Cinderella helping with the cleaning. Edie's birthday is just around the corner and her one year check up is next week. Since food has been an epic battle for us from the time we introduced solids at 6 months, this is the point I'm most interested in discussing with the doctor. How will she possibly get enough to eat with the one bite here - one bite there attitude she has right now? I've done a crap job of getting the bottle out of the picture for this reason, but this birthday has sort of rushed up on me. Since Edie hates most foods, the bottle has been my go-to in times of frustration. After pushing like 20 different foods at lunch, for example, I will finally resort to the bottle because I keep thinking, "She needs her calories somehow, right?"
Her bottles are now about 1/3 whole milk and I plan to keep upping that ratio until we're working with all whole milk in a week or two, but the sippy cup part seems to have taken a step backwards. I think Edie got so used to drinking only water from her sippy cup, that now when she takes a drink and finds milk she gets confused and spits it out. Then she presses the sippy cup spout into the table or ground until it leaks the milk all over and she can draw pictures in the milk with her fingers. So. Frustrating.
I don't know... I talked to my Mom tonight while trying to convince Edie that bread and cheese is delicious (no dice) and expressed my frustration. I was saying that maybe I just need to go hard-core about this and only offer her the sippy cup from now on. No matter how pissed she gets. My Mom even suggested we could formally say goodbye to the bottles with Edie. I figure it's like Crying It Out but for food. Am I off base? I'm not suggesting cramming food down her throat (she wouldn't let me if I tried), I'm just saying that I will offer her plenty of food when she is hungry, as well as the same amount of milk she's used to, just in sippy cup form. I'm pretty sure it's going to be ugly, but maybe I'm ready for it.
Also? I was complaining to Jeff about the food war when he got home tonight and he took it as his personal goal to get Edie to eat something for dinner. He somehow got her to (willingly) eat: salami, plain Greek yogurt, a bite of a cherry tomato, grapes, strawberries and.... wait for it.... are you ready? .... PEANUT BUTTER. So yeah. I guess we'll find out tonight if Edie's allergic to peanuts. Seriously though, is that not the grossest combination of foods ever? When I turned around and saw Edie sucking on Jeff's finger I quietly asked (already guessing the answer), "What is she eating?" When he told me peanut butter I shrieked. But then, I don't know. It was too late to take it back, so I guess we'll just find out. The good news is that she liked it. Hopefully there IS no bad news.
3 comments:
I have a photo of you at 5mos gripping a hard roll w/ crumbs all over your face. I could turn it into a poster for your kitchen...hee!?
When we first put milk in a sippy cup for Marina, she did the same thing: spit it out, made a face, tapped it upside down and drew pictures in the milk puddles. The next time I warmed the milk just slightly and gave it to her again in the sippy cup. That seemed to help. Marina had never had water straight out of the fridge so I thought maybe the cold temperature of the milk might be unappealing to her. Anyway, it took a couple of days but now she is GUZZLING milk from her sippy. Just stick with it and she'll take it. As Greg likes to say, "Hunger is the best sauce." (We usually reference that with regards to our incredibly picky dog but it's the same concept.)
Emmi does the milk pictures too. She hasn't gotten the milk switch yet, but it seems like she is weaning herself off the formula. But she REFUSES the sippy cup. She is gung-ho about water or juice in the sippy cup, but formula gets a big ol' "hells no mom! wtf you thinkin' lady?" and the cup is tossed to the floor. I've been contemplating the same exact thing - do I just toss the bottles and say no more, you'll drink it if you really need/want it. We have Emmi's appointment on Monday and I'm planning on this being the number one topic. I'll let you know what we attempt.
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