So I was sitting here debating whether or not to post. I haven’t been taking very many food photos, which I’ll explain in a bit, and I just thought that whatever post I write would be very unstructured and I could use the extra sleep. I should post to get back in the habit, so I figured to hell with structure. I hope you guys don’t mind!
I’ve been very very very busy. That and my life is completely being turned upside down and changing in so many ways. I debated mentioning this on the blog because in general this is a pretty happy go lucky kind of blog format, but it would be hard not to mention it if this were to talk about the happenings of my life. My parents are splitting up, which was announced about a week after coming back home. While it was not a huge shock, is still a lot to process especially when I am making such life changing decisions. Such decisions include leaving for Hawaii in August. I deferred from college and I have a couple very promising job leads, but it would involve leaving after a trip to California in roughly three weeks. So I might be leaving home for a year again in basically a heartbeat, when I’ve barely adjusted to being back. I’m so excited, and I’m very fortunate but again, it’s a lot to process. Add to all this my 8 am to 5 pm daily babysitting job and you can understand why I feel like I barely have time to breathe.
I’ve had some delicious eats these past few days but didn’t document them. By the time I fix the kids’ breakfasts and lunches I’m STARVING and tear into my food. Not to mention that I’m so hungry I don’t really think about what’s photogenic. I did take a picture of this one day:
An Arnold’s multigrain sandwich thin with cinnamon raisin swirl peanut butter and sliced banana, paninied, with a nectarine and a few tart cherries.
It took a lot of effort in my hangry state to clean the nectarine juice off the plate and organize everything to look semi-decent, which is why I’ve been generally slacking in the food pics. Sorry, you guys deserve better! Plus I’m usually chasing after the kids, who eat while I make my breakfast/lunch and interrupt my food process with things such as Can I have fruit chews? and Can you open my juice? But they’re adorable, so I guess that makes it worth it!
A question for you all How do you help picky kids expand their food repertoire? I’ve never fed anyone so much refined flour in my life, but I have no choice. These kids are well behaved, cute, and good listeners. But they are the pickiest kids I’ve met. One day I gave the boy waffles, two pop tarts and crackers all before lunch. I cringed doing so, but he eats virtually no vegetables and only cantaloupe and apples for fruit. And when he eats apples he eats a tiny bit in the middle of the slice, ignoring the peel. There is no whole grains in the house. I consider it a success when I manage to get Danimals or Trix yogurt into their systems. Yes, I am considering bright green and blue Trix yogurt that comes in flavors such as cotton candy wholesome food when you compare it to their usual eats.
I also considered it a success when I got them hooked on Joe Joes, the Trader Joe’s version of Oreos. We go to Trader Joe’s every Tuesday y to stock up on groceries in their house that only I eat for kids’ activity day. They wanted to buy the Joe Joes last week, and I figured they would find some discrepancy that differentiate them from their hydrogenated oil Oreo counterparts. But they loved them and wanted more this week! And posed in front of them for the summer journal we’re creating to document their activities.
Another success: though Elise wouldn’t try my cinnamon Puffins when I offered them to her before, she saw them in my car today and loved them. I heard her hand them to CJ and say this is yummy! It’s all about the baby steps here, people.
In other news, I’m trying to see my friends as much as I can despite my busy schedule, which included going to a concert for a band I don’t really like yesterday in DC. But it was only $10 and it meant a lot to my friend. To relate that back to eats, I had the carrot cake Cliff Bar, my first Cliff Bar, for dinner in the car after the concert. I was apprehensive about trying it because I heard some mixed reviews but I LOVED it! It tasted very carrot cake-like and I loved the white chocolate bits. If you guys say there are better Cliff Bars than that out there I can’t wait to try the other flavors! Hopefully tomorrow I’ll see my friend who’s been studying abroad this summer! I also bought an iPhone yesterday. When I bought my Macbook Pro I got a student deal of a free itouch, which I sold and used to buy the iPhone, so it paid for itself. And I love it!
This post was all over the place, I hope you don’t mind! I’ll check back in when I can, and hopefully with more food pictures. Right now Im digesting the dinner I had at 9 of the biggest salad that would put a Huge Jass to shame. It had tons of carrots, tomatoes, cooked cauliflower/snap peas, and kidney beans. It was loaded mainly because after my Huge Jass I stuffed raw romaine lettuce in my mouth like a classy lady. I’m hoping loads of vitamins while help the exhausted look I’ve been sporting, but I think the best solution to that is sleep, which I hope to be getting tonight.
A toute a l’heure!
Maya
