A Small Success

I am quite the proud aunt. My sister M is a great mom and cook. BooBoo is a good litter eater who is fairly adventerous for a 2 1/2 year old as well as a fruit fiend. While she gets lots of different foods at home and my parents house she has started to learn that there are special things she gets to do and eat at Aunt Lily and Uncle B's.

She likes to feed the fish and knows that they get "just a pinch". We check the garden when ever she comes over; she asks what's growing and likes to see the baby plants. She also will pluck at plants and taste them, although she still spits most of them out and offers them to me. Yummy. She almost always had some chocolate (soy) milk. She has a special bar stool that we move around the kitchen so she can help me do the dishes and cook. Jewel nearly always keeps her company when she is sitting on it - too precious. She likes to check the bread dough to see if it has bubbles. We always read the "poo poo" book (Everybody Poops) and A Turtle in the Toilet, in both of which she can now identify all the animals.

Most recently she tells M that she wants to go to Aunt Lily's and have a "smoovie". I let her pick the color (okay, I usually subletly encourage one). She knows to cover her ears when I run the blender. A trick to getting kids to like smoothies that are not just fruit is to let them pick the color because colors are fun! Also, use a lot more fruit in the begining and then gradually add more veggies. She really liked her green smoothie (spinach, banana, orange, pineapple, and water) but last time she picked pink and pink she got - hot pink! This one is strawberries, banana, orange, a raw beet, and water. So my small success is getting my neice to willingly consume "green smoovies". Plus I just like to brag, she is so fun; she now wrinkles her nose up whenever you point a camera at her :o)