You Can Forget Trying to Fool This Girl

My Grace hates fruit. She'll eat any vegetable you put in front of her, but give her a piece of fruit, and she scrunches up her itty-bitty face and shoves the spoon away. Her swift movement usually results in my spilling the fruit.

She will however eat baby food fruit if I mix it with her oatmeal. And since juice is made from fruit, she doesn't drink that either. Even the watered down stuff is a no-go. To get around this, I make the oatmeal with the juice.

Tonight as I was making her dinner, I thought I'd try and give her tiny bits of peaches and cherries from a fruit cup in the cupboard. Grace has to feed herself at dinner time, so I thought maybe if she was feeding herself the fruit, she'd eat it.

Step 1: I put tiny bits of fruit on her highchair tray.

Step 2: She touches it, but won't pick them up.

Step 3: Thinking she wants her plate, I put the pieces on her plate.

Step 4: She touches them, touches the plate, picks up the plate, flips it upside down on the floor.

Step 5: After picking up the pieces of fruit from the floor, I try again. This was the first mistake.

Step 6: Grace takes the plate and turns it into a food frisbee. There was food EVERYWHERE. I found fruit on the wall, the floor, and the fridge. None in her belly though.

Step 7: Clean everything up, give her three pieces of banana. She touches them, picks one up, but doesn't eat it. She then proceeds to bang on her highchair (We have Matt to thank for this.). I give her three Puffs. Now, the puffs look just like the banana. When I looked back, all the Puffs were gone, and the bananas were still sitting there.

Step 8: Go back to giving Grace fruit in her oatmeal.

My 2010 Anti-Resolutions

1. I will not eat beat myself up over eating multiple sugar cookies or buckeyes or pieces fudge every time I walk in the kitchen at Christmas. Who has the willpower to walk away from all that goodness? Not me. Maybe that is why I gained so much weight in the two weeks we've been on winter break.

2. I will not keep clothes that I haven't worn in over a year. Quite frankly, I find it a little disturbing that I still have clothes that I wore in high school.

3. I will not give up coffee.

4. I will not let 105 seventh graders let my blood pressure rise to abnormal limits.

5. I will not give up procrastinating. As much as I pains me to write this, I admit I am a procrastinator. I wait until the last minute to grade 105 essays. I wait my shoes are piling up at the front door before I haul them upstairs just to start the cycle again. I wait until the door is sagging from the amount of clothes waiting to be ironed before I drag out the iron. I wait.

6. I will not turn into a texting-obsessed person who can't even sit through a dinner at a restaurant with friends without pulling out the cell phone to check on her husband. (insert rolling eyes).

7. I will not send my family into a swirling amount of debt just to keep up with what is "in" or "cool" or to keep up with what everyone else is sporting. I'm just fine with my low-tech cell phone (I just upgraded to one that actually sends videos. It still flips though. That is apparently out-of-style now.). I'm just fine with my $10 purse from TJ Maxx.

8. I will not forget to use stickers. What kid doesn't love stickers?

9. I will not be sad when my birthday rolls around this year. Maybe I won't be told to get in line as I walk my students to the computer lab.

10. I will NEVER stop loving my beautiful Grace.

Thoughts on Traditions

"The way you celebrate Christmas can be a gift in itself, handing down traditions that will give your child a feeling of continuity, comfort and joy in all the Christmases to come."
-Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers' Neighborhood)


I'm a quote hoarded. When I read a quote that sticks with me, I write them down. Sometimes I'll find a post-it note stuffed in a magazine or a random drawer with a quote I liked written on it. It's always a nice surpise to find a long-lost quote.

Anyway, this is the quote I found this morning. And since it is Christmastime, and I'm stuck inside because the wind is howling too badly for me to take Grace sledding, I figured I could think about traditions.

One of my favorite memories is decorating our Christmas tree. Our tree is a hodge-podge of ornaments. Each one of us has a personalized name ornament from Bronners. There are handmade ornaments from my "wish-I-was-crafty" stages. There those oh-so-wonderful paper ornaments we made in elementary school with our school pictures smack dab in the middle. And then there is a mixture of old and new ornaments gathered throughout the years. This is my parents' tree, but the tree Matt and I have at our home resembles this one.

We have the Bronners' ornaments with our names. I have handmade ornaments from students. I have extremely old ornaments that belonged to my grandparents. My Cabbage Patch kid ornament and mouse ornament are two of my favorites. Matt has an Onsted football player ornament with the number #8 on the jersey.

Putting up our tree is one tradition that will remain close to my heart. As soon as Grace is old enough, I hope she'll enjoy this tradition and hearing about each and every ornament on that tree.
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I had every intention to write about more than one tradition. I guess I'll save them for another post.

A Belated Wish

Merry Christmas

Forget Presents, Give the Girl a Sock or Strings or Paper

December 25th will mark Grace's first Christmas. But if her track record continues, I have a feeling that she won't be too interested in the presents. Instead, she'll continue to eat... her socks

and the strings on anyone's sweatshirts

or paper.

Her new found paper fettish leads me to believe instead of playing with the presents, she will eating the wrapping paper.

Santa Baby

Wordless Wednesday