the day before yesterday i picked up my friend's girl to watch her for the day. we had some fun activities planned such as doing laundry, cleaning the house, washing the dishes. she loved it! now i'm considering borrowing kids on a more regular basis, haha! i wanted her to have a good time so i tried to keep her occupied with different activities and not to spoil her too much with sweets etc, but i felt a hot cup of cocoa was a necessity on a cold and rainy day. we also did some painting where i took this photo. her little finger nails had those cute dots and flowers painted on them, so adorable! she was a really good girl the whole day, i'd love to have her over again on her next school vacation.
i always find it hilarious when kids play the "i'm not hungry" game when they'd rather want something else: they know there is dessert in the house, and hoping to be able to throw the real food out they claim they're not hungry just to 3 minutes later claim they are hungry and want dessert. i think it's since our parents didn't fall for it i'm totally opposed to that game. i remember playing that game myself in full detail so i know all the tricks in the book. even the extreme one of stuffing as much food in my mouth and "using the bathroom" a.k.a spitting it all out un-chewed in an extreme case of wanting to get done so i can move on to the much more delicious dessert. (i am absolutely not talking about bulimic habits, simply stating the tricks of a little kid wanting to get ice cream as soon as possible.) sorry, mama, i know you're a good cook, but when i was 4 i loved dessert more than veggies!
so, long story short, in my house kids have to at least try to eat what's on their plate, it's a 3/4 german household after all. and in germany we say the sun won't shine tomorrow unless you finish what's on your plate. i am open for compromises ("okay, 3 more big bites and you can have desert"), but i'm not throwing loads of food away. some of the reasons being:
• we pray before eating, giving thanks for the meal. might eating a few bites and throwing out the rest be hypocritical and unthankful?
• somebody actually cooked this meal. let's show respect to the cook and eat it. exception: if they're trying to poison us. but that doesn't happen all too often in the average household.
• other people don't have regular meals. we should be grateful for being more fortunate.
• we worked so we can buy food. i don't want to work in vain. if somebody doesn't have to work to afford meals, please do tell me the trick!
the other day my sweet hubby came home with a bunch of flowers. one stem broke off when i went to put the flowers into a vase so i looked around to find a tiny vase that will hold the broken off flowers. well, a few days ago we posted a tutorial on how to decorate a tea light holder. it happened that this tea light holder i had sitting on the living room table turned out to be an ideal little vase!
so what do you have going on right now?
and how do you handle the "i'm not hungry" claim?
6 comments:
my little guy is ALWAYS hungry. LOL
he's loving his oatmeal at the moment. i make one from scratch every morning, for the two of us. yum yum! and he tells me alll the time thIS IS WHAT HE HAD AT OOOAAA AND FÜLLÜ'S PLACE. AND HE JUST PRESSED THE CAPS LOCK KEY.
The wee one is never hungry, but if I sit with her and help her, she eats...a lot! She isn't much for dessert though, she likes cheeses [except the blue one]!
We have the "must try" rule, but very rarely have dessert in our house. Treats are normally afternoon snacks. So the kids get one episode of an ABC Kids show (on demand online) if they eat all of their dinner, or in some cases 'enough' of it to qualify ;)
Tonight Ash took one look at the tomato and vegie fettucine and chose to go straight to bed rather than eating it! Funny boy.
I've heard that 'I'm not hungry' expression too. And I know many tricks too - was a vegetable hater growing up (and it couldn't touch anything else on my plate by the way), but now I love veggies.
Do you think I could borrow your friend's child for a day or two? Maybe some of her cleaning enthusiasm would rub off on my children.
Wow, I admire your determination to get food into other people's kids, ha, ha! We all have our favorite dishes, and so do children. I remember some "utterly awful" soup that I wouldn't be able to swallow.
With my daughters I tried the "Let's see the picture"-trick, i.e., let's get right down to the bottom of the plate. Well, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Just the same with my beloved grandson Spencer today. But I fully agree on teaching children not to waste any food, but rather appreciate it.
By the way: I'll try your artistic ideas to beautify tealight holders!!
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