Hooked on Veggies | The art of tricking your kids because you are a good mom!

It’s funny, when you become a mom your whole life suddenly revolves around what goes in and comes out of a tiny human. It’s truly maddening at times.  When they are teeny tiny babies you struggle to know if they are getting enough or fighting to latch. Then they get the hang of breast feeding or bottle feeding or your happy combo and it kind of evens out for a while. Before you know it though, you start thinking about solid foods and you consider all the options: baby led weening, homemade purees, store bought, organic, how little to cut tiny pieces of fruit in and it goes on and on. Every time you hit a happy medium it feels like you are turning another corner. We’ll save the troubles of what comes out of those ever-growing babies for another day. 

What I want to talk about today, is what the heck happens when they become toddlers and preschoolers? All that worrying and carefully thought out planning just goes out that window. My oldest loved trying all kinds of foods as a baby, he was the best eater, but then came the refusal. He refused to even taste things he’d loved just weeks before and I still don’t think we’ve moved beyond that at five years old. Few things are more frustrating as a mom, than a child refusing to eat a dinner that he loved last week! The thing about eating though, is you can’t actually force them to eat anything. Sure you can offer consequences to older children or make them sit at the table until it’s gone, but I haven’t found those things to work very well on anyone under the age of five but maybe one day. So, what do you do? 

I am no expert but in my little experience this far, I have tried to be very honest with my children about how what we put into our bodies affects us. I am the poster child of not listening to my own advice but I am trying and I’m trying even harder to help them understand how their bodies function better on better food. I am so proud when Jonah has had enough of the junk food at parties or holidays and swears off sweets. “Mama, I only want a healthy snack.” “Mama can I have a glass of water because I know it’s the healthiest for me.” There are these tiny moments when you think "Okay, I'm doing something right." However, I have this second child, who would live his life on pancakes and fruit snacks if given the option. He doesn’t try anything and if he does, it will come flying back out so fast you know there’s no way he even tasted it. I mean I know he’s two and we’ve got some work to do, but the boy really just wants to survive on milk for the rest of his life. So, for that one, I am so thankful for foods that let me resort to trickery. Yeah, I know I just preached about honesty and having teachable moments, but you gotta do what you gotta do when you have a stubborn two year old. 

So, when he gets his pancakes, they are most of the time whole grain with some kind of fruit. I try to sub honey in for syrup and chop fresh bananas or strawberries for the top. I try to offer greek yogurt so that he can get a little more protein and offer the peanut butter with less sugar, but honestly I fail all the time. So it's nice to see that there are some new products out there that give me a little nudge in the right directions. 

We are so excited to work with Garden Lites, so earlier this week, I took Ezra to Kroger to let him help me pick out some muffins. He chose blueberry and I grabbed the banana chocolate chip too.

I am on the lookout for their waffles now, because these muffins were definitely a hit in my house. Bread is something Ezra will always we eat, I mean, it's something that pretty much all of us will eat, any time, but what the kids don't know is that the first ingredients in Garden Lites are vegetables. 

They are actually so veggie rich that vegetables are the primary ingredient in every product. They are convenient and a super easy way to trick your family and friends into eating their veggies, because you REALLY cannot even tell they are in there! Garden Lites are made of clean and simple ingredients and all products are gluten free, dairy-free and nut free. Seriously.

I know you are going to try them, so go ahead and get every variety! Sometimes you even need to trick yourself and get more veggies in your diet! I know I do.... find Garden Lites near you!

Enjoy and seriously don't tell my kids...