Weekday schedule....
Morning is pretty simple. She eats first thing, gets dressed, and then a little snack downstairs (cheerios, pancake, waffle, etc), before heading out the door.
The day is spent playing and learning new things at her Sitter's house. They go on a "field trip" once a week (today was COSI). She naps from around 930-1030 and 130-330. She eats 1 meal and 2 snacks. Every day we get a written update of the things she is doing there.
After picking up Amelia at her Sitter's, I bring her home and it's around 5:15 or so. She's usually ready for dinner, so I plop her into her high chair, and go to work. She's not much of a veggie eater (her sitter gets some in, but by the end of the day, she's pretty obstinate), so it's pretty much a carb/dairy/fruit fest.
Her menu of choice is pretty much either a quesadilla (tortilla+american cheese) or grilled cheese sandwich. Not much variety there! And she'll eat chopped up fruit (grapes, watermelon, mango, etc) and some sort of "dessert", like puffs, graham crackers or animal crackers. That's just about it. She just is pretty hard to convince to expand her boundaries at dinnertime, so we've stopped struggling and just offer her our veggies, but don't cry when she won't eat them. Actually, that's being nice.... it's not just not eating them... she ceremoniously chucks them off her high chair and onto the floor. It's frustrating, but we feel stuck right now. We're holding off on meat and eggs for now, she has stopped liking some stuff she used to like (like beans and rice), and she does not like "normal" toddler foods like macaroni and cheese.
But one victory is that she's drinking milk now! It took about a week of mixing it with formula, gradually lessening the amount of formula in the cup. And she was already a pro at the sippy cup, so that wasn't a problem. So now she's totally off of formula (YAY!) and virtually off of the bottle, too. We can't officially say that, because she nurses at bedtime, so if I wasn't there, I'm thinking Chris would give her a bottle, just to get her to go to bed easy. Her pediatrician says that once she's drinking a good amount of milk, we can drop the bedtime feeding, but we're nervous about that!!
Here's Amelia tonight at dinner. Sippy cup of milk; grapes are what's closest to her; a couple of chunks of watermelon in the middle; abandoned quesadilla at the far side of the tray.
Chris usually cooks for us while I'm keeping Amelia happy and well-fed.
After, we hang out until bedtime. We like to play outside... going for walks, swinging, or rolling around on the lawn. She gets an ice cream treat about once a week. We also like to play with her toys indoors. She LOVES to be chased, and likes to tackle and crawl over mommy or daddy.
Playful Amelia!
At around 7:15 (sometimes later, but usually not), we head upstairs. Bath, dressed in pj's, books, feeding, bedtime!
And about 12 hours later... it all starts again.
Before we were parents, we swore that we'd not be those that are sticklers to routine and slaves to nap/bedtimes. But... sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. It keeps our kid happy and healthy. We stray from the schedule enough to stay sane and enjoy life.
