Vegetables

I love fruits and vegetables.  I really do. I like them at breakfast, at lunch, and at dinner.  I enjoy their variety of colors and flavors and all the different and interesting ways there are to eat and cook them.  Don't get me wrong, though... given the choice of a piece of chocolate cake or a pile of peas, I'd pick the cake 9 times out of 10.  But overall, I'd say Josh and I do pretty well in consuming a wide variety of fruits and vegetables on most days.  My Buggy, however, she does not like the fruits and vegetables.  Not really at all.

I've tried to follow all the advice out there about teaching a child to be a healthy eater.  When she was a baby, I spent hours making homemade purees, then soups and casseroles, all chock full of wholesome, organic produce goodness with just the right textures and seasonings for a budding eater.  She ate it all with gusto.  As she got older, we continued to offer her a variety of fruits and vegetables and as the months passed, she rejected more and more of them. 

In her 2s, she went through a phase of loving broccoli.  She'd only eat it steamed, pureed, and mixed with salt, pepper, olive oil, and pam-zan cheese (freshly grated, K?).  She liked to add all the seasoning herself and then she'd eat big bowlfuls of this concoction.  I told myself that if she was eating a bowlful of broccoli every other day, I didn't really care what other fruits and vegetables, if any, she would eat. Sadly, one day she rejected the broccoli and it is only in recent weeks, after many months on hiatus, that she will eat this dish again.

And other than broccoli, she is willing only to eat peas, roasted sweet potatoes, dried strawberries, the occasional fresh strawberry, and sometimes a smoothie.  This leaves, well, an entire universe practically of produce items out there that she will not eat.

I read that if you grow vegetables in your garden, your kid will pick them and eat them right up out of a grand sense of pride at growing something.  Ella helped me plant tomato plants, waters them with glee, runs outside to pick 'her tomatoes' whenever she spots a new one ripening on the vine.  She feeds them to us with great pleasure.  But will she eat them?  Not even a teeny tiny bite.

I also read that if your kid picks out their produce, they are more likely to eat it.  Ella has been to the grocery store, the Farmer's Market, and the pick-up for our share in a local farm countless times.  She loves to help pick out our produce, see how it feels and even how it smells.  But eating this bounty?  Ha.

I try to make my parenting mantra "this too shall pass".  But when?

Blogging begins

For months, maybe even years, I've thought about writing a blog.  I like to read other people's blogs, both people I know and others written by strangers that I've just stumbled upon.  I even admit to liking Facebook (so not cool, right?) and the chance to share my thoughts with a wide world of friends.  But sometimes, the Facebook format is too short for my big (or really, not so big at all, but just long and wordy) thoughts.

So a blog.  Sounds like a good idea.  Except that I have lots of fears about... THE INTERNET.  What does it mean to have a blog that anyone can see?  Is it better to set it to be permission only?  Will anyone really read it if they have to sign in? Do I even care?  Mostly, this blog is for me.  Kind of an electronic journal except a journal that I won't be mortified for my mom to read.  And maybe my family and friends who live far away will enjoy the chance to hear stories about the two cutest kids in the universe (unbiased opinion, of course).

So a blog, great, it's been in the back of my mind for months.  Along with a list 100 items deep, like buying new bedside lamps and finally painting the downstairs powder room something other then boring beige.  Tonight after baby and preschooler bathtime and the 4000th reading of Knuffle Bunny Too and Free (good gracious, I will be able to recite those books when I am 100) and the giving of at least 50 kisses, I sat down at my computer to buy an airline ticket, check on ticket availability to a baseball game, and catch up on some celebrity gossip.   I got the airline ticket but then somehow stumbled my way into setting up a blog. 

The first conundrum? Picking a name.  Naming a blog is hard!  I want the blog, and thus its name, to have something to do with my children or raising children or just generally be cute enough to remember but not so cute that it makes me gag a little every time I sign in.  After a few minutes of free association about my babies, I came up with the name "Buggy and Buddy".  I like to have nicknames for my kids, and now that I have two, I find that I like to have nicknames that go together.   They are often "Tall" and "Small"  or "Buggy" and "Buddy" or some other combination of silly words and sounds that only a mother would call a poor little person.  So Buggy and Buddy it is.

Looking forward to the blogging adventure with you.