Lotta Broccoli!

Thursday, 5/31/12 - Since she accidentally had fake food coloring on Wednesday, Z had a hard time getting to sleep (an "Aha! moment" for me. That explains why she was having such a hard time calming down and getting to sleep some nights. Hopefully I'll get better at this dye-free business and make fewer mistakes and slip-ups, so we can all stop fighting and hating each other at bedtime!)
So Thursday morning she slept in until it was time to leave to go to gym class. So we decided to skip it and do a make-up on Friday, when we had no other plans. Since I had already packed our lunches the night before, I was able to give her hers for a late breakfast and go back to bed. Well. Who do you think was up with her until midnight? Yup. That's right. And then up again at 2am, since Baby's been sick and is eating smaller feedings closer together. Which means my 6-8 hour stretch at night is currently gone, gone, gone. So 2am, 6am, 8am, and 10am I was up again for feedings. And Hubby had just left that morning for a 4-day trip out of town. Yayy.

Her Lunch:

Broccoli, white-chocolate-macadamia-bar, Ranch, ketchup,
Rainier and Bing cherries, ham-and-cream-cheese roll-ups

I decided to try something new. She's been avoiding her veggies unless I offer a dessert as a reward, which I know is a bad way to teach them about food. You don't want the healthy foods to be an "obstacle" they have to overcome to get to the dessert. I had asked her about broccoli, and she said she liked it with Ranch and ketchup. So I called her bluff. I filled the EasyLunchbox compartment halfway with broccoli, and added silicone cups with her dips. I managed to squeeze in a flower cut-out from a white-chocolate macadamia bar I had bought at the restaurant we'd gone to the day before (where I accidentally let her have a Yellow #5 cookie. Doh!) She'd been asking to have some that whole day, so I thought this would be a nice surprise. 

We had also just bought the cherries at a roadside stand. She picked out both kinds (Bing and Rainier,) and was super excited about them. 

This was my first time with a ham and cream cheese sandwich for her. I read somewhere that cream cheese is mostly fat, so doesn't really count as dairy. So I've been trying to use it less. But it sticks everything together better on a tortilla!

I had just read a post somewhere about how, instead of calling dessert a "treat" you can classify foods as "sometimes foods" and "any time foods." That way a ripe, juicy apple can be thought of as a "treat" instead. And instead of "eat your healthy food, then you can have your dessert," remind them that we fill up on healthy "any time" foods first, before we eat less-healthy "sometimes foods." So I plopped her lunch in front of her computer and said that the "cookie" (she kept calling it a cookie when she was asking to try some the day before) was a "sometimes food." And the broccoli, cherries, and ham roll-ups were "any time foods" and she should fill her tummy up with them first. Then I went to lie down with the Baby, who was also asleep.

After my nap, I got up to discover she had eaten everything but the roll-ups. Everything. She had eaten more broccoli than I've ever given her. Heck. More vegetables than I've ever given her in one sitting. I was gobsmacked. She ended up eating the roll-ups either on the way to school or else on the way home. I forget.

Later she asked me what the ketchup was for, and I reminded her that she had said she wanted it for her broccoli, so it was for dipping. She laughed and said "Oops. I just ate it with my finger." Haha. Oh well. 

 Mama's Lunch:

Spinach with carrot scraps, pumpkin seeds, currants, dried blueberries, and
raspberry vinaigrette. Buttered herb roll, SunButter ants on a log

For my salad, I threw on some raw pumpkin and sunflower seeds from a trail mix from my April NatureBox. Z had eaten all the dried fruits out of it, leaving me with the seeds and nuts. The currants were also from my April box.
I still had purple, orange and yellow carrot scraps from my teacher appreciation lunches and other lunches, and surprisingly, they were still good (I keep them in a sealable container with a splash of water.) Yum!
My husband had brought home some yummy mini rolls and artisan bread from work. (They cater lunches every day, which actually kind of pisses me off. Now he's not eating up my leftovers when I cook, since he used to pack them for lunch, and eat them for dinner. Now he doesn't need to pack lunches, and he fills up on their leftovers for dinner. Since he is now expected to work until 7pm too. Yay.) But anyway, this bread was pretty tasty. And since he was going out of town, it was mine, all mine!