Man cannot live on PB&J alone

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Toddler Questions: Apps, Brushing Teeth, Eating (Again)

Apps:

Our trip to visit my parents is coming up, and with it four very long flights on an airplane. Carla has a tablet for just this kind of occasion (also for going out to restaurants when her parents cannot stand the thought of cooking/washing dishes), and so I am on the lookout for some new apps. Is it apps? Suddenly that’s making me think of appetizers. Or aps? It’s not apse, I know that. (Although I still couldn’t tell you which is the apse and which is the transept or how they are related except by “church.”)

Carla’s favorite apps include:

Toca Pet Doctor (My husband and I recently got into a nearly-heated discussion about why it’s “pet doctor” instead of “vet.” My husband’s explanation is that the “healing” has nothing whatsoever to do with veterinary medicine. My retort is that nor does it have anything to do with any sort of “doctoring.”)

Toca Pet Doctor.jpg

(Image from Tocaboca.com)

 

Toca Hair Salon

Toca Hair Salon

(Image from appsplayground.com)

 

Sago mini Ocean Swimmer

Sago Ocean Swimmer

(Image from googleplay.com)

 

Sago mini Road Trip

Sago Road Trip

(Image from itunes.com)

 

Dr. Panda Restaurant

DrPanda Restaurant

(Image from smartappsforkids.com)

 

Dr. Panda Airport – I love this one because it requires simple counting and number/letter recognition, as well as understanding of matching concepts. Plus it’s fun.

DrPanda Airport

(Image from topbestappsforkids.com)

 

Sago mini Toolbox

Sago Toolbox

(Image from gabdar.com)

We also have Sago mini Monsters, but I don’t know if she’s ever played it. It seems a little simplistic. And we have Toca Boo, which Carla likes in concept (scaring people while dressed as a ghost), but is a little advanced for her, so she gets bored quickly.And there was a Sago mini Friends app we had on our ancient second-gen iPad, which Carla loved as well.

We are always on the lookout for fun apps for Carla. Especially if they are free or very low-cost. Any apps that your toddler loves?

 

Brushing Teeth

Speaking of apps, I was thinking that it would be SO GREAT if there were an app that was connected digitally to a child’s toothbrush. The image on the screen would be of a mouth with lots of gunk on the teeth. And the child would be able to remove the gunk by brushing his/her own teeth. AND the gunk would come off only after two minutes of brushing. HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?

Because brushing teeth is becoming a HUGE power play around here. My husband and I have exhausted our collective creativity on the subject. For a while, Carla liked being A Big Girl and brushing her teeth. For a short while, she liked me or her father to brush her teeth for her. For a short while, she would “compete” with one of us to see who could brush their teeth most quickly. For a shorter while, she accepted the dentist’s recommendation that we be the ones to brush her teeth. There were a few days when she would enthusiastically “teach” her baby doll or one of her stuffed animals to brush their teeth by watching her. Of course, my husband or I had to narrate the entire time. There were a few days when she thought it was hilarious for me to brush her teeth while she had her thumb in her mouth. Then two thumbs. Once in a while, she will brush her teeth to a toothbrushing song or video on YouTube. Lately, I have been allowing her to watch Elmo videos while I brush her teeth.

Every day, it’s something new. You never know whether she’ll be game for whatever stupid game you’ve dreamed up or you’ll end up feeling like a teakettle about to boil over.

It’s a NIGHTMARISH ORDEAL, is what I’m saying.

HOW in the WIDE WIDE WORLD do you get a stubborn, control-enthusiast toddler to brush her teeth?

 

Eating (again)

Last night for dinner, Carla had two tablespoons of peanut butter and 12 slices of pepperoni.

I mean.

She can’t SURVIVE like this, right? How is she surviving?

As usual, I served her a meal that had a variety of things. AND, the variety was things that she LIKES and has eaten with gusto in the past. (Read: no guarantee she will ever eat again.) I gave her fish sticks (with plenty of ketchup), cheesy noodles, and cheesy broccoli. But no. She put a tiny bite of fish stick into her mouth and then spat it out. “I don’t LIKE it,” she said, beseechingly. SIGH.

She asked for rice off of my plate, then didn’t eat it.

We THREATENED. She has presents to open from the party this weekend, and we said she MUST eat three fish sticks in order to open them. Nope. Nothing more than the teeny little taste that came right back out.

So. Peanut butter and pepperoni it is.

She used to be GREAT about yogurt. And I felt fine with giving her a (whole milk, full fat) yogurt anytime, anywhere. But now she is finicky and not interested. Oh! That DOES remind me that she and I made some yogurt “popsicles” that I should try and get her to eat.

Breakfast used to be a fair guarantee that she’d eat: a pancake or two, a French toast stick or two, plus some fruit, plus an applesauce pouch, plus a yogurt pouch. Lately? She’ll eat a handful of berries, a bite of a starch… and some Cheez Its.

This morning she had twelve Frosted Mini Wheats (she’s very into counting things; there were 20 to begin with, and it took about 890 minutes to eat the twelve and then we were late) and about a half cup of blackberries and raspberries. And an applesauce pouch in the car.

And that’s the other thing. Meals drag. On. For. Ever. I wake her up at 7:00, and we’re “eating” by 7:15… but it takes until 8:30 to be done. And even then, it’s only by setting timers and urging her to KEEP EATING FTLOG and then we have to be finished even if she’s not done. Dinner time is a series of ups and downs and “I need water” and “I need a spoon” “no a different spoon” “no a BIG GIRL spoon” and “I have to go potty” until we strap her into her booster seat. And then it’s eating nothing and trying small bites and arguing and wheedling and negotiating until finally I set the timer for bath time. And then she wants something else! That she doesn’t eat! And something else! And something else! Until I am ready to throw in the towel and all the bedsheets and a canopy besides.

I know – I know – that EATING is one of the few ways she can exert control over her universe. But it is driving me mad. MAD.

And also nervous. Because how is she surviving? She eats less than a bird.

Do I just… continue along this path – offering good food, then when she refuses it, give her an alternate option? (And please keep in mind that I asked her what she wanted for dinner – between two options – and she chose fish sticks so it’s not like I haven’t tried THAT tack.) I cannot put her to bed hungry. I know it’s an option, and it’s one that we’ve tried. But it just doesn’t work for us.

WHAT ELSE IS THERE?

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Go-To Dinners That Your Kids Will Eat (When They Won’t Eat Anything Else)

For the second time in recent memory, Carla woke up at 4:00 am last night and crawled into bed with me and my husband. She did not fall back to sleep, but stroked my back and hair in a nice but un-restful way until I finally scooped her up and put her back into her room. The whole time I was tucking her in, she was sobbing about how hungry she was.

And I wasn’t surprised! She barely ate anything for dinner last night. The other time she woke up in the middle of the night, hungry, she’d eaten nothing – literally not a single bite – of food. That time, I’d carried her down into the kitchen, refusing to turn on the lights, and plied her with a yogurt pouch and an applesauce pouch and then put her back to bed.

I am trying to be very zen about the eating thing. I tell myself that Carla eats a good breakfast and a good lunch (according to her teachers), so if she picks at dinner, it’s not a huge deal.

But it’s getting more difficult to feel okay about that plan, especially if her empty stomach is waking her up in the wee hours.

To add to the trouble, my normal “she’ll almost always eat this” go-to foods aren’t working that well anymore.

We typically cook a separate dinner for Carla. This was long a function of timing – she and I would arrive home at six, and I couldn’t get a proper dinner on the table quickly enough to stem the post-school crankiness and hunger. But it’s also a function of Carla’s out-and-out rejection of 90% of the foods my husband and I enjoy.

I have long been a picky eater – even the idea of certain textures and tastes turn my stomach – so I have a hard time forcing Carla to eat things she isn’t interested in. We’ve been trying to encourage tasting – one taste, and if you don’t like it, fine. But most of the time, she won’t even try something new. Won’t even LICK it. So I do plenty of offering – asparagus, zucchini, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, chicken, steak, hamburger, pork – but rarely get any interest. Sometimes I will put these things on her plate – especially if my husband and/or I are eating with her at the same time, so she can see us eating and enjoying them – but they inevitably go uneaten. Or worse, pushed off the plate onto the table or the floor. (We are working on that. Drives me batty.) And I HATE wasting food.

She also shares my dislike of foods mixed together – albeit to an extreme degree. (She will eat tacos, but only if they are deconstructed: meat in one pile, shell in another, tomatoes in another, sour cream somewhere else.) So chili and spaghetti with meat sauce and lasagna and soup and ravioli and casseroles etc. etc. are pretty much out.

So I fall back on these stand-bys:

  • Fish sticks
  • Meatballs
  • Chicken nuggets
  • Pierogis
  • Pizza
  • Noodles
  • Peanut butter and jelly
  • Yogurt
  • Taco meat
  • Any and all chips of any kind

On rare occasions, she will gobble up a piece of salmon or a bowl of chickpea curry. Some days, she will gulp down a bowl of green beans or broccoli. Noodles and rice are usually a good bet (although macaroni and cheese has been ignored a lot recently). She sometimes eats corn. She usually eats pickles (but never cucumbers – I get it; I’m the same) and sometimes baby carrots. She’s never met a berry she won’t eat by the truckload, and eats lots of other fruits – although she goes through phases with bananas, sometimes eating two a day, other times eating a bite and then maddeningly throwing the entire rest of it into the garbage before I can stop her. Cheese is a mystery – I can never tell when she’ll eat it or not; the same extends to grilled cheese sandwiches. She seems to eat hot dogs if I send them in her lunch, but won’t touch them at home. She used to LOVE yams, but hasn’t given them a second glance lately.

Driven by a desire to instill some sort of “well-rounded” eating habits, I offer her protein and veggies for every meal. (I don’t know how “breaded meats” fit into “well-rounded eating,” but we take what we can get.)

Now, though, Carla claims she is bored with these foods. And who can blame her! But I have, it turns out, no imagination when it comes to kid-friendly dinners. And I just don’t know if moving to a full-on “we all eat the same meal” will… work.

I’ve tried to google “kid-friendly foods” and have even looked on pinterest, but the number of options so overwhelms me that I find myself right back where I started, offering fish sticks that she used to devour but that now languish coldly on her plate.

My kind mother tells me, when I fret to her, that my cousin ate only noodles and butter for years and he turned out okay. So I know – I KNOW – it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she ate only peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of her childhood, but man. I don’t know if I have the stomach for it.