Enchanted Chameleon: Whole Foods

The other day Cillian and I hit Family Place because it's the easiest and best fun for him, we get out of the house, if it's nice we play outside, we have snacks, we socialize and best of all we have circle time which Cillian loves and I love watching Cillian love circle time. (PS They have their Valentine's day celebration on Friday and me and other mama's will be there if you want to join us)

However, this particular day we came up against our first of many exposures to what I will call "social wheat removal" in the form of Goldfish crackers.

I'm not a fan of Goldfish crackers, right from the get go before we even introduced foods to Cillian. There are two reasons I don't like them and they are: wheat and dairy. Having been one of those people whose health improves only with the removal of wheat and dairy I was pretty adamant that Goldfish crackers would not be something I would ever purchase for Cillian and to this day I haven't. Letting him snack on someone else's Goldfish crackers when we are out is another ball game altogether. At first, I was pretty great at keeping him off them. But then I believe I started to offend others for my determination NOT to let my kid eat their snacks and I eventually gave in and allowed him to have some here and there. I figure that couldn't hurt. (I'm such a social slave, I don't know what is worse, the Goldfish crackers or my lack of backbone?) In any case, it also became more difficult as Cillian got older to not let them have them. Cillian being 2 and pure "needs now" I decided to start picking my battles and this was not one of them. However, now, I regress, my initial instinct to keep him off them was probably my best instinct and now we are going to learn how to do this to best suit Cillian.

The thing is about Goldfish and Cheddar Bunnies (the organic, whole foods version but essentially the same thing appealing to people's better nature but I'm onto you little bunnies, I know what you are up to) is when it comes down to it, I think they suit adults better than they suit the children eating them. I think this because they are an easy snack and when I say easy, I mean, easy for the parent. Once a kid can pick them up, there is this instant reward of child independence which in today's world is often sought way too early and for the wrong reasons. But hey, my kid has eaten way worse things and I have also eaten way worse things and then nursed him, so who am I to judge.

So yesterday Cillian and I took matters into our own hands. We made a batch of Quick Sticks using Kamut and Coconut Butter and Cillian loved them. There were whole new lessons to be learned in preparing Quick Sticks with Cillian. All went well preparing them with his help until we got near the end and he started to undo my hard "rolling sticks" work and I instantly turned into my mother where messes and not doing it right were frowned upon in the kitchen (much of the reason why I've avoided the kitchen instead of embracing it) but I quickly got over it, apologized to Cillian, forgave myself (mental note: work on perfectionism issues, they aren't helping anyone!) and after 6 rings of the smoke detector (why I hate cooking with olive oil!) we came up with some yummy snacks that Cillian CAN eat. The best part of all was the look on his face when I gave him one to eat (you mean the sticks I helped to make mama!!? - yes baby those sticks!).

So what have we learned today? That Goldfish crackers and Cheddar Bunnies are the Devil. I'm tempted to say yes that's exactly it, but no, it's not. I think that overall, I missed the lesson today, all I know is I forgave myself for like the first time EVER since I've been a parent (and maybe also since forever) and I'm pretty proud of that. Love Suzanne