Parenting alert!

I am ashamed of how picky Hambet is -- he hates everything except bread, peanut butter, and spaghetti and meatballs. He doesn't even eat bananas. But I don't feed him candy bars as a substitute!

My mom and sister are amazed that my kids don't eat much junk food. My husband's mom and siblings are also confused byt his, since their kids eat junk constantly. They ask me how I pull it off, and I say, "I don't buy it."

Edyn's new thing is apples. She goes nuts over apples (all fresh from the organic orchard -- we're going through half a bushel a months seems like!). I have never once given her a piece of candy and only rarely given her treats like cookies or cake. She's happy.

Zooey has had treats like candy. He asks for it once in a while, but he only gets it sparingly. We put a little candy in his Easter basket and a little in his Christmas stocking. I noticed the other day that the "candy jar" on top of the fridge STILL has four dum-dum lollipops in it from Easter! They're going in the trash, as I know Zoo will get a fresh batch on Halloween. He has never considered candy a daily thing.

And it's not hereditary -- both dh and I have tremendous sweet tooth problems. But we made a choice, and I hope our kids are better for it.

BTW, a guy we used to go to church with told us when Zooey was born to feed him as much junk food as he would eat when he was a toddler. Theory being, he'd be sick of it by the time he was 10. I didn't think that made any sense!

I'm like Sparki, only not as good. We don't really keep a store of junky food, well, Oreos and soda and what most people call junk anyway. When I get garbage for myself, and that's way too often, Davey shares very little to none of it. (If I have Burger King and he's waiting for his own food I might give him the tiniest bits of bun to pacify him; although I think recently I realized that if we're dealing in tiny amounts, the beef probably has more value.) He has his little repertoire of foods. He LOVES whole wheat bread -- if we're at a restaurant or someplace I'll let him have the non-whole stuff they give us, but it's important to me to keep him into the healthier stuff. He eats a lot of soy dogs, which are probably not the healthiest form of soy, but I am glad they're not hot dogs. When we had edamame soybeans he'd eat those too. He eats lots of organic non-hydrogenated almond butter. We don't go to Fresh Fields anymore and we need to relocate the actual baked tofu he used to like from there. Other than that he likes natural cheese (we just switched to low-fat because he can eat a whole lot of it) and bananas, grapes, peaches, oranges, apples, broccoli (even raw,) oatmeal (sweetened, but let's be realistic.) I want to make less sugary yogurt for him, even, than the YoBaby he has almost every morning.

Tonight for dinner he shared the organic whole wheat spaghetti with milled flax seed (insisting on feeding himself most of the way,) the pre-cooked storebrand turkey meatballs, some raw broccoli, AND some Entenmann's coffee cake, which is the unusual part. We had people over for dinner. Usually I feel bad enough sharing too much of my sweetened granola bar, or letting him have non-whole grain crackers or bread at home.

I try not to be too judgmental about how other parents' kids acquired eating habits I'd rather Davey not. I mean, Davey does get chicken tenders from Chik-Fil-A or Burger King maybe 2 to 4 times a month, maybe when he's older he'll cling to that memory more and refuse the stuff we give him at home. But we really want to do what we can to give him good nutritional habits because we both know how very difficult bad ones are to correct and keep from falling back into. Being a better example would help, cuz eventually he'll find out why Mommy doesn't eat soy dogs and why he isn't supposed to share her Burger King :(