Granola

Here's a random update about Maybelle:  she's started eating homemade granola (which she pronounces "gra-no-lalala").  It's actually a bit more significant than it might initially seem, because Maybelle is someone with very stubborn food preferences.

She has a healthy diet--one that's fueled her growth physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.--but it's limited.  She eats a couple of things of Chobani yogurt almost every day.  She eats applesauce, Nutrigrain bars (or the Trader Joe's high-fructose-corn-syrup-free version), bananas, Multigrain Cheerios, waffles, pancakes, scrambled eggs, some toast, an occasional bite of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and ice cream.  She loves yogurt and ice cream most of all.

This limited diet makes it challenging to pack her any diverse lunches.  Almost every day she gets the same lunch (because of course it's hard to pack ice cream for lunch).  And although she's a child who loves the routine (she's my daughter, after all), even she gets tired of eating the same food all the time.  The last two times we've eaten pancakes she's been less than thrilled, and that's worrisome.  If one item gets boring and falls off the list of approved foods, what can we replace it with?  Pirate Booty already fell off the list, and that's led to challenges when we go to other people's houses for meals--Pirate Booty was a food she could eat entirely by herself and generally didn't lead to a nightmarish mess.

So, speaking of a nightmarish mess, let me tell you about granola's entry into her diet.  My mom was here last week, and one of the things she routinely does when she visits is makes a batch of the world's most delicious granola.  And it's incredibly healthy.  Healthy enough that my mom has suggested it can cause "mega-poops":  it has quite a bit of wheat germ, wheat bran, flax meal, chia seeds, and probably some other food products that are essentially laxatives.  Maybelle loves it.

She got interested in it by wanting some bites of mine when I'm eating it.  This is a new thing of hers:  she's curious about most things I'm eating, and often will ask for a bite--and when she asks for a bite, she always gets it, and I'll try to get her to try more than one bite.  Granola didn't take much marketing on my end.  I told her that it was crunchy (and wrote "granola is crunchy" on her dry erase board--visual cues are helpful for her), and with that warning, she was prepared.  She tried several bites of mine and was enthusiastic enough that I started giving her her own bowls.  One day she ate three bowls!

The stuff is so loaded with nutrition that it's an ideal food to have in the diet of a person who doesn't eat that many different things.  The texture can be unpredictable, so she sometimes spits out a bite, but by and large it goes down.  And something to be aware of:  granola is a good food to have in the diet of someone who's getting closer and closer to being potty trained.  The mega-poop in the potty is effortless to clean up, since Maybelle herself loves to flush.  I'm glad we haven't had to deal with it in a diaper.

That's it for today.  I promise that soon I'll write you about the progress we're making toward potty training (I know you're all very very eager to read that post).