Monday, January 25, 2010

Mommy Mojo

I totally impressed myself last week getting Zelda to eat. This may seem simpleton to some of you. But, you have to understand that I have no experience with getting a child to eat. Annalee has always been a phenomenal eater. Put something in front of her and she eats it. And, she eats a lot. I can think of only a couple entrees that I cook that she doesn't like.

Along comes petite Zelda who eats so little, and I'm at a loss. The three different pediatricians I've seen at our local practice all say the same thing: she's petite, doesn't need a lot of calories to sustain herself and won't eat a lot because her stomach's tiny. So, I figure that when I do get her to eat, I need to make every mouthful count.

Last week, I was trying to feed Zelda a chicken vegetable soup. She should have been hungry, because she hadn't eaten in a while (and what she ate before that was minimal). I was trying to get this soup into her and she just wasn't interested.

Suddenly, I came up with this idea for the individual items in the soup to talk. To Zelda. These items wanted in. They wanted in to the belly. The chicken, the carrots, the green beans. I peaked her interest. She took a couple spoonfuls. Then, the remaining food in the bowl wanted to get to their pals in the belly. They were begging to get in. To the belly. So, she ate more.

Pretty soon, I had fed Zelda that whole bowl of soup - and she even asked for another one! I was so impressed with myself. See, I'm not one to get creative in this way. Give me a craft and I can work it. Getting clever with kids? Not really my thing. But, maybe that's changing.

The next day, Ron wasn't having luck with Zelda eating. He was easily willing to chalk it up to her just not being hungry. But, I knew that couldn't be the case. That food needed to get into the belly, wanted to get into the belly. So, it started talking, begging Zelda to get into the belly.

And, what do ya know? She started sucking that food down. Forkful after forkful. I almost hurt my arm patting myself on the back.

1 comment:

Alice said...

What an amazing way to get her to eat! Way to go, Jackie! Glad she's eating now for you. Hope all is going well!