Sunday, November 8, 2009

Food, choices and joy

I'm finding it so fascinating to watch E's food choices. Today, I made smoothies for breakfast, and I should have made her something else because I know she doesn't really like smoothies, but I didn't. So, she drank a few sips, then wanted an ice cream. So, I got her an ice cream and pulled out some frozen strawberries for L. As soon as E saw the strawberries she said "OOOHHHHH! We have strawberries?!" and put down the ice cream. I thawed out some strawberries and blueberries and the girls both munched on those while the ice cream sat melting in a bowl on the table.

Yesterday, we went to Trader Joe's and E saw a bag of little onions, and wanted to buy them. I had no idea what we were going to do with them, but it's fun to let her pick out her own food, so I let her put them in the cart. Then she saw a bag of little pumpkins and wanted those. I had the idea that we could do a soup with the onions and pumpkin, and she liked that idea. Then she wanted to buy a bag of cranberries. Now I REALLY had no idea what to do with fresh cranberries, but again it's fun for her to pick things out and I knew we could come up with something. Then she picked out cookies and gum and that's all she wanted.

So, today we made the soup together. We chopped up the onions and I cooked the pumpkin and it was her idea to put the carrots and cranberries in the soup. I've never had cranberries in a soup, but I figured what the heck, let's try it! It turned out really good!

After she ate her strawberries and blueberries, she had a few more bites of the ice cream, then put it down again in favor of the soup. While eating the soup, she went on and on about how yummy the soup was and "this makes my body feel good, mommy!" and she put some blueberries in her soup too.

Then, later, she wanted some of D's soda, and she asked me to mix it with water, which I've never done or suggested to her. So, I did, and she took a few sips and didn't drink anymore.

We went to Whole Foods to do some shopping and on the way there, she ate two bananas. Her special request while we were there was gum, because the gum she had gotten from Trader Joe's was spicy and she didn't like it. She also asked for crackers, but I said that we'd have to buy them somewhere else because their prices are crazy. She was ok with that. I got some coconut milk and coconut oil because I wanted to try out this vegan pancake recipe. I made the pancakes when we got home, and she ate 3 of them with honey.

This evening we were out of the house again, and D wanted to stop at Arby's. We rarely eat out, but he was craving something there, so we went through the drive through. E asked for a milkshake and we got it, and I split it with her. She took a few sips, then wanted some sandwich and ate half of that. Then took a few more sips of the shake, then ate the rest of the sand which. She barely drank half of her half of the shake. Before bed, she snacked on some apple slices.