The Templeton Blog: "Diet Training" a 3 year old boy

The title of this post seems cruel really. But I have to give myself a little credit for attempting this new, extremely challenging diet that has already shown a few improvements in Andrew's sleep and mood. It will all pay off...I just know it will!

So the question I have for today: should I let him go ahead and cheat on his diet tonight? It is Halloween and he's going to be all dressed up "working" for his treats, so I would feel so mean if I had to take them from him. :( At the Halloween parade on Sunday, I just took out the dairy/ gluten candies (I actually had a handout with safe candies in my massive packetS o' nutritional info.) and let him chow away on those leftover (gummy bears and sweet tarts are some of his favs). But he LOVES chocolate...as much as I do. And I can't imagine as a 3 year-old understanding my mom allowing my sibling to eat chocolate and not me. :( So that's the dilemma today.

I WILL say Andrew has been SO good about understanding what he can and can't have. He has even started saying, "No that will hurt your belly," if he sees us eating a glutinous/dairy item (I gave up my bagel in the morning for about 2 weeks, and gave in when I saw pumpkin cream cheese at Trader Joe's. ;/ So no- the whole family is not following the diet very strictly). If it were Abby being forced to give up certain things that she saw Andrew eating...O...M...G....DRAMA would take over our house-hold. That little girl of mine is a drama queen when she doesn't get what she wants. Andrew gets over it pretty quickly (for the most part), so that is REALLY nice. Andrew has grabbed Abby's snack cup of Annie's bunnies or cheerios a few times (2 of the many things we loaded up on at Costco a week before Andrew's diet changes), but he won't usually get too angry once I take it from him.

Speaking of eating- I seriously feel like my kids eat ALL DAY LONG....it kinda drives me crazy sometimes (bad parent alert??) ;-) But seriously...I will be in the middle of preparing a meal and all I hear in the background is: Snack!! pop sic (what Abby calls popsicles), APPLE!!!! berries!!!! With both kids pulling every snack cup out of the drawer, containers of berries, milk cartons, and bags of chips from the cupboard and fridge. I HAD a rule where they can only eat at the bar or table...but Andrew has figured out how to climb up to the bar and take cereal bars, bananas, apples, muffins...what ever he can find..that I normally had up high enough for him not to scavenge and find and so now I'm constantly finding half-eaten fruit, cereal bars (gluten free of course), and chips spilled all over the house. I even locked the "snack cupboard" so they couldn't get to it and Abby has figured out how to shove her tiny arms through and pull out bags of chips. Nice. At least they are good eaters, but my house is never clean (and I sweep at least 4 times a day).Thank goodness for a dog to clean up after most of it. ;-) haha!

Aside from diet changes and eating around our house, there are a lot of changes going on with little personalities! Andrew actually called me Kristi today...seriously?? He yelled, "Kristi, Sadie needs to go to time out! She's barking!" I laughed so hard and can't even figure out who he heard calling me that. I mean, it IS my name, but Todd usually calls me "babe." He had a friend over to play yesterday and probably heard his mom call me Kristi...cracks me up! I give it 2 weeks before Abby starts referring to me by my first name too. ;-) As far as personalities- Abby has been extremely moody lately. I felt really bad because both kids got sick with fever and coughing and Andrew got over his pretty quickly while Abby's lingered. I took her to the doctor and found out she had an ear infection (opps...) Andrew never had one before, so I really wasn't even suspecting it with Abby. They prescribed her an antibiotic (go figure), and I gave it to her for the first few days and then I felt uneasy about giving it to her.... she did actually seem much better after 2 days, but I read some things (I won't go into it), and decided to stop antibiotics and use lavender oil and give garlic and mullein oil a try if it keeps hurting. Well, she's back to the angry little girl that cries 75% of the day and is not sleeping at night, so off to whole foods tonight to see if I can get some mullein oil. Hopefully it will get better soon. Until next time!