Thursday, January 29, 2009

Food Log: January 29

Breakfast: 3-4 graham crackers
Snack: Fruit Nuggets
Lunch: 2 bowls mac and cheese (Annie's organic macaroni and Tofutti "cheese")
Snack: Fruit Nuggets (I know, twice in one day! But she loves them and it made her happy...)
Chocolate (She found some and ate 2 pieces before I realized what was going on...)
Dinner: Yogurt and homemade pizza

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

BPA Free... and cute to boot!


Lately Eliana has been hooked on her sippy cups. It doesn't matter what's in them, she just wants a sippy cup. For comfort. And she doesn't want to drink out of a real cup for dinner.

Ack!

So I bought Ellie some new cups yesterday at Costco, just like her friend Zoe has. These Contigo cups are great! They're leakproof when sealed (though Ellie did discover right away that she can push down the button and pour out of her cup - which she promptly got in trouble for), but the spout opens up for drinking when you push the button. That means no more sucking to get the liquid out! These are big girl cups! And actually, they are recommended for ages 4+, but it seems to me that they are fine so long as the kiddo can coordinate pushing the button, tipping, and drinking all at the same time.

I didn't get the cups BECAUSE they were BPA free, but it is a nice feature. They're also dishwasher safe and don't have extra little valves to pull out, which is nice. Just two peices, the cup and the lid. And Costco's got a 4 pack of them for $12 less than Amazon. I love Costco. =D

Now I'm going to go freecycle MOST of Eliana's sippy cups. Not all of them, I will keep the 4 Gerber ones, but I will freecycle the rest. I really want to break this sippy cup habit!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Food Log: January 27

Apparently, I only do a food log (and an incomplete one at that) once a month, on the 27th. Who knew?

I don't know what Eliana had for breakfast this morning, because Leif got her something while I was still being lazy in bed.

But for lunch she's eating soy yogurt (strawberry) and macaroni (organic Annie's macaroni noodles) and cheese (tofutti melted over top and stirred into the noodles) with hot dogs (turkey hot dogs, the Jennie-O brand).

I realized that I don't really need to keep buying Easy Mac just for the macaroni. I have been buying it, microwaving the (completely processed, un-nutritious) pasta and freecycling the cheese packets. You know, if I'd just take the time to precook some whole wheat macaroni and keep it in the fridge, it would be just as quick to make mac and cheese for her. So I think that's what I'm going to do.

Anyway, food today was....

Breakfast: (I asked Leif what she had)
  • Banana
  • Raisins
Lunch:
  • Soy Yogurt
  • Organic Macaroni with Tofutti Cheese
Dinner:
  • ? (I have a meeting, so it's up to Leif tonight, I think)

Friday, January 23, 2009

potty training...

Since I never blogged about the potty training progress, let me just do that quickly right now...

I haven't changed a dirty diaper in over a week.

That is serious news!! Wet diapers, yes, but dirty diapers? Not in over a week! Here's sort of how it went:

One day a week or two ago Eliana was being especially pesky when it came to getting dressed in the morning. I finally got frustrated with her running away every time I tried to put a pull up on her that I said, "If you don't want to wear a pull-up, Eliana, that's fine. But if you pee on my carpet, you're cleaning it up." I left it at that, fully expecting her to pee on the carpet, have to clean it up, (because, yes, I would have made her clean it up. At least to the best of her ability, with some good work put in) and learn her lesson. Instead, do you know what happened to my little bare-bottomed girl? After a while she stopped playing, looked at me, said, "I need to go peepee!" and ran into the bathroom to pee on her little potty. She continued the pattern most of the morning, without accident! Around noon we had this little conversation:

"Mommy, I need a pull-up."
"Do you need to go potty, Eliana?"
"No, I just need a pull-up."
"Do you need to go poopoo in the potty?"
"Nope!" (and she ran off to retrieve a pull-up, which I then helped her put on.)

After 2 minutes, if that, she says,
"Mommy, I need a diaper change."
"Eliana, did you go poopoo in your pull-up?"
and she ran away shreiking, "Don't check! Don't check!"

Yes, that was day one of our potty training, quite by accident. In that day I learned that she knew EXACTLY when she needed to go and was quite capable of going by herself, if she didn't have any restrictive clothing in her way.

As a side note, she poo'ed in the potty that afternoon, and not in a pull-up. It was a grand day indeed!

So for the rest of the week Eliana got to run around rather "free" from the waist down. Then we learned that she was just fine if she wore a dress with nothing underneath, so we moved to that so we could have our living room windows open again without flashing the neighbors with a 2 year old tush!

This week we have learned that if Eliana wears pants (with nothing underneath) she does just fine then, too. We have graduated to pants!! It is a very exciting thing for this mama. I'm hoping one of these days we can graduate to panties, but so far she has just treated them like a pull-up, which is less than stellar. BUT we are making progress! It all seems connected to her independence. She does NOT like it when we ask her if she needs to go potty. Nor does she like it if we try to help her when she has not asked for help. Only once has she missed the potty by sitting too close to the edge, and we have had NO accidents at all the entire time. Obviously, when she's at someone else's house or we're out running errands, she has a pull-up on. Which she uses like a diaper sometimes. *sigh* But she has on several occasions asked to go in the potty while we're out running errands, so I've been very proud of her for that!

Like I said, she's been making progress in the potty training arena over the last couple weeks. It is very exciting and I can't even tell you how many phone calls I've made to my parents to celebrate random potty victories. It's great.

I love this idea!

Okay, so Ellie isn't yet old enough to be able to use these, but they will be helpful for me to use when I pick out her clothes for the next day or next week. I'm also planning to use them for myself. =D I printed out and laminated two sets tonight, so they're ready to go for next week's clothes. Yippee!

I'm a sucker for stuff like this.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

so little time!

I have so many things to blog about. This week Eliana has been maturing by leaps and bounds in a few different ways! I haven't blogged them because I want to give them a proper blog post, but I'm having trouble finding the time! So, until there are decent blog posts, let me just say that in the last 2 days Eliana has made significant improvements in:

- potty training
- obedience
- creativity and imagination
- independence

It's wonderful! But... it's also a little exhausting, and I really ought to head to bed as it's after 1 and Ellie will be up in 5-6 hours. So the posts will have to wait, but I have really enjoyed being a mommy the last 2 days. That's a good note to end the day on.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Cracker Sandwiches

Today's lunch is cracker sandwiches... and Ellie is delighted by them! She wanted cheese (MY cheese, real cheddar cheese, the kind she can't have cheese) for lunch and wasn't pleased at my insistence that she eat her own soy cheese. Nor was she excited at eating cheese and crackers, if it mean that she had to eat her cheese instead of the forbidden. BUT offer her a "cracker sandwich" and she was excited. Even though it was a cracker sandwich with her soy cheese.

So we had cracker sandwiches for lunch.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Bento gone WILD!

This is NOT my bento. But it is too awesome not to share! Seriously... is this the cutest food or what?!

Where the Wild Things Are Bento!

I can only aspire to make lunches this cute for Eliana someday. (Really, in a perfect world, we would read together every afternoon and focus on one book a week and I would make her a cute bento like this to celebrate whatever book we were reading. It would be great! I love the perfect world in my head...)