Because they ate breakfast before 7, my girls were ready for lunch by 10 yesterday. I made them a nutritious feast of chicken nuggets, baked beans, and fuji apples and had beans and rice myself.
I had a doctor's appointment, and Allie fell asleep on the way home.
{Hallelujah!}
By the time she woke up, it was almost 2 o'clock.
And they were both hungry again.
Grace asked for a pineapple Greek yogurt, easy. Allie wanted bay-ees (berries), which meant grapes or strawberries. I think she has them confused, so either will do.
"Allie, we don't have any berries. What would you like instead."
BAY-EES! BAY-EES! BAAAAAAAAY-EEEEEEEEEES! she screamed. When screaming didn't work, she moaned. When moaning didn't work, she collapsed with a sigh.
Bay-ees, she pouted. Bay-ees.
I texted Joe and asked him to buy grapes and strawberries on his way home.
"Allie, how about some yogurt?"
No.
"A hot dog?"
No.
"Some chocolate bears?" She never passes up chocolate teddy grahams.
No.
Well, crap, I thought. What else can I offer her?
"That's all there is. How about some of these?" I showed her the bears again.
Yeah, yeth (yes). She agreed, despondent.
I poured the bears into the bowl and handed it to her. She nibbled one.
Realizing that I was hungry, too, I carefully weighed out 30 grams of nut chips (my inexpensive alternative to gluten-free crackers), measured 6 tablespoons of hummus, and sat down at the table.
I've gained 4 pounds {ice cream and Girl Scout cookies mostly}, so I am being extra careful with my choices and my portions.
Allie sat her bowl of bears on the table, pointed to my chips, and grunted.
"Do you want a chip?"
Yeth (yes).
I handed her a chip, but she pointed and grunted again.
"Do you want some hummus?"
Yeth (yes).
I smeared some hummus on her chip.
And she ate it.
Muy (more).
I double dipped on her behalf.
She licked it off in one sweep.
Muy (more).
We ended up eating hummus from the container together. Even Grace came along and shared in the nut chips and hummus snack.
What's my point?
As I watched my 2-year-old and 5-year-old lap hummus from their soggy baked chips next to a nearly untouched bowl of sugary bear-shaped crackers, I was hit in the head {not really} by what I'd done.
Allie asked over and over for healthy food, for fruit. I pushed sugary crackers over and over.
At first, I tried to excuse myself, rationalizing that chips and crackers are together on the not exactly healthy side of things, but then I read the labels.
The crackers I was pushing have 15 ingredients including sugar, dextrose {which is sugar}, maltodextrin {which is a non-sugar sweetener}, and calcium carbonate {which is chalk. Chalk?!}. The chips have 6 ingredients: rice flour, almonds, potato starch, safflower oil, sea salt, natural almond flavor.
I'm working hard on eating healthy foods myself, and I'm pushing cheap junk on my kids.
I'm eating healthier and feeding my kids junk.
Before you leave me a comment saying how one snack isn't really that bad {Cindy, I'm looking at you}, do know that I feed my kids well a lot of the time. They eat a lot of fresh fruit, and I offer a lot of fresh vegetables {that they usually don't eat}. They drink plenty of low-fat milk and eat a balanced diet.
Starting today, though, I'm going to be more cognizant of all the other stuff, the snacky foods that they eat because we buy them, the junk that wouldn't be missed if it weren't here.
What do your kids eat for snacks?
This isn't a sponsored post, but since I know I'm going to get emails about the brand, here are the nut chips I buy on Amazon. We get ours at Walmart because they're cheaper.
Cindy says
You caught me. I was totally thinking "She is just way too hard on herself. Crackers are OK!" I thought my computer was damaged when I spit my coffee all over the keyboard reading this the other morning. Glad it was your plugin crashing the browser instead. 😉
Seriously, though, you're right! It doesn't do any good at all to model good choices for our kids if we just turn around and push them to do the easy thing just to give ourselves a break. Nor does it help much if we make them clean their rooms and then fail to clean ours (she said as she surveyed her own bedroom, guiltily). Most life lessons are more caught than taught.
Tara Ziegmont says
I know you. 😉
Figuring out the crashing has taken over a week. It's insane! There was an ad widget causing trouble, and then the plugin I was using to have the cool Pin It button when you hover over images was the ultimate culprit. Anyway, it's all fixed.
You are full of sage one-liners. I'm going to put this on a pillow or something: Most life lessons are more caught than taught.
Cindy says
I probably heard that one somewhere before. I can't remember, I've said it so much.
Alyssa says
My kids, the younger two by themselves ate a huge bag of grapes in the last two days. I wanted to put some in a chicken salad for tomorrow and all but a tiny handful are GONE!