The all new and exciting May TODDLERS thread...

[GeorginaA]

... it's May 1st folks...

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Aah how lovely. I had a finger food only child with my DS (now 4) so have BTDT. DD slightly more co-operative (although hairwashing, teeth cleaning, nose wiping etc not so). I have found thought that most things can be finger food. All sorts of veg (brocolli, cauli, carrots), cheese sandwiches, cheese on toast, pasta, roast/boiled potatoes, cubes of cheese, raisins, pieces of quiche, pieces of meat loaf, cooked chicken, cheese on toast (depends on teeth though), omelette, banana, ripe pear, half grapes, peas, sweetcorn (keeps them quiet for a bit until they start launching it) etc.

If you do a search I think we've discussed it before but maybe on a previous thread.

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Thanks for the advice everyone, I have to admit that I had been stalling the posting of all these worries because I just feel so stupid about the whole thing. Part of the problem is that the routine that we started when I went back to work was ideal but I feel I have been postponing it too long to modify it.

Then all the other stuff kicked off, I just want to start a fresh new life with DS and start as I mean to go on. Humph.

Anyway, welcome Meggymoo! Happy birthday to all the May babes still to go!

Egypt, hope your DD feels better soon. Sounds a bit like what DS had, he just wanted to sleep and be cuddled constantly - thinking of you xx

I would say welcome Meggymoo - but I've been gone such a long time I'm new myself again

Bozza - thank you - THINK ds had a lovely day (if not a little snotty)

Libb
& all - a friend of mine gave me this advice when ds wouldn't sleep (and fingers crossed, so far it's working)....He kept taking a nap at 10ish, and it was getting later and later - I wasn't sure whether to leave him, and call it the lunch sleep, or whether to wake him. Every time I woke him after 1 hour or so, he would make it through till tea (5pm), but be too tired to eat, and conk out at around 6 - then wake 2 times in night for food.

New routine: Encourage him to sleep (whether looking tired or not somewhere between 9-10)- and leave him 20 MINS ONLY (no finishing off that tea!!)He's then had a little power nap, but is ready to go back to sleep at around 12.30pm, after lunch for 1-2 hours. then he's happy and awake for dinner at 5, bath at 5.30 and play/milk at 6. SO FAR, each night he has gone down happily at 7pm (I thn give him a dream feed at 11pm), and he sleeps till 6.30am.

Still not perfect - but at least I get to sleep from when I go to bed till the morning.. Hope it helps someone else....(btw I don't think my dd would have ever fallen into a routine, but he's definitely a routine-craver just for info)

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...and another thing (love that no one can tell me to shut up or interrupt me on MN!!)

Finger foods:
chopped strawberries, raspberries, pineapple, grated cheese, grated cold chicken, pesto pasta, cheese omlette,avocado, tomatoes, peeled grapes, tinned orange segments, homous and breadsticks or toast, soaked raisins, and about 1000 wipes to clean up the sticky mess off the floor afterwards!

Hot on the heels of cheesy porridge and courgette scones comes another Spots household revoltinmg recipe to add to the finger foods pile. You know those Grizzly bars and things like them? You can make them in a blender:

2 tablespoons each of toasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds

1 handful each of raisins, apricots, figs, dates or similar to a total of 3 handfuls

1 biggish handful porridge oats

coconut would be good too

whizz in blender, form into balls, flatten and refrigerate until hard enough to eat without crushing!

I give these to DD when I am eating chocolate. Because they're brown she can be fooled that she has the same as me.

Welcome Meggymoo!

well eating for us has become non-existant at the mo. hoping its just that shes ill and not because she has become a case for supernanny. dd now has a rash - since yesterday, although the temp seems to have gone. she is happy as larry one minute and cuddly and grotty the next. she wont eat anything excet scrambled eggs and even thats a hit and miss at the moment. i'm trying not to worry. I think dd might have an aversion to the highchair. She def doesnt like being spoonfed either.

All these ideas for foods is great mind, and i'm going to make notes! quiche is a great one. never thought of that.

Libb, dont worry. I think i know how you feel about the routine thing. As spots ( i think) said, you should prob urge your childminder to make him have a nap. Can she take him for a walk? Or are there other children with her. Its the only way to get dd to nap sometimes. Also, I cut out her daytime milk and it def worked. I had to make her eat her porridge before her morning bottle too as she wouldnt touch any breakfast otherwise. She rarely ate more than 2 spoonfuls of lunch and tea until i cut the bottles. One in the morning and one at night. ooo, and a little watery one in the night

hope things sort themselves out soon hon. ((((hugs))))

Egypt, it was Bozza, who is much better than me at troubleshooting! I have a tendency to dither in the face of trouble. (that's a picture of me dithering)

nonetheless Libb it did occur to me to wonder if you were managing to eat properly? If you have enough meal-type food for yourselves around the house could you not drag some of it out at an appropriate time for ds? I'm not clear on whether this is a tiredness problem, a time-for-cooking problem or a weird unsolved mystery problem. How does your evening meal work?

To add mine to the picture, I am finding it very hard to have 'family meals' with DD. It's always been such a pleasant time for DH and I to have together, and we both like cooking and eating so having our meal after she's in bed started to become a bit sacrasanct (sp?) Now it's all different. She can be hard work at evening meals, screaming at her food and spitting it out, showing no sign of enjoyment even if it's something she likes. But then from time to time she will eat more of something because she sees us having it. If we have a glass of wine, or something she can't have, she throws a real benny! Oh the joys... I suppose it will get better...

And Egypt, I would bet that it's the illness that's putting your DD off her food. IME it's the first thing to go and the last thing to come back. Hope she seems better soon.

All this is making me think that even now the babies are still only learning to eat.

Spots - we never eat our evening meal with the children, always wait until after they have gone to bed. When there was just DD, she did eat with us but only when she was nearer 2 years and could wait until 5.45./6pm-ish to eat without turning into a mad screaming thing!

we hardly ever eat with dd either. dh doesnt get home until 630ish, at which time she is in the bath. i feed her at about 5, at which point i do sit and eat something just to try and set an example. rarely on the weekends do we all eat together either. it is bad. this is why i havent really got the hang of giving dd what we eat. she still has jars and little meals of her own. i do feel more open to feeding her 'whatever' now though. eg, the mint chocolate that the waiter gave her down the indian tonight! eeeek.

its our 5th anniversary btw, so we took dd on the park and to get an indian takeaway to celebrate!

not that she ate the takeaway of course, but thankfully she did get stuck into some mashed potato, swett potato and brocolli with toast for tea. think she is on the mend, although spottier than yesterday. and didnt go to bed well. about the 7th night running. of course we are putting it down to illness, but i feel a habit is being established and cc is lurking.

Yes I think 5 prob is a more realistic time to feed them... I have been doing 5.30/6 but tiredness has got to be at the root of her grumpiness. Maybe eating together just sometimes as a family is the only option.

Spots at me being good at troubleshooting. Egypt I'm sure you can put a lot of DD's troubles down to her being ill. Honestly I've done the starting to worry that its all going wrong and then all of a sudden its back to normal. DD was awful Thursday night with her teeth - ended up in bed with me (mediced at 2, neruofen at 4.30) and DH downstairs. So then she was tired yesterday and wouldn't eat her lunch/am snack. So I was dithering about taking her swimming at 1 - hard work on my own with two in the water if she plays up. And she had a ball. A brilliant time. And ate a full banana in the changing room when we got out. Took them to see DH's cousin's new baby with MIL and she was quite giddy. And a bit rough with the tiny one I'm afraid.... Hmmm.

And now she is in bed asleep and has been since about 10.15 so a record nap really. Although I think she is still catching up. We're off to a table top sale at the school when she surfaces. Its an opportunity for DS to see inside and I know he will be so excited. And I've jsut heard a cry!

Egypt - why not the takeaway? Ds loves chicken Tikka, and wolfs down tarka dhal and chappatis. Our local is very high quality mind, authentic spices rather than artifical additives.

Can I please confess?

Ds2 had his first macdonalds today

runs fast putting on flak jacket simultaneously...

GeorginaA - we went over to the dark side 2 months ago! Hey - you have a McDonalds, you also cook Annabel Karmel...it more than evens out.

I have a food question too! DS won't eat vegetables as finger foods although fruit, sandwiches, sultanas etc all go down fine. I presume he just doesn't fancy the taste or texture at the moment. I think my plan of attack is to keep offering, but also make up some veg in cheese/tomato sauce to accompany things like fish cakes/chicken nuggets. He is more than happy to have vegetables in things like ratatouille, spaghetti bolognese etc.
Do you think it will just click if I keep plugging away at it and not getting too stressed? (please say yes!)

Judd - yes! I'd make pasta sauces with lots of veg hidden in.

We are one today! Had four local babies and godparents over, very nice and Arsenal won the FA cup which was good as DH would have been inconsolable had they lost. Dd2 was lovely all day, very good natured, sat with lots of people, didn't sleep at all (I have high hopes for tonight!). She wants to stand all the time at the moment and kept lowering herself down onto the floor. I was very proud of her, and DD1, who said that she had tried very hard to be helpful but had felt a bit left out. We bought her an "unbirthday" present, which helped (disgusting fluffy unicorn which she said she had "always dreamed of having, and now I've got one!")
We're now relaxing in front of Eurovision(helped by a bottle of wine and Terry Wogan).

Oh Judd you know the answer I'd give to that! I don't think it matters how they get the veg... it's not like we're trying to recruit them up to some vegetable loving religion... it's the vitamins etc that are the important thing...there are just as many in a sag sauce as there are in a steamed carrot!

Helsy we also had football tenterhooks yesterday. God it does wind me up! so daft! DH's team were facing relegation, in case you were wondering. Didn't get relegated in the end (in case you wondered that too.)

Meanwhile DD has learned to point ot my nose when I say 'where's my nose?' - she says 'no' while she does it. She has also 'learned' travel sickness. What a lot of stuff came out of her yesterday! I will revise my impression of not-a-lot-going-down as of now.

We were at a car boot sale; Bozza hope yours is as satisfying (apart from the sickness).I got a cot bumper set (huurah guilt free bumpers at last) and the Baby and Toddler Big Book of Everything. Has anyone come across this book? It is MAGNIFICENT!

All this hiding veg talk has made me remember something. Have I give you guys my tried and true vegetable lasagne recipe yet? Ds2 will scoff an adult sized portion of it and even ds1 will tolerate it...

Ooh yes please to the veg lasagne recipe. We had out and out refusal of meat lasagne at lunchtime - madness as he wolfs down the sauce as spaghetti bolognese. Decided he was probably being a bit of a pest so didn't offer an alternative, just banana mid afternoon and then ratatouille for tea. And yoghurt with coco pops in it (can't leave DH for one second before he's defiling innocent yoghurts )
I'm sure I'm getting the veg thing out of all proportion, I just take it all very personally! Blah blah blah, back to being Type A personality and results driven (other thread that I lurked on and read avidly but didn't post on).
DS has started taking bricks out of a box and putting them all in another container..then doing the same in reverse.

Oooh did I tell you about my good friend and her vegetable desperation? She used to puree broccoli for her 2 & 4yo DDs, mix it with tomato ketchup, pour the whole lot back into the TK bottle and then stick a picture of Barbie over the label! Bingo - Barbie ketchup that the kids loved! Only came a cropper when they went for tea elsewhere and nobody else seemed to have it!

Hello everyone!

Can I join? My dd was born on May 4th 2004...

Lottie

Hello Lottie, come on in, throw yourself into a conversation We're a friendly lot

Vegetable Lasagne
Ingredients

225g carrots
225g courgettes
1 onion
100g celery
1 chicken stock cube (or vegetable stock cube if catering for vegetarians. I prefer the flavour the chicken stock cube gives though)
25g butter
2 level tablespoons of flour
½ pint of milk
salt and pepper (I tend to omit this as I forget, and it's probably healthier without and there's salt in the stock - still tasty)
175g lasagne (although this depends on the dish size - get the quick cook stuff not the one you have to precook)
175g grated cheddar cheese
Method

1. Preheat oven to 190°C (375°F Gas Mark 5)

2. Place the chopped vegetables in a saucepan with the stock cube and ¼ pint boiling water. Yes, I know that doesn't look enough fluid, but trust me, it is. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

3. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour and cook gently for one minute, stirring. Remove the pan from the heat and gradually stir in the milk. Bring to the boil and continue to cook, stirring, until the sauce thickens, then add seasoning to taste. If too thick, add a little stock from the vegetables.

4. Put layers of vegetables, lasagne, and only two thirds of the cheese (alternatively!) in a shallow, oblong or square, 3 pint dish, finishing with a layer of lasagne. Pour the sauce over the top and cover with the rest of the cheese.

5. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes.

6. Serve with salad and/or crusty bread.

Serves: 4. Ish. Unless you feel particularly peckish one day and 2 of you polish the lot off