're stained on the stainless.  well, let it be known that a tiny bit of baby oil rubbed on there made it look brand new!  like this has never been touched by human hands.  absolute perfection and i am in heaven.

 

 

also, i love my friends.  when i have no husband for days on end, texting helps me keep a grip on life. these past several days have been going really well but i still appreciate those "maybe you're on crack" texts that make me smile.

 

and because i am trying to be better and not stay up til obscene hours of the morning, i'm going to actually close my computer and get to sleep before midnight!  yeay for sleep! 

finding a cure

there are a lot of things i love about my house.  one kinda strange thing i love is that it's "good at being dirty."  the people that built the house picked fixtures and finishes that look the same regardless of if they're clean or messy.  like the speckled granite in my kitchen is one example.  you could have dumped two cups of granola and scattered it across the counter tops and yet they would still look flawlessly clean.  you wouldn't know about all that granola unless you wiped everything down (or unless you got down at eye level and had the sun shining in to help you see everything) and i love that.  i keep my house as clean as i can, but it's easier on my ocd when i can't see every tiny spill (as was the case when i nannied for a family with jet black granite countertops.  you could even see the streaks left over from the cleaning wipes and it drove me nuts) so i can enjoy a "clean" kitchen all day even when i only have time to wipe everything down at night before i go to bed.

one thing that is very much the opposite?  my glass shower.  it can be clean without ever looking clean because of the hard water stains that build up on the shower door and walls.  i know, i know, if you use a squeegee after every time you shower, it won't have time to build up.  that's all fine except that my husband isn't in to that stuff.  it doesn't bother him so he doesn't have the motivation (or memory) to wipe the walls or spray that every day shower spray stuff.  so my shower looks like this...

and i hate it.  and don't think i haven't tried a slew of cleaning products, vinegar, searching a million and one blogs (and pinterest) online, and asking every friend i've ever met.  no success.  so it just keeps getting worse and this morning i was showering while baby girl was working on puzzles.  occasionally she would bring me a piece and ask for help.  i would always say something super nondescript like "oh, that goes next to the orange pieces" or "it's got a straight edge so it goes next to the other straight edge pieces" which always satisfied her just fine and she would give me an "oh!" and happily run to the coffee table to put it in its place.  the thing that bothered me though was that i realized the glass was getting so bad that i could barely see through it anymore.  this was dire.  i NEEDED to find a solution!

according to a lot of comments on the internet, mr clean magic erases work well for this... but i don't have any of those in the house.  i think one comment mentioned using something abrasive to scrub it off.  so i tried some of those steel wool soap pads i have under my kitchen sink for scrubbing my cookie sheets and jelly roll pans.  well...

i couldn't believe it worked!  i made sure to test a concentrated area because (like when i tried the vinegar) it's frustrating to clean your whole shower only to have it dry and look the same as when you started.  i wasn't going to waste my time doing the whole shower until i knew it actually worked.  well it really really works... i promise!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

are you amazed?  when you're scrubbing it, you can hear and feel the difference from it scraping away the hard water mineral deposits to just having clean and smooth glass.

 

i did a couple more circles just for fun and then just started at the top and was doing a huge chunk when i heard my baby crying in the other room and realized i was supposed to pick baby girl up from play school in two minutes.  sooo, i don't have any true after pictures for you... but eventually i'll have a clean shower!  this might be the best day of my life.

*i took a million pictures so you could see but it turns out it's really tricky to take pictures in my bathroom.  so many shadows and mirrors and reflections and whatever.  oh well, hopefully it's enough to show the difference.

who's with me?!?!

i'm on pinterest.  i just started so i know next to nothing.  but i think if you go to http://pinterest.com/carrieelise/ then you can see all my stuff (this is for you liza).

so who's with me?!?!  leave me your link so i can check out your pins.  do it!  now!

in other news...

this morning i woke up at 8:30 to a wonderful text from my friend kirstyn saying something along the lines of "i found the most awesome garage sale, i'm going to the store to get cash and then i'm coming back.  come!"  so i got ready, got my baby up and ready, ate a little, and then we were out the door.

i am at the garage sale for seriously half a second before i have major deja vu (that's french for "already seen" in case you didn't know).  i have seen all this stuff before!  well, not all of it.  but probably half of it.

there are two women running this garage sale and one looks slightly familiar and i'm pretty sure her name is renee.  well, long story short, that was indeed renee... the previous owner of our current house!  i've been wanting to meet her for months (more accurately, since april, when we actually bought this place) and fate brought us together at this garage sale!

actually, i'm not really good at making things short so here's the slightly longer story.  i told kirstyn my suspicions (which i was actually really positive about) and we agreed that it might be awkward or uncomfortable for renee if i accosted her with this information so i didn't say anything.  she actually left with one of her kids and said she'd be back later.  in the mean time, i bought a few of renee's old things (renee had fabulous taste... she had our house decorated beautifully) from her friend lisa who was manning the sale.  and then i left.

we went to the library for story time and to pick up saving ceecee honeycutt and pride and prejudice on dvd (which i'm so sad about because i opened the case tonight and it was empty).  and then we went home for a few craft supplies.  and then we went to kirstyn's to make these little get well cards we found on pinterest.  i still need to take a picture of my finished product.  okay.  here it is!

crafting is one of those really distant talents i occasionally attempt to develop.  like cooking.

anyways, on our way home, i felt like i should swing by the garage sale again.  as i was parking my car i felt super super stupid but i knew they'd seen me so i was past the point of no return.  i walked up and was warmly greeted by renee, who'd been informed of my identity by her friend, lisa.  we talked as if we were old friends and exchanged multiple hugs.  after 10 or so minutes i had to break up our love fest (past nap time and i'd left baby in the car... windows down, 20 feet away... with a toy and i was feeling a little guilty about neglecting her) but we exchanged numbers and renee said i could have anything i wanted left over from the garage sale and that for the bigger items, she would be happy to bring them to my house for me since i don't have a truck.  anyways, it was glorious.  i love that woman.  and i love her house.  i mean, my house.  all of these keeps making me think of adoption and birth parents contacting the adopted family or vice versa.  yes i just said that.  ha.  anyways...

nap time was short but it worked out because i was able to make it to the post office before it closed!  and then we went straight to the in laws for pizza and the byu game.  came home during half time to put our exhausted baby to bed and watched byu win.  and then honey passed out on the sofa (of course) and fifty million hours later i'm still awake and on the internet (of course).  this is getting to be a real problem.  i need to work on this.  i have a problem.  i really need to work on this.

but really, isn't that a cool story about meeting renee?  it 100% made my day.

and back to the beginning... leave me your pinterest link.  or tell me the more technologically savvy way go about this whole pinning madness.

goodnight!