HERE COMES DECEMBER - WEEKLY CHAT 11/28 - 12/04

[AnnaB]

Good morning!

I hope you have a great start to your week! I've been to the dietician this morning - will tell you more about it later.

Are you excited about the reveal? I am! I love this kit so much!

[Funky Fairy]

Good Morning,

Wow, my first time here in a week.
Bloody pc!!!!

Hope it all went well Anna.
Off to have a catch up now.

[mable]

Hope everythings ok Anna.

Nice to see you back Lisa.

Really looking forward to Reveal, more so being my very first one

[DeniseM]

I am so interested to hear about your meeting Anna.

glad you are back Lisa.

rushing, rushing this morning. back to the grind. will be back later today and chat about the reveal. you ladies are going to flip when you see this kit. It's gorgeous.

have a great day!

[Sherry C]

Anna, does the happy face indicate good news? (I hope so!)

We missed you, Lisa, welcome back!

Ready for reveal...

[AnnaB]

I don't think all our food issues will be solved in a wink (is it in a wink or in a blink? ) but it felt really good talking to the dietitian this morning. Trying not to write a novel... she suggested that we try this strategy:

-be very strict with rules regarding how to behave at the table, if they aren't able to sit still they'll have to leave. BUT, it's ok to eat with the hands and we're not to nag about the "smaller" things, but focusing on the more acute ones - the things that really ruin our meals today.

- make sure we serve varied food

- not have any rules about what or how much they have to eat, but let them eat only pasta one day if that's what the want and only meatballs another day... but of course have all the other things that complete a meal, on the table (and if possible on their plates)

The huge difference is that we've always said that they've had to taste everything, even if it was only a tiny bit.

The thought behind this new strategy is most easily explained by using one example that I started by saying that we can see that Linus has made up his mind that everything new is impossible to eat, and I compared the situation to if someone would offer me ants or worms. That's how hard it is for him to try new things with an open mind, and that's why the result is always that he didn't like it, when he tries something new.

The dietitian then said that there's a higher possibility that I would actually try the ants if all the others at my table ate their ants every day, without asking/forcing me to try, than if I was constantly forced to have a bite. If I watched others enjoy their ants long enough, perhaps I'd eventually be curious and try them myself. It sort of makes sense!

As it is now, Linus takes his "ants" as a tiny bite that he swallows with as little chewing as possible, with lots of milk or water. It really doesn't do a lot of good.

I don't know if this will work. It's quite possible that he won't eat a single thing that he doesn't know that he likes. But it's worth a try. We'll have a phone contact with the dietitian after Christmas and then we'll decide how to move on and if we need to try another strategy. Since he is growing the way he is supposed to, he does eat "enough" in total and it's not a medical problem... but still sooo complicated.

Ha ha... I guess I did write a book after all...

[ellen s]

The dietitian then said that there's a higher possibility that I would actually try the ants if all the others at my table ate their ants every day, without asking/forcing me to try, than if I was constantly forced to have a bite. If I watched others enjoy their ants long enough, perhaps I'd eventually be curious and try them myself. It sort of makes sense!

That is really interesting. I never looked at it this way but it makes total sense. We have struggled with owen coming into his own with trying food as well. Have you ever heard of a kid that didn't like mashed potatoes or mac n cheese? it's been a struggle. I think it is hard, or at least for us it has been, because people always want to give us advice on how to "help" him try more food. We would sit at the table for hours just to get him to try one bite of something and nice dinners would just be awful b/c of the dramatics. I really hope it helps. That dietician sounds very knowledgeable.

[mison]

Since I´ve used to be around here every single day it feels like forever since I stepped by Well, hope everyone had a great thanksgiving. The weekend at work was pretty ok - no bigger disaster .

Alice and Svens stayed at home today. Apparently Alice had fever last night, but was pretty much ok this morning. The rule is that they have to stay at home for one day without fever before getting back to daycare. She´s going tomorrow....

Since half the family stayed at home today, we took the opportunity to go and pick out new glasses for Max. Red/orange ones was his choice - he is into color my little man...

Anna - your appointment with the dietitian sounded like a good one! Gave me ideas how to tackle our little stubborn 3 yo too.

Won´t be around for the reveal tonight. Too tired! Will snuggle up in the bed with "our" book for a while and then hit the pillow early.

See you all tomorrow.

[Sherry C]

Anna, The visit with the dietician sounds promising, good luck!

We woke up to a dusting of snow this morning -- it's beautiful! Our kids were already on a two hour school delay this morning from all the rain we had the last few days. I think this morning before school, we will take our Christmas card photo! I love checking that off my list of holiday things to do!

[DeniseM]

Yeah for the snow Sherry!

Hi Marie, missed you last week. Hope things are good.

anna, your meeting sounds good. I guess we sort of did those things w/o realizing it. Conner is now 15 and actually will eat so many more foods than he used to. We never made him special things but we would always have things on the table that he would eat. I think the main thing that I learned is not to put any extra energy into his food choices, I mean, we finally stopped focusing so much on what he was eating. Less drama. He is a picky eater, okay. end of story. we just stopped paying attention to it and meals became much nicer. I hope he will eat vegetables some day, they are always on the table but I am not going to hound him anymore about it. He takes vitamins.

sorry I missed the reveal. I popped in but then was making dinner, talking with kids about stuff, and then crashed on the couch with my hubby and fell asleep. Yesterday was a long day after having four days off.

I wanted to scrap this week but it looks like I may not get a chance until the weekend.

Hope you are all well. have a great day.

[Asil]

Hi all!

Hope you all had fun yesterday on reveal day. What a month - great kits!!
Hardly anay time to surf around these days, and on top of that Xmas is getting closer.. A tiny bit of panic is starting to creep up on me.. Nevermind!

Tiny's watching Handy Manny, junior's on hockey practice, I'm on the couch trying to stay awake.. And now tiny wants food, so I better fix her evening meal. About food: I never give them options - what they see is what they eat. Or, that's what the can eat. It's their choice if they do or don't, and if they don't - well, hello "hunger" until next meal. Thankfully they're not that picky anymore (junior hardly eat anything for about two years..), and eat their greens. Usually.. Sometimes..

I better fix her that meal - little miss drama is turning the volume up.

[mison]

Denise - glad to be missed

Asil - so your boy does play hockey as well. I could so relate to what you told - sofa, computer, sleepiness, food crises

STILL no snow here - it is +7 degrees Celsius and stormy. I kind of miss snow and have problems understanding that it´s soon Christmas...

Big task ahead of me today - trying to get tickets for a Springsteen concert in July. A BIG task since they usually sell out in 10 minutes. Wish me luck!

[AnnaB]

Good morning!

Our weather is the same as yours Marie. +7 C and a bit windy. Linus says he is longing for snow about 10 times/day. I do too, but at the same time a lot of things are easier without it and therefore I'm not desperate.

Asil, we've been pretty strict too when it comes to food. But things have only gotten worse and worse during so many years now. Linus started eating fewer and fewer things when he was around 2-3 and when he was 4 or 5 they talked to us about this problem at daycare. Up until then we always believed it was mostly at home that he didn't eat and that things were ok at daycare. Now he is 8 and yesterday Johan was with Linus at the yearly "talk" at school and one of the things his teacher addressed, was the fact that he doesn't eat much.

He has never complained much about being hungry in the evenings, even when he had almost no dinner at all. But it has happened several times that he's been all pale and shaky and felt really bad in the mornings, because he hardly ate the day before. And when that happens you kind of want to make sure he eats the day after...

This and the fact that there are so many arguments and so much trouble at the table when he doesn't like the food, made us cook the things he does eat more and more often. But we never ever changed our mind in the middle of the meal and offered him something else etc... Sometimes we have bread to the meal, but we never take it out because he is not eating. Either it's there from the beginning or it's not there at all. But it really is so hard to put something on the table when you know he will only eat 5 grains of rice and nothing else...

Lately he is also more hungry than before. I guess it's because he's getting older. This autumn it has happened a few times that he has started to cry, when I've told him what we're having for dinner.

I don't know what will happen with this new strategy, but I'm so happy that we're doing something!

And when it comes to school and what Johan got to hear yesterday - apart from the eating - things are going really well and it's such a relief!

I don't know what happened to yesterday. I was logged in here, but never got the time to post. Alva and I did a little painting. We also took Tuva to a doctor's check up and she was all ok. She's now weighing 7,8 kg.

Right now my plan is to do some drawing while Tuva is sleeping. I really should do the laundry... but I hope that I'll have time for that later on.

I hope you'll get the tickets Marie...!!!!

[Sharmaine]

anna, glad you have some ideas of what to do and hope there is some resolutions in there.
Denise, hope you have oodles of scrappy energy for the weekend.
Asil, yay to guesting, can't wait to see your gallery
Sherry!! LOVE snow, excited for you!
Marie, did you get tickets??!!
Lisa, so glad you are back online
I was back at the doctor today (insert very tired sigh). Jessica has been on antibiotics for her sinus infection, yesterday she started getting spots... she's now the third daughter to be allergic to penicillin. So we were back the the Dr today to get some non penicillin antibiotics. I was thankful for being able to get 2 appointments back to back because Megan has a throat infection (insert even more tired sigh) and now has the same non penicillin antibiotics.
Elizabeth had her best day so far on Monday but has gone to bed tonight with an upset belly and diarrhea (insert an over it sigh). Hoping that it's nothing and she sleeps through the night.
TOmorrow Dave's mum arrives for 2 nights. Love having her to stay, doesn't happen often
She's here for Megan's big band concert on Friday night. The girls don't know so I am looking forward to the excitment from the surprise Going to pick her up from the airport with Elizabeth midday tomorrow. Will tell Elizabeth that we will go see who we might see at the airport

[mison]

Anna - we got the tickets!!!!