Grazing

Apart from her insatiable desire to breastfeed - which lasted a year and a half - Eloise has always been a tough kid to feed. We've tried all sorts of tricks but my girl just likes to graze. Unfortunately this may be a learned behaviour because my eating habits are admittedly not the best. I too graze from breakfast through lunch as busy days don't allow for much more, and it's really only at dinner that I take the time to sit down for a meal with Chris and Eloise. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that between caring for Eloise, working and keeping up the house, the last thing I want to do is prep and clean up yet another meal.

To make sure Eloise is eating enough I put out bowls of goodies for her to snack on throughout the day: apples, strawberries, veggie dog, cheese, tomatoes, dry cereal, raisins, nuts, muffins and crackers make perfect grazing snacks and Eloise will eat while she plays without much fuss. She is obsessed with over packaged (and sometimes over processed) snacks like Babybel, Iogo drinkable yogurt, granola bars and Booster Juice smoothies, but I save these for treats when we're on the go. For dinner she'll devour gnocchi or pasta with chicken or salmon, but getting veggies into her is still a challenge.

At the recommendation of her doctor, we've started giving our picky little grazer a multi-vitamin which has made me worry a whole lot less about what she isn't getting from food. We chose Nature's Way Alive! Children's Multi-Vitamin Gummy for their gelatin-and preservative-free ingredients, including 26 fruits and veggies. A far cry from the ol' standby, Flinstones Gummies, which contain icky ingredients like Glucose Syrup, Carnuba Wax, FD&C Blue #1, FD&C Red #40, and FD&C Yellow #6. Yikes.

Tell me, do your children stop to eat or are they busy bees like Eloise who don't like to slow down?