Looky Looky! That Ain't No Cookie!

It's only the second week of NaBloPoMo and I've already missed several days. Honestly, with my blogging track record recently, I am happy to be blogging once a week. I'm also happy to see my traffic going up. Hi everyone!

Love Invents Us has kindly published some prompts and thank g-d for that! I will definitely use some of them this month.

After our visit with the girls' aunt this week, I wanted to talk about all the weirdness and politics that goes on in our donor sibling group with our donors' family (our open donor from the sperm bank became a known donor after he died a while back), but I started writing that post and I'm getting all tangled up. Too many things to explain to do that easily, so I will save that for later!

So let's talk about toddler eating habits.

We have a girl who eats most anything (loves BROCK-y! olives! pickles! all the things toddlers don't normally like! ) and a girl who eats very few things. We are lucky that our girl who eats very few things mainly prefers plain and/or healthy things like tofu, but she still frustrates us daily. Regular foods both of them are: pasta, tofu, plain yogurt, peanut butter (on waffles/toast), black beans and rice, hot dogs (organic chicken, beef or turkey), bananas (and other fruit- they never refuse fruit!), waffles, eggs. Ru used to eat cheese, but she's stopped that too. They don't drink juice and they only have cake or cookies or other desserts on rare special occasions.

How do we get them to eat vegetables? I'd add veg to sauces if Ru would eat sauce on anything.

We are trying so hard to keep power struggles away from the table. We offer things, but we don't push. Instead, if Ru refuses to eat what's being served, we'll give her a serving of plain yogurt or beans or something else. But seriously, she LOOKS at food and decides she's not going to eat it. There's no "just taste it"... we don't even get to that point. As girls with food issues, we want to keep our kids from struggling- especially since they will most likely have weight problems with their genes, let's be honest. We don't want them to feel pressure because we don't want them to eat every bite of something just because someone offered it (unless they want to of course). But dang, sometimes you just want to force them to eat just a bite.

Anyone have tips? Or a cookbook you like?

Oh what a blah day

Went to bed on time last night, but then I woke up at 1:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night. I can't keep my mind from whatever bad stuff is going on. Right now that's money. There's not much you can do to fix that kind of problem in the middle of the night. Consequently, I was tired and down and anxious all day, culminating in a very teary ride home. So I'm going to sleep now before it gets any later!

In under the wire

Donor's sister is visiting this week. She's twenty, and being around her makes me realize how very old I am. She just teased me for watching Cosby Show as my comforting palate cleanser after the goriness of Walking Dead. Apparently, no one her age ever watched it- they all made fun of it! Ah well. At least when I check F.b in the middle of a conversation with her, she doesn't think I'm totally rude! Guess there are tradeoffs. :)

Trick or Treat!

Trick or treating was a success! I have a cute video too, but I will have to wait until later to show you... I can't figure out how to move it over from F.b.

El was a bear, Ru was a kitty. We tried to use eyeliner and lipstick to give them whiskers and noses, but they flipped out, so we gave up. Our neighborhood has its own little parade. We took the girls over. El was so busy looking around at people that she kept running into strollers, curbs, and other people. Ru instantly got into the swing of trick-or-treating, but it took El a bit to warm up. After a few houses, they were ready to climb the stairs to get their treats. We didn't get them to say "trick-or-treat" but they were saying please and thank you. Polite kids make me happy.

Zazie gave them each a piece of candy corn yesterday, so all day long they were asking for more "Corn!" (they didn't get any). El carried two candy bars around in her left hand while she trick-or-treated. They'd shift, she'd set her pumpkin and the chocolates on the sidewalk, readjust the chocolates in her hand and keep walking. Thank goodness they don't know from candy yet, but I think I have a candy hangover from all that I ate last night. I think all the sugar made me catch a cold.

Ruby has started saying "yes, ma'am!"- that's a little weird, because we're not a yes ma'am no ma'am house, but sometimes, I'll say yes ma'am in response to something. Maybe that's it?

Speaking of the opposite of polite, we went to the neighborhood Chinese place to get dinner on the way back. A pre-teen came in with his buddies and he was asking the guy behind the counter how much a chicken wing costs. Guy tells him 1 wing is a dollar. Kid says Will you give me 2 for $1.50? (Uh, yeah, kid, this guy's going to barter with you) Guy doesn't respond for a minute. Kid gets belligerent, saying something like "You know, it's Bloods' week and I'm gonna tell them to come pop you." Kid turns to his friends, who are both like, no man, they're not going to come all the way out here for Chinese food. Then he's saying stuff about s*ck my *ahem* to this guy. It was all I could do to not say "look, kid, my girls don't need to hear your foul mouth," but I held my tongue. Until the kid turns to me when we're walking out the door and says "did you hear him tell me to s*ck his *ahem*?" Well, that just flipped my old lady switch. I said,"I'm sure he did NOT tell you any such thing. And you need to not be so disrespectful to him." I'm not sure what the kid thought the outcome would be, but it was clear he was a little taken aback. Thank goodness that turned out well because it so easily could've gone the other way. Preteens are scary because they're unpredictable.