Food & Pre-Schoolers

What do I feed my baby today? I wake up with this question each day. I have to figure out a way to make sure that his meal is nutritious and tasty. Thanks to the experienced mommies around. I take bits and pieces of advices from most of the conversations. My idea of a good meal is not the quantity but the quality for the food that he eats. To give our children good quality food, we do not have to spend lots of money.We just have to make sure that they eat a healthy, balanced meal rich in all the essential nutrients. Now I have a few things figured out after profusely pouring over blogs and articles over a period of time. He has never been fussy about eating vegetables and having his milk. At least so far. So he drinks a cup of milk in the morning and one in the night. Apart from that he gets to eat two good meals and in between he snacks on fruits, nuts and biscuits. His meal includes a good amount of vegetables, meat, rice and pulses. He does not like the vegetables in curries so I give him just plain boiled vegetables. When it comes to meat, he prefers anything in a Chinese sauce or indian style with not too much of spice. He loves pickles (Indian pickles). He eats it with yogurt rice or chapatis. He eats just plain boiled rice. I cannot mix the rice with anything but a bit of ghee and salt. He loves nuts and dry fruits. His favorite are almonds, figs and cashews. After starting pre-school his appetite has increased and that makes it easy for me to feed him. He usually eats eggs for breakfast. At school he eats nuts and fruits or vegetables. After he comes home I feed him some rice. He takes a nap and after he wakes up i give him some biscuits and soup. For dinner he usually eats what we eat, so I do not have to make anything especially for him. I prefer not to give him too much of juices, so he gets his juice only if he asks for it, which is about a couple of times a week. He likes soy milk, so I give him soy milk every other day. He takes one serving of it. I want to try soy nuggets and soy flakes with vegetables to see if he ll like that. So I route for a healthy option in all the meals that he takes. What ever I feed him, I try to make it a little interesting for him. For example, if I give him bread with nutella, I cut the bread slices into different shapes. He gobbles up everything within seconds. I also try to give him colorful food to eat. Anything that looks appetizing to the eyes, is appetizing to the tongue. That is one slogan that works well with his father too!!

Walking the Talk

Our children are walking and talking representations of us, the parents. Since they spend most of their time with us and since we are the closest to them, they get used to our habits. Their body language, sleep pattern, social skills mostly shadow us. I always thought that bringing up a child in the best possible manner involves lots of reading, learning and understanding by the parents. But it is in fact quite simpler than all that. We have to set good examples. That is all it takes. At least in the formative years till they turn 5. For example, if I want my son to say thank you each time he receives something from someone, I go ahead and say thanks to that person. I do not ask him to tell thank you. When I respond with a "thank you", he learns much faster. He has been watching a lot of cartoons lately, and has gotten used to hitting people for fun. He thinks that they are bad when someone does not do something that he asks for. So the best way for me to deal with this is to make him busy with other activities. He does not have time to TV now. Even if he does, I turn on either Nat Geo or Animal Planet. He enjoys watching animals now. He has completely stopped asking for cartoons. 
His current craze is play-doh, its basically clay in different colors and it comes with different forms of molds. He enjoys playing with it after he comes back from play school. I make sure that I put all of his play things back inside the his big box of play things. After a couple of days, he started helping me with cleaning up after he is done and now he does it himself. So as much as we tell and teach our children to be good, we need to show how its done. That is the one way which has worked for me. Enjoy parenting..