Cleaning out the pantry!

Goodbye Granola bars, chips, cereal, crackers, cereal bars, candy, and other crunchy snacks.

That is just about the list of everything my toddler eats.

For two weeks, (notice I'm not saying forever), I'm going to only offer fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, and whole grains. I'm also removing sugar and juice. Eventually, he'll get hungry, right? At least that's the plan. And then hopefully he'll eat.

When my oldest daughter was two, I removed all processed food from the home. No boxed pastas. No instant meals. It had to do mostly with a food coloring issue. But recently, convenience has been winning the food war. It's just so easy to grab a granola bar and be off instead of peeling and bagging veggies. To take a Gogurt out of the freezer instead of blending blueberries in plain yogurt. To throw corn dogs in the toaster oven instead of making a fresh salad.

So for a couple of weeks, I told my kids that I needed their help to fix Kevin's terrible eating habits.

This morning, I made steel-cut oatmeal and frozen fruit smoothies. He didn't eat either of them. Then at lunch, I offered watermelon, meat, cheese, and a few whole wheat crackers. He ate the watermelon and the crackers.


It's going to be interesting, especially with a day camp next week that I'm working and all the kids are attending, but I'm going to give it a good try.

Any tips? I'll have to let you know how it goes!

"Ding!" Time to go potty!

Every 20 minutes around our house, a timer goes off.

Every 20 minutes for a week.

Sounds fun, right?

"Why?" you ask.  Well, I'm potty training my two year old, of course!

It's the method I've used w/ my other three kids. I don't know where I got the idea, but for us, it works.

Basically, when I think he's ready, I put him in underwear and try to stay home as much as possible. While home, every twenty minutes, a timer goes off and I have him sit on the potty. He gets a jelly bean for trying. If he happens to go, then he gets two! And he gets to help flush it away. That is very exciting.

The first two days are, well, messy. He's learning what going potty is all about. It takes a bit of time to move from, "Uh Oh, mess," to realizing the feeling before he has to go.

I'm on day 3 right now, and it's going well. Last night, he was dry for about 5 hours straight!

Hopefully, by the first of next week, I'll stretch it to 40 minutes and he'll start to tell me, rather than relying on the timer. That's the goal, anyway.

And to be honest, the timer is really for me. I'm just too distracted with life to remember to have the little guy try! So the timer reminds me  that, "Hey, easily distracted mom, you're potty training, remember?"

What advice would you give someone who was potty training their child for the first time?