Mommy Wisdom 4-3-09

This time I'm offering actual advice as opposed to the sorry attempt at humor I usually display.

Drink your fruit. My kids, though not particularly finnicky eaters, are quite wasteful eaters. I can't tell you how often they will ask for a piece of fruit and then eat just a few bites. I always try to save it for the next snack, but obviously fruit, once cut or peeled, doesn't last very well. So a few times recently, I've looked at the half-eaten fruit about to go to waste and asked Alexander if he wants a milkshake. He always gets excited and says yes. I have a little baby-food mixer, but a blender would work well, too. I just throw the leftover fruit in with a bit of milk and sometimes a couple drops of food-coloring to make it exciting, and voila, my kids guzzle leftover fruit and milk happily through a fancy straw. We've had plain banana, banana-strawberry, and today an exciting mix: banana-apple-pear. The novelty may wear off at some point, but for now, we're all quite happy with our "milkshakes." (They're more like "smoothies," of course, but since Alexander isn't familiar with that term, I offered them up as "milkshakes.")