Toddlers and restaurants leave mom breathless

At my house, we’ve been through many of the firsts, including walking, birthdays and holidays. Now, we’re tackling potty training. My daughter’s taking to it, mostly because she likes the applause she gets when she hits her mark.

But there’s one milestone we’ve yet to achieve. We still haven’t mastered the art of eating out at restaurants. And at this point, I’m coming undone. I cringe when we receive dinner invites for the entire family. Why? Because I know what’s to come: wiggling, whining, begging to get out of the high chair and very little eating for the little tike or her parents.

Recently, me, my hubby, our 19-month-old daughter and some friends went out to eat at the Olive Garden. What was supposed to be a nice after-church meal turned into a wrestling match. I thought I’d done all the right things to prepare. I had snacks to occupy her until something tastier arrived. I had juice boxes ready for the sipping and even a few toys for her amusement. Still, total chaos reigned. My tot moved from one set of arms to the next and alternated between waving at other diners who sat nearby and running over to talk to them. She’s cute – I really am not biased – but she needs to sit down.

I’m embarrassed to say I’ve become the mother of that child. At my daughter’s age, the little crayons the wait staff gives her are little more than scud missiles or an unwelcome appetizer. Needless to say, during our Olive Garden outing we ate a bit, got the wait staff to pack up our meal and then headed home.

This scenario has repeated itself at a host of eateries ranging from the Cheesecake Factory to Golden Corral, where I was sure my toddler would fare better because there was no wait for food. Um, no dice!

My husband and I keep trying to eat out because we know we need to train her. But, honestly, it’s a lot easier to eat at home, where she exhibits a lot more self control. There she actually sits, eats and, wonder of all wonders, behaves.

I read some place that taking toddlers for a walk between ordering and the arrival of food can help maintain calm. I tried that recently when my family went to brunch at a fancy buffet restaurant. It worked for a while and then my girl was ready to move. I only got her to calm down when I took her out of her high chair and spoke a few stern words in her ear. The tornado passed, for about three minutes.

I’ve been working on my mean Momma routine, which includes a disapproving look, no-nonsense tone and punishment such as making her sit or lie down until she can straighten up. But those tools don’t seem to work when we’re dining out.

AHHHHHH, check please!

-- Sherri Day

Gawd, I hate packing lunches

Am I the only person that despises the school lunch box? I'm not sure where this aversion comes from, but I think it comes from my own school days when I had to pack a lunch while all the cool kids got to buy theirs in the cafeteria. Back then it was much cheaper to pack the lunch. Seeing all the prepackaged drinks, chips and Lunchables coming out of boxes in our cafeteria, I think that price difference has flipped. It's only a couple bucks to buy the school lunch.

But alas, my kids hate the cafeteria food, so I'm back on lunchbox duty until the younger one is big enough to hand this duty off to. I have no creativity when it comes to this. It's pretty much PB&J or turkey sandwiches, some pretzels or Wheat Thins, some fruit, a drink and something sweet, usually a granola bar. I think that's a pretty good lunch. But not every. single. day. I'm in need of some better ideas.

I will offer this tip to make your lunch packing go fast by investing in some extra time at the beginning of the week. Get a big bag of pretzels and bag up 4-5 of them for the week. Get a big bag of grapes and cube up some melon and make 5 bags of fruit to tote along in the lunchbox. Take a tip from the Uncrustables people and freeze peanut butter sandwiches. I will make 3-4 of them at once and freeze the rest. They freeze beautifully and thaw out by lunch time. 

--Sharon Kennedy Wynne

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Free Chick-fil-A sandwich on Labor Day

This is simple enough: On Labor Day, put on your favorite sports team's logo, go to Chick-fil-A from 10:30 a.m. to close and walk away with a free original sandwich. That's it. You don't need to buy anything or dress up like a cow. Check here for locations near you.

-- Sherry Robinson

Skip the junk food and try these easy game snacks

Kids are back to school and back on the field and that makes it doubly hard for a family to get a healthy meal in between homework and running to the ballfield. This list of healthy snacks to keep in your cooler is a good place to start. And in this story, you can find out what student athletes are eating -- and what they actually should be eating.

One of the ways to work in a sort-of family dinner is to pack like it's a picnic and have a meal on the sidelines with cold chicken, fruit and salads. I tend to go the route of staving off hunger with a snack before and/or after and getting home for a decent meal. Not that I don't do it far too often, but going through a drive-through lane for fast food after a healthy afternoon of exercise feels like a failure to me.

-- Sharon Kennedy Wynne

"Carbotarian" kid takes finicky eating to new high

One of our Whoa, Momma! readers Rachel sent in this request:

I am the mom of two boys, ages 5 and 2. My oldest son is a carbotarian – I kid you not.  He has survived the first 5 years of his life eating no meat, no veggies, no whole fruit (only fruit-flavored items).  He has been this way since infancy.  We’ve even tried “sensory therapy” with no success.  It is time to take this problem to other mothers!  Can you steer me in the right direction?

Wow! So Rachel's son must be living on pasta and not much more.

Sherry has a finicky eater who swears he doesn't like cheese but would eat it on pizza everyday if she let him. And I have one who I have coaxed into expanding his palate, but it has taken a long time and a lot of patience.

One book I got back when my finicky eater was a toddler that really helped was Coping With a Picky Eater by William Wilkoff (I'm sure you can find it in the library). Where it most helped was to make me realize that three squares a day is just not in the cards for many toddlers. Many kids do just fine on two decent meals a day, so stop fighting if they aren't hungry.

If you can, concentrate on the higher-vitamin fruits like apples with skin on, berries of all color, cantaloupe, etc. Keep offering veggies and make the rule only that he has to try it.  Be good to your word and drop the subject because you'll be tested at first to make sure you mean it so even the foods the child previously liked may get passed on.

Then try to make meal time as pleasant as possible and do not even talk about what the child is eating, good or bad. Just talk about your day.

Meanwhile, give them a multivitamin to make yourself feel better and add finely diced carrots and peppers to meat sauces, quesadillas, meatloaf, etc. Do not have junk in the house that would be tempting to offer as an alternative. Offer a bedtime snack of some yogurt or cheese slices to make you feel better after a finicky dinner. But make no comment on the dinner eating. You want them to look forward to meals!

Wilkoff suggests putting just one tablespoon each of the meal on his plate, saying nothing and only offering seconds if they eat what you gave them. If they don't eat, don't say a word. Offer a healthy snack in 2 hours. If they don't eat, once again don't say a word. Offer another meal in 2 hours and do the same routine.

Here are some other tips I've gleaned from Wilkoff's book and other moms of picky eaters:

SNEAK IT: I load up carrots and diced zucchini and even chopped spinach in spaghetti and pizza sauces. I add diced tomatoes, carrots or spinach leaves to quesadillas and grilled cheese. Soup is a wonderful way to add extra veggies. And Sneaky Chef and other cookbooks have great ideas like adding carrot puree to mac and cheese that goes unnoticed.

OFFER IT: Even though I have added and sneaked veggies I still have some on the plate at every meal. Don't hide our love of healthy food, model it.

RAINBOW OF COLORS: My kids never cared for veggies but they will eat all manner of fruits so I add fruit to every meal, especially cantaloupe (which has the same vitamins as carrots) and berries.

MAKE IT A GAME: We call broccoli stalks "trees" and imagine we are giants eating a whole tree. Sliced carrots are coins and we see who can put the most money in his belly. Silly stuff works wonders.

GET THEM TO HELP MAKE IT: This has been one of the most helpful things lately, getting the kids to help make dinner. If they helped make it, they have a sense of pride and really want to like it. Let him tear lettuce, measure water for rice, add veggies to the soup.

THE 'NO THANK YOU' BITE: I tell my kids I will never make them eat something they truly don't like, but I want them to at least try it and say "No thank you" to see if they like it. Even if it's something they have tried before and not liked, I ask them to have just one bite the size of a quarter to make sure. I explain that tastebuds change as you grow and people often love stuff they hated as a kid. By doing this I finally got the kids to like broccoli and carrots because after several "No thank you" bites, they finally developed a taste for them.

Rachel, try these tactics and let us know if your "carbotarian" has a change of heart at mealtime.

-- Sharon Kennedy Wynne

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Camp recipes needed!

Gory details to follow, but in preparation for an upcoming family vacation, I was hoping to collect some of your tried-and-true camping recipes.

I’ve Googled and gathered some interesting recipes online, but the first test-batch of camp biscuits were only suitable for putting behind the camper’s tires when parked, so I’d be appreciative of any of those great camp-centric meals that your family just loves under a blanket of stars or mosquitoes.

 Leave a comment here or if you’re really shy, you can email me at divamail@suburbandiva.com.

Tracey Henry, Suburban Diva

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KFC offers free food (again) and free gas (your joke here)

A couple of months ago, KFC nearly had some riots on its hands when patrons swarmed in to get the free grilled chicken meal that Oprah offered to viewers. So what would KFC do as a follow up? Offer another free meal deal this holiday weekend -- and throw in some free gas to boot.

That's right -- to launch the new KFC $5 Fill-Up Box, the company created the KFC $5 Fill-Up Sweepstakes to top off gas tanks – and stomachs. When you register, you can get a gift check for a $5 Fill-Up Box and a $10 gas card. But here's the catch: To win, you must be one of the first 200 people to register each day from Thursday to Sunday during a randomly determined time period between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Is it worth it after all the problems with the previous giveaway? You be the judge.

-- Sherry Robinson

[KFC Fill-Up Box from KFC Web site]

How do you keep kids eating right during summer break?

I’m not proud of it. Back when my daughter was 2, I was reviewing restaurants in Silicon Valley. We went to a Filipino cafe, where my daughter selected a long, gelatinous purple log covered in what we thought was flaked coconut. I still don’t know what it was, but she took one bite and was set to spit that sucker out. I told her, “No, swallow it! We don’t spit food out.”

Our lunch companion thought I was a sadist. “If you thought that was bad,” I said, “my dad would make me sit there until ALL of the food was gone. As long as it took.” It ended up being a game of one-upmanship, whose parents had committed greater crimes against nature in the name of getting us to eat healthy.

I still don’t have it dialed. Here it is summer, with its unstructured, idle days, a pantry full of snacks and no one supervising too closely. I’ve learned my lesson about the unexpected consequences of a clean-plate-club rule. Ditto the “you can have your dessert as soon as you finish your dinner” variation.

Physically moving the delicious stuff to a “pilfering from this basket requires adult consent” special spot seems to make the forbidden fruit all the more tempting. Eschewing all bad-for-you snack foods makes your house the pariah on the block (and your kids mysteriously seem to play elsewhere). Focusing on fat grams and calories puts too much emphasis on weight and leads to body self-image issues. Setting arbitrary limits (“and it was decreed, the number of cookies you shall have is two”) opens up the opportunity for negotiation and, shudder, whining.

Then, of course, there's the magnetic pull of super-cheap, super-convenient fast food (see my picks for navigating the dollar menus) -- it's just so tempting on the way back from the pool and at the sweaty end of day camp.

So, I’d be interested to hear what other moms out there do to gently guide children toward healthy food choices during these first lazy, crazy days of summer.

-- Laura Reiley, Times Momma, food critic and Mouth of Tampa Bay blogger

Nestle's voluntarily recalls refrigerated Toll House cookie dough

Ugh! I just bought a bunch of this BOGO at the grocery a week ago. Apparently, folks have not listened to their Mommas and are eating the cookie dough raw. According to this story, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control are investigating the possibility of E. coli in the raw dough. Nestle has recalled it and the FDA is recommending that consumers throw away any prepackaged refrigerated Nestle Toll House cookie dough in their homes. Throw it away? Can someone tell me how to get a refund?

Here's what Nestle's says to do with the dough to get your dough: "Consumers who have purchased these products should not consume them. Instead, we are asking that consumers return these products to their local grocer for a full refund."

There have been 66 reports of illness across 28 states since March. About 25 people have been hospitalized, but no one has died, the MSNBC story said.

The recall includes refrigerated cookie bar dough, cookie dough tub, cookie dough tubes, limited edition cookie dough items, seasonal cookie dough and Ultimates cookie bar dough. It does not affect any other Toll House products.

First, peanut butter in crackers, then pistachios and now this. Pretty soon we aren't going to be able to eat anything.

-- Sherry Robinson

Growing excitement

Much like an HR director at AIG, I don’t always have the best of luck when trying to rally my family around certain team-building exercises. Pushing around a double-stroller through the mud and rain at an Oktoberfest didn’t garner many laughs nor did a particularly ill-fated community theater production of Les Miserables.

But recently, I hit one straight out of the park at the company softball game: A vegetable garden.

I hear you scoffing, but I swear it’s true. I have long longed for the sweet sunshine taste of a fresh tomato on my sandwich. My mouth has watered at the idea of fresh herbs growing right in my backyard, and I think I’d reach some sort of culinary nirvana if I baked a loaf of zucchini bread from one grown on a vine outside my window.

But I grew up in Detroit, and so my gardening experience consists of a 72-hour growing season which half of that time is subject to a late frost over the fourth of July. Your fancy tropical climate and sunshine confuse me. We’ve been here over 10 years, and the only native plants I have cultivated with any success are live oak saplings in the cracks of my driveway.

So to get my family to share in my excitement of gardening? That would take some work.

I found a “How to Build Your Own Raised Bed Garden” video online, which my husband promptly ignored and designed his own. Last weekend, he and the boys made seventeen trips to Lowe’s and spent as many hours clearing the spot and building our 7'X23' garden bed.

And then we filled it with dirt. Lots and lots of dirt.

This was my first hook for the kids. The complete and utter filth of this job spoke directly to their cores of natural mess makers. We played in that dirt for hours while we filled and spread the soil.

The next fun task was choosing our crops. Unfortunately, I read this Times article saying that many Florida gardeners take summers off, but a big ole patch of okra would do well.

Hmmm. Okra. Throw in a row of Brussels sprouts and I was sure to lose all hope of shared culinary and horticulture interest. So I decided now would be a good time for experimentation, and we made yet another trip to the store, each of them choosing those vegetables that they liked. So while not a traditional garden grouping, we have a lot of corn, pumpkins and catnip even though we don’t have a cat.

And although I did get my tomatoes, herbs, radishes, peppers, and watermelon; it’s the non-cash crops that are the most delicious.

Every morning the kids check their seedlings and report on their progress. They water and consult the weather reports. They even are planning what they want to plant in September when real Florida gardening begins.

So amongst the seedlings we’re growing a little interest, patience, nurturing and a whole lot of unexpected fun.

Don’t be surprised if we bring fresh tomato sandwiches to the AIG company picnic after all.

-- Tracey Henry, Suburban Diva

[Photos: Henry family garden before (top) and after]