Picky eater? No, no, no!

As a new parent of an almost toddler, this old piece of wisdom has been coming to mind a lot lately.

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results.

Yet, I’ve made a giant post-it note-to-self: ignore old wisdoms, especially when it comes to feeding Isla.

Turns out, repeatedly giving kids the same food over, and over, and over—especially a food they tend to fling across the room—is not insane at all.

It’s brilliant.

Isla, mid fling

And, by brilliant, I mean it works.

Did I figure this out on my own? Not at all. (You mistake me for a person with patience.)

By dumb luck I was recently assigned to read a research study which reported that a child’s willingness to eat a new food increases after they’ve been exposed to it about five to 10 times.

Yes, 10. (As in seven ain’t enough, eight ain’t enough, and neither is nine.)

If that sounds like a lot, brace yourself: some feeding experts cite evidence showing it can take 15 to 20 exposures to a new food to get the ‘Mikey likes it!‘ response I’ve been hoping for. (But I’m not even going there just yet because, let’s face it, by ‘exposures’ I mean episodes of me standing patiently nearby as Isla cheerfully flings pieces of food across the kitchen.)

If you think that’s way too many times to be pulling the same food stunt with your kids, you’re not the only one. The same study showed that most of us throw in the ‘just try it’ towel much faster, serving up a new food an average of 2.5 times before we decide our little mini me just doesn’t like it.

Even I, holding tight to the idea that I’m willing to do anything when it comes to winning the you’re-gonna-eat-veggies-war, admit this seemingly low number is sadly accurate. Spending time on my hands and knees on the floor, wiping up all the tasty morsels I’ve spent time cooking and cutting into perfectly appropriate infant-sized pieces gets old—insanely old—after about the second or third time.

It can also be a little heartbreaking. I’m thinking of the incident that occurred the other day after I found the most beautiful and delicious heirloom tomatoes at our local farmer’s market. I came home, washed and sliced them, delicately scraping all the seeds and juice out of their insides, and then dicing the remains into tiny little squares, perfect for Isla’s munchkin fingers to pick up.

Seconds after I laid those sweet, red squares of summer out in front of her, she tossed them highchair-overboard.

Picking up their wet little bodies off of the cold kitchen tiles was a sad experience I wasn’t too anxious to repeat.

Yet, I plan on doing just that.

(I know what you’re thinking…poor, sad little woman. Crying over tomatoes and slaving to a wee 11 month old.)

No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. According to feeding experts, Isla isn’t a cruel little tyrant nor is she getting a kick out of seeing me crawl around picking up over-priced produce off the floor (okay, maybe she is just a little bit.)

Isla’s instinct to chuck pieces of unfamiliar foods across my kitchen is a perfectly normal type of food neophobia, a fancy term for fear of new foods. (Well, the throwing isn’t the normal part, the refusing to eat is.) A certain degree of food neophobia is a perfectly natural, even intelligent and protective, behavior for a young little omnivore.

You see, we omnivores need to eat a wide variety of foods in order to get all the necessary vitamins, minerals and other nutrients our bodies need in order to function properly.

Isla, still a little unsure about all this variety

Yet, eating all kinds of different foods can be dicey business because before you eat anything new you’ve got to make sure it’s safe to eat.

It’s a perplexing little problem we omnivores have, needing to eat a wide variety of foods but also needing to exercise caution and eat only what’s familiar and safe. You may have already heard of this little food catch-22, which is sometimes called the omnivore’s paradox or omnivore’s dilemma.

Did you lose me yet? Hopefully not but who cares because here’s the point: if your kid refuses to eat a good-for-you food once, twice, even five times, don’t give up! This goes especially so when it comes to vegetables, the absolute healthiest foods they will ever eat.

When feeding Isla, I remember that my little omnivore is going through a learning process so I’ve vowed to start exercising some mealtime “PP.”

Patient Persistence

Since I hate cleaning the kitchen floor (or anywhere, for that matter) I’ve discovered a few tricks that make trying new foods easier on Isla, such as…

The Takeaway

Are your smoke alarms up to snuff?

The fear of fire is always on my mind.

Maybe it’s because I’m married to a firefighter. For me, that means that a bon voyage off-to-work-hug-and-kiss-fest is rarely complete without me sending one stupid and pleading thought out into the universe: please, please don’t let anything terrible happen.

Maybe it’s because being married to his man also means always being reminded to unplug the toaster after using it and directed to notice where the emergency exits are when we take our seats in a theater. (Trust me, no matter how handsome he is, this is always an awkward start to a night.)

Maybe it isn’t marriage but motherhood that’s made fire a threat that’s always in the back of my mind. My most distinct memory of my first Christmas with Isla is one of a horrifying scene on the morning news. Sometime in the middle of the night, a blaze tore through a home in nearby Stamford, Connecticut killing three young girls and their grandparents. Images of a once idyllic-looking waterfront house now smoldering and the faces of the innocent young children who had lived there kept flashing on the screen. It was one of those stories I could not bare to watch and could not stop watching at the same time. A new mother myself, I was tortured with the wonder of how this other mother, a survivor of the blaze, would ever go forward to endure such grief.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’m the kind of person who somehow thinks that protecting herself from ‘the worst that can happen’ is as easy is imagining it first? As if worrying about possible tragedy might magically ward it away…

Regardless of whether marriage, motherhood, or a catastrophizing personalty (yes to all you budding analysts out there, I’m aware of my ‘ish) is to blame, I’m definitely afraid of a fire. That fact makes it no surprise that a smoke alarm report on the NBC’s Today Show caught my undivided attention yesterday morning.

The reporter claimed that the type of alarms used in 90% of homes—called ionization alarms—aren’t effective at detecting lethal smoke. He went on to interview an electrical engineering professor at Texas A & M University, who was quoted saying that the use of this type of alarm was responsible for a number of unnecessary deaths each year.

To drive their point home, the engineer, the reporter and a local fire department set up a test to show that it took 36 minutes for the ionization alarm to sound off in response to smoldering fire. In contrast, they did a second test adding another type of alarm, called a photoelectric alarm, which sounded off in 17 minutes. It wasn’t until 21 minutes later that the ionization alarm went off in this second test.

The story went on, very investigatively, to interview an official at the Consumer Product Safety Commission as to why photoelectric alarms aren’t mandated, suggesting something about higher manufacturing costs and lower profits being to blame… but by this time, the story had lost me.

All I could wonder was, could we sleep through a fire for half an hour before our alarm detected it? (And by ‘we’ I mean Isla and I, as this would never happen with my husband home. He can’t detect a whiff of my new shampoo or the stench of a dirty diaper, but he can manage to smell smoke coming from a pile of burning leaves two towns over. Go figure.)

Still, for the nights my husband’s not home, I was was worried. So I called him at work to tell him what I’d just seen and ask him the deal. “Sounds plausible,” he said. “You know, there’s a difference between smoke detection and heat detection?” Oh no. I felt the fire safety lecture coming on, only this time, I’d asked for it. Since I was silent, he dumbed it down and tried again:

“There’s a difference between smoke and flame. Did you know that?”

No, sweetheart, I didn’t know that. Now I do. And I have to run because the baby’s crying, there’s someone at the door, the kettle’s boiling, thank you.

From there, I got on my laptop and quickly discovered that both the U.S. Fire Administration and the National Fire Protection Association note that there’s a difference in smoke detectors.

An ionization alarm detects fast moving flame while a photoelectric alarm detects smoldering smoke.

What’s more? Both agencies recommend optimizing protection by installing both kinds of detectors in your home. You can check it out, just like I did, by linking to the USFA and the NFPA sites.

So, today I hit Home Depot and bought a couple of these new dual detectors for our home. And, to bring this back to food and the kitchen, I chose one that also has a ‘hush’ button. If your cooking sets off the kitchen alarm frequently (guilty!), this feature allows you to temporarily silence it rather than removing the batteries, which experts warn are often forgotten to be replaced (also guilty!)

So, my public service announcement for today: Check your smoke alarms. Make sure that they detect both flames (ionization) and smoke (photoelectric). If they don’t, upgrade them. At about $21 a pop, it’ll give you one less thing to worry about.∗

The Takeaway

Why feeding a toddler is like a high octane sport

No meal with Isla would be complete without one cool shot of adrenaline, poured especially for me.

It’s served straight up my spine, numbness across the chest, heart pumping through the ears, fingers tingling.

She offers it in the kitchen, when my back is turned away from her. I’m facing the counter, slicing and dicing her serving of whatever’s on the menu. I hear her gentle coughing, then a sharp gag, then a moment of silence that lasts an odd second too long. The instant I whip around to face her—those cherub cheeks flushed red, her eyes uncertain, more silence—the adrenaline shoots right through me with a lone thought,

She’s choking! Oh my god! This time, she’s really choking!

Though I’ve thought this a couple dozen times, it still rips through me like a triple espresso on an empty stomach.

I rip her tray from her chair, fumble unbuckling the belt (did I mention the numbness?), and grab her by her tiny torso never not knowing exactly what to do next. It’s usually in that moment that she opens her little mouth, releasing dozens of little pieces of the unchewed food I’d been serving her over the last ten minutes.

She’s not gasping for breath, losing oxygen to the brain, about to pass out …. she’s simply given in to the fact that there’s no room in her mouth to chew.

When I realize she’s fine, I get a small taste of relief and then a large side order of anger. “Isla! Why do you do this? Don’t shovel so much in your mouth at once!” For dessert, we share a small dish of disbelief. Me, not understanding what’s possessing my little daughter to hoard every morsel she sees. Her, wondering why soft, sweet cooing mommy sometimes suddenly turns so loud and sharp.

I’m always wide awake after a meal like that.

WIDE awake. Ready to run a race, dash off a hundred thank you cards, redesign the living room, write a family financial plan for the new year. No need to seek life-affirming thrills on the top of a ski mountain, on the backseat of a motorcycle, in a 100 foot plunge off a trestle bridge. I’m now get shots of my adrenaline right in my own kitchen.

The last time this choking fake out happened, I had had enough and did what any ~~young mother~~ mother of a young child would do: I signed up for a class on infant CPR. (No. That’s still on the To-Do list.) I took my problem to the Internet and start googling the heck of out of it… ‘infant stuffing mouth,’ ‘infant choking,’ ‘infant feeding problems,’

That’s when I discovered that there are actually experts in what I call the ‘mechanical side of feeding.’ They’re usually occupational therapists and speech pathologists who specialize in pediatric feeding difficulties. Who knew?!

Q & A: Alisha Grogan

Meet one such expert, Alisha Grogan, MOTR/L a pediatric occupational therapist and mother of two young boys based in the Pittsburgh area.

Alisha and her blog, Your Kid’s Table, talked me through my most recent fear of feeding Isla—and then, since I’m full of fears, we chatted some more… Here, find great tips for feeding a toddler or younger. Since this post is long, I added some nifty headings to make it easier to skim through and find what you’re looking for…

Choking

Amelia: At 13 months, Isla’s a speed eater, two-fisting handfuls of food into her mouth faster than I can replace them on the tray. Of course, I’m terrified she’s going to choke. I don’t have patience for the obvious solution—to put just one piece in front of her at time, so I’m wondering 1) if you have any ideas for slowing her down, and 2) what’s her problem (clearly, she’s anticipating a famine)?

Alisha: Not to worry! Actually, this kind of feeding behavior is normal for kids until 16 ot 17 months. Up until then, they’re really still developing a sense of the boundaries of their mouth. Normally, you put food on your tongue, the tongue moves it to the molars, it goes back and forth until it becomes a bolus (or a ball of food that’s been through the chewing process), then you swallow. A child is still learning this process and if they can’t feel the pieces of food in their mouth, they will stuff more and more in there until it stretches the sides of their cheeks and they can. They don’t yet understand the idea that they can choke.

The good news: she will eventually grow out of it. That said, there are still a few things you can do to help her learn to slow down. First, you can literally ask her to: cognitively, she might not understand you, but she will in time. Gently pull her arm back from her mouth as you say it to help her make the connection. (She might be a little fussy about this, but will get better.) Second, you can distract her from the food (by singing, clapping, or whatever she likes) to get her to take a break. Let her get back to eating once she’s chewed what’s in her mouth. Lastly, when you brush her teeth, you can make sure you’re brushing her gums really well in the back, and the insides of her cheeks, around the edges and the top. That will improve her oral discrimination, too. A vibrating toothbrush can also help, which I talk about on my blog in a post about a child with some sensory challenges.

Just be cautious: your number one goal should always be to have a positive association with food and meal time. Keep this in mind as you’re working with her to slow down.

Also, while I don’t think this is what’s going on with your child, there ARE children with tactile discrimination problems—there’s a spectrum. Some children who are born premature or have autism might struggle with this and an occupational therapist can help. Also, there are easy ways to improve any child’s sensory skills, which can also be found on my blog.

Drinking

Amelia: Such good advice! Thank you! Okay, my next point of confusion at meals: giving drinks alongside food–are you for or against this? My husband always serves up a beverage with meals ’to help her wash it down.’ I’m always taking it away (when he’s not looking, of course). Two reasons; I’m worried she’ll fill up on fluids and not have enough room for food (ie real nutrition); plus, I’m worried that mixing the fluids and the solids will cause her to choke, not prevent it. Thoughts?

Alisha: Overall it’s a good idea! Congratulations to your husband on that one. I actually use this as a strategy to help kids learn to swallow. If a child can’t stand the texture of applesauce, or anything pureed, for instance, I will use the drink as a tool to help them. They take a taste, then a drink to help wash it down. The idea is that if you add a little liquid to the mouth, it can be easier to swallow because it’s easier to swallow liquid than a solid. In general, if kids have hard time swallowing or chewing solids, following each bite with a drink to help wash it down and rinse everything from their mouth is a good, helpful thing. Overall, we want them to have great ability to eat and drink at the same time.

That said, it really does depend on the child. If your child is choosing the drink only, then no, it is not a good idea to give it to them with meals. Some children will choose to drink an entire cup of milk, for example, and then not eat their food. If this is your child, I’d give a little bit of water—opposed to milk, which is much more filling—and that’s all.

Mastering forks & spoons

Amelia: At what age are kids ready to use a fork and spoon? At 13 months, my daughter has no interest in using them for anything but banging or making food mosaics on her face and tray. Should I try harder to teach her to use them or leave it alone?

Alisha: I would expect them to be independent with a fork and spoon by 2 years old. There’s a really wide range, however. As general guidelines, I would recommend starting a child at 9 or 10 months with a spoon. If they are throwing it… then take it away. You can re-introduce it again in a week or two. Really, a child is capable of feeding themselves with a spoon by one year—I wouldn’t expect them to or need them to at this age, but the point is that they do have the ability to do it and you should certainly give them an opportunity to try by this time.

Around 14 months, they should be they should be partially feeding themselves and you should be partially feeding them. At 16 to 18 months, they should be poking foods with a fork. I think it’s totally acceptable if they are still finger feeding themselves at this point, too. If they are eating chicken fingers, for example, they can use use their hands. But if they want spaghetti, they would be able to use a fork if they wanted to.

Isla, why not try the other hand?

Amelia: Okay, we’ll work on that one. This is definitely a case of ME, not Isla, who is having trouble learning something. (I need to learn not to cringe at the mess she makes and to give her more opportunity to try. Along with this, I’m dizzied by the array of spoons, forks and sporks at buybuyBaby: what should I be looking for?

Alisha: You want spoons with a deeper bowl, so that the food they scoop up stays put. You also want a shorter, thicker handle, which is easier for them to grasp and manipulate with their wrist since they need to scoop then turn towards their mouth. (These are different from feeding spoons, which have a shallow bowls and longer, narrower handles.)

Sippy cups

Amelia: Next up: sippy cups. My pediatrician advised us to skip them and go straight from a bottle to a straw. What’s up with that?

Alisha: With a sippy cup, you use the same suck pattern as with a bottle: for both, they put their little tongue under the nipple or spout and move it back and forth to drink. You’re not challenging them or advancing at all. With the straw cup, they use a different suck pattern–one that helps to develop speech sounds. A straw cup is more developmentally advanced than a sippy cup. The other issue is if they use a sippy cup for a long period of time, it can actually make their teeth push out. It’d have to be for a long time, but it is a potential risk.

Amelia: Oh wow! This is so interesting… you’re actually helping them develop their mouth in preparation to speak?

Alisha: Yes! Using a straw helps strengthen the muscles in the mouth that are used for speech. To drink from a straw, you use your lips—your tongue isn’t involved at all.

On another note, drinking from a straw is also really great sensory stimulation. The actual sucking sensation brings a soothing, calming, organizing stimulus to their systems. This is especially helpful for kids with sensory issues, since they are all over the place. Generally speaking, sucking on a straw brings balance to a kid’s system. It can also be alerting, too, especially if it is a cool drink.

Straws

Amelia: One of my favorite posts (thus far!) on your blog explains how to teach your little one to drink from a straw. Thank you for posting this because I went through a time when I asked every mom I saw with a toddler drinking from a straw HOW they taught them, and no one could really explain it. Your post includes a great step-by-step method.

Alisha: You can usually teach them with a regular straw first. That’s because the no-leak cups with a built-in straw have a valve which requires a strong suck in order to get any liquid out of them. Some kids pick it up it up right away—one of my sons, for instance, amazed me by getting it at five months—and some kids need more time.

If your child is choking or coughing a lot of with a straw you might need to back off a bit. A straw brings a lot more liquid into the mouth and drops it further back on the tongue, so it can be challenging at first.

Snacking

Amelia: Lastly, as an occupational therapist, what’s the biggest mistake you see parents make when it comes to feeding?

Alisha: The thing that I see the most often, and what really makes me crazy, is when people ask me, “Why won’t my kids eat?” Usually, the answer is “because you’re giving them snacks all day!”

Many people make the mistake of letting their kids graze all day long. Handing them a couple of pretzels here, a cup of Cheerios there. And I’m not saying that I’ve never done it. However, I save it for exceptions, just to pacify them in extreme situations. It can ruin the appetite and it’s also a safety issue, especially a choking hazard, for children under the age of 5.

Snacks should be more substantial than this and they should be worked into the routine. For instance, kids should eat every 2.5 to 3 hours from the start of one meal to the start of the next with just water in between. (This is under my ‘basic strategies‘ on my blog.) I know everyone is crazy busy and this can be tough but I think having structure around your meal patterns is very important.

I believe that eating should be an event. It’s family time, it’s social time, whether your kids are with you, grandparents, or whomever. I think eating and meal time should be given the respect that it deserves by having kids sit down at a table to do it. You want to show them that meal time is an important part of life and not something we are just doing it passively.

Amelia: Oh, Alisha! That’s really wonderful! In addition to making sitting down at a table to help make meals important, I love the idea of ‘not eating passively.’ Teaching kids (and adults!) to be more deliberate when it comes to choosing foods and nourishing themselves—especially with the food-is-everywhere environment we live in—is definitely worthwhile!

Thanks to Alisha Grogan for ALL the great tips and advice. If you want to learn more about how to help your child be a better eater, you can find additional articles on the website Your Kids Table. You can also find Alisha on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Enjoy!∗

The Takeaway

Clueless about Cavities?

Remember Alicia Silverstone? I give her kudos for vowing to live The Kind Life and all…but there’s a wildly good chance that girlfriend’s putting her adorable little son, Bear Blu, at big risk for cavities. (Sorry, sister! The only reason I’m calling you out as being clueless about cavities is because, up until a few days ago, I was too.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Where’d she come up with that name for her kid?” (No, you’re too grown-up to judge, right? Of course, of course, me too!) No, what you’re really thinking is, “Old news!” because you’ve already seen the video of Alicia swapping spit with her son in an attempt to help him chew up his food—you and at least 169,000 other people, according to YouTube, plus the millions who caught it on the national television news and entertainment programs that ran it.

You’re right, that’s old news. What’s new news is that…

I’m guilty of this crime against kids’ teeth

And YOU probably are, too!

(Nope, I’m not about to step out of the premastication closet. Nor am I about to out you either, so keep cool. For now, your post-modern mothering ways remain under wraps.)

~~We’re~~ I’m guilty because pre-chewing your little one’s food (a la Ms. Silverstone) isn’t the ONLY way to increase a kid’s risk for cavities. Doing something as common as sharing a feeding utensil, such as a cup or spoon (I’ve done this), kissing them on the mouth (I don’t do this), or blowing on their food (really?) ups the odds they’ll suffer from tooth decay, too, according to The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD).

When I first read this, I thought, ‘How could that be? People are sharing spoons and kissing each other all over this planet and my dentist never mentioned that it’d cause cavities—a cold and couple other unpleasant things, yes—but not cavities.’

So, I did a little research and discovered an ~~anxiety-provoking~~ amazingly interesting fact about infants and toddlers.

Turns out, from the age teething starts until about 2.5 years old, a child’s mouth goes through a special window of time (or a period of infectivity) when it’s highly susceptible to being colonized by the bacteria—called mutans streptococcus—that’s largely responsible for causing tooth decay. This is because the immune system is not yet fully developed so, if mutans streptococcus happen to get into the mouth, they’ve got a good chance of being able to take hold and set-up shop there for the long-term. That means that even when baby teeth are long gone, the bacteria will stay put infecting (i.e. rotting) adult permanent teeth as well.

Furthermore (yes, there’s more—and if you’re a mom, you’re about to be called out here, so brace yourself)… after reviewing 46 studies on the subject, researchers discovered that the biggest source of the bacteria is caregivers—moms, in particular. (Dads came in second, I should note.) So, if kids get cavities caused by this bacteria, there’s a good chance they’ve ‘caught’ them from their parents.

By kindergarten age, 40% of kids have at least one cavity

Eek! As if worrying about being the source of all my daughter’s future eating neurosis weren’t enough on my plate. Now I have to worry that a slip-up during meal times might be destroying her lil’ pearly whites, too!

Now, for anyone who’s wondering WHY I’d ever share a spoon with my child, here’s the deal: I’d never deliberately share her spoon or fork. However, despite having every intention to keep her utensils out of my mouth—and mine out of hers, I don’t always succeed.

Let me explain and ~~hopefully~~ maybe you can relate. Meal times—especially when they happen in our own kitchen—are usually pretty chaotic. Utensils are flying. There’s the ones I’m using to prepare things, the ones I’m using to transfer foods from their storage containers to serving/eating bowls, the ones I’m using to feed Isla, and those I’m using to feed myself. In a perfect world, never the twain—or quadruplicate—shall meet. Of course, I don’t live in a perfect world and slip-ups happen.

While I’m busy cutting up foods into mini bites, testing that things aren’t scorching hot, and making sure Isla gets a glimpse of me eating the same foods that she’ll be eating in an effort to defend against pickiness, it’s inevitable that her little baby spoon might end up in my mouth now and again. I usually notice seconds after the feeding fumble has occurred (sometimes midway through it), toss the contaminated utensil into the sink, and then grab a fresh baby spoon only to commit the same silly offense a couple of bites later.

Needless to say, we go through an obscene about of cutlery for one ‘Isla’ meal and, now that I think about it, I should definitely add the dishwasher to my gratitude list pronto.

5 Tips for Stopping Saliva Spread

Since cavity-causing bacteria is spread through saliva, stopping yours from reaching baby’s mouth is key. Here’s the Cliff Notes version of the tips I found to reduce and/or eliminate the problem:

Avoid sharing a feeding utensil or cup
Avoid using your mouth to ‘cut’ foods into smaller bites, like a grape or piece of meat (another feeding faux pas I admit to committing in the absence of a knife)
Avoid cleaning a dropped pacifier with your mouth (never did this but seen it often enough to mention)
Avoid kissing kids on the mouth (no comment)
If you’ve got cavities, research shows that chewing xylitol-containing gum 2 to 3 times daily can cut back on enough bacteria in your mouth actually lower the risk of your kid will develop ECC (or early childhood caries, a fancy term for the bacteria-linked tooth decay I’ve been talking about)

I’ve taken these tips one step further and have added a couple additional ideas:

Avoid cross-contaminating kids’ food by dipping your own used spoon/fork into a child’s bowl for a taste (again, usually done in an effort to show how much mommy likes it)
Avoid feeding directly from food storage/leftover bins, which doesn’t cause cavities but does contaminate the leftover food with enough of of a child’s own bacteria to hasten spoilage

This post wouldn’t be complete without at least some general feeding tips to keep kids teeth healthy, as recommended by the AAPD and AAP, which include; limiting night time feedings with milk (some experts even recommend never putting a child to sleep with a bottle containing anything but water); avoiding frequent breastfeeding (7 or more times daily) in children 12 months and older, which has been associated with increased ECC; limiting the amount of juice or sugary drinks to 4 to 6 ounces (if any!) daily for kids 1 to 6 years old—also, if you do give kids juice, this should only be from a cup (no sippy cups or bottles) and only alongside a meal or snack; and, of course, limiting overall consumption of high-sugar foods.

Lastly, oral hygiene should begin no later than the eruption of the first tooth according to the AAPD. This means brushing teeth and/or gums with a soft toothbrush or gauze twice daily as soon as teeth emerge, which can also help prevent bacteria from colonizing the mouth. AAPD also recommends scheduling your child’s first dental visit by 12 months.

Brusha, Brusha, Brusha!

If you’re interested in learning more about your baby’s teeth, check out A Guide To Children’s Dental Health or Oral Health, both created by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a FAQ sheet created by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentists.∗

The Takeaway

Animal Pancakes and What Cheese Can Teach Us about Love

Warning to those traveling to the Netherlands with children: Wanneer u een dier Pannenkoek van het kindermenu in The Pancake Bakery bestellen, wees dan niet verbaasd als het wordt geserveerd overgoten met een gevulde slang en een aantal Zweedse vis zoals snoep die ervoor zorgt dat je kleintje zeggen “woooooooah!”

Isla, discovering how the Dutch do pancakes

(P.S. The translation is found later in this post so you’ll soon be in-the-know if only you have the patience to continue reading.)Diehard fans of this blog (you know who you are) may jump the gun and use Google Translate to discover the secret in that sentence. Those who speak Dutch will have little idea of what I’m saying as I’m quite sure my use of the language is a disaster. For everyone else, suffice to say that my little family and I just spent a week eating our way through Amsterdam and Utrecht and we liked it very much, very much indeed.

First, I’ll have you know ’twas love that inspired our trip to the Netherlands. A wedding, in fact—a most out-of-this-world wedding, at that, which included an Italian feast, a circus, a ribbon acrobat, a fire eater, a teatro metamorfosis, numerous declarations of absolute admiration and adoration for the bride and groom, another feast, a castle, a Dutch picnic, tandem bikes, a group of 300 enthusiastic guests, and so very much more. Yet, none of these marvelous and extraordinary things had me as convinced that bride was indeed in love—truly, madly, deeply in love—with the groom as much as did the overwhelming presence of cheese. (More on love and cheese later.)

Second, I’m very happy to report that none of our brood was hit by a bicyclist. My husband did walk into a bike that was chained to rack… and it did make a big ruckus and twist into an awkward mess onto the sidewalk… but he insists this doesn’t count as a bike accident since there was no actual rider involved. (There were other points to his argument which I won’t get into except to say that I beg to differ.)

Third, I’m ashamed to admit that one member of our brood went three (maybe four) days without eating a single vegetable. I’m not naming names but she does not speak English (or Dutch), insists on eating all foods with her bare hands, and must be carried or pushed in her ‘buggy’ everywhere she goes.

Fourth, since I’m hoping to write off part of this trip as a work expense, please bear with me as I summarize a brief list of food facts culled from eating research I conducted while traveling:

17 food lessons from 7 days in Holland

1. The apple compote from Albert Heijn is darned good. Like, super darned good. (In fact, I might be willing to accept it over Nutella when a sugar craving strikes. No joke. This is huge.)

2. You can easily get through U.S. Customs with a jar of apple compote.

3. Gluten-free in Dutch = Gluten-vrij

4. Dutch people like Italian food.

5. Serving cotton candy at your wedding is much enjoyed and appreciated.

6. In Amsterdam, gelato is ubiquitous (see #4). Ditto for Utrecht. I mention this because standing alongside a canal under the moonlight with a scoop of ricotta and fig gelato may very well be worth a 7 hour flight with toddler.

7. American Cookies is the gelato flavor favored by Dutch waitresses.

8. When eating out, if you’d like to order meat, cheese, or bread, then you’re in luck. Vegetables = not possible. (Though, you and your child will graciously be offered french fries as an alternative.)

9. Soused herring is slippery, slimy and best avoided unless you are part Dutch.

10. A pack of colored file folder stickers can keep a toddler occupied for at least 27 minutes while flying. (Not food related but highly valuable information nonetheless.)

11. The milk served on KLM airlines is organic.

12. Bibsters (disposable bibs) are the bomb! (Pay no mind to the cost, just pony up. You will be happy.)

13. If you were raised in Holland, you probably consider the Starbucks grande latte Supersized. (You probably consider any drink over 5 ounces Supersized. Be proud.)

14. In The Netherlands, organic is referred to as ‘biological.’ (And that makes me feel weird.)

15. If you’re looking to avoid growth hormones, there’s no need to insist on ‘biological’ versions of milk, etc. The use of r-BGH and r-BST is banned in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. (Again, Holland, be proud.)

16. Weighing your own produce is fun. Lucky for you, you will get to take your hand at it if you go to a Dutch grocery store.

17. When you order an Animal Pancake from the children’s menu at The Pancake Bakery in Amsterdam, do not be surprised if it is served topped with a stuffed snake and a number of Swedish-fish like candy that will make your little one say “woooooooah!” Please be prepared for every meal to pale in comparison hereafter.

P.S. If you’d like to embarrass yourself by attempting to say this above sentence in Dutch, scroll back to the top.)

My research is complete, on to cheese and love.

The bride, a former cheese fiend (forgive me, is that too strong a word? Anyone who has shared a plate of saganaki with this woman will know what I’m saying) now lives a very virtuous, dairy-free lifestyle. Yet, despite her having given up this tough-to-resist food (I once read that cheese has an addictive quality, working on brain receptors the same way as morphine), she has agreed to live the rest of her life with a man from a country replete with this temptation.

(For those of you have haven’t been to Holland, there are gorgeous and enticing little cheese shops everywhere. As if that weren’t enough, the cheese is good, really good. There are entire museums celebrating the stuff. Literally. Cheese, cheese, cheese.)

This would be like me swearing off chocolate and then falling in love with Willy Wonka and hanging out in The Chocolate Factory just to be near him.

Could I do it? For love…Maybe?

I’m not sure I could. And that’s how cheese game me my proof…

Be still, my salivating heart! The bride is most surely in love with her Dutchy, the groom.

The Takeaway

Saling with Summer Infant

I love to go saling! And by saling, I mean soaring on a blissful feeling I get when I find exactly what I need for a bargain basement price.

Don’t be mistaken: I take saling seriously. Scoping out a worthwhile markdown is a talent. It takes persistence, experience, good judgement, timing, and a certain degree of restraint.

If saling were a measurable virtue, I’d be considered an admirable woman.

After years of honing this skill, I’m gotten good at it. Really good! If only I could apply my saling skill to something worthwhile… say, bringing clean water to millions of in-need children around the world, I’d be a great success. I’d die a peaceful woman and a hero.

Of course, my saling skill isn’t good for much of anything. (I haven’t figured out how to use it to help kids access clean water, but I’m working on it.)

Truth be told, aside from a couple bucks I’ve managed to save here and there, nothing worthwhile has ever come from my saling talent… except that it’s how I came to pluck this thingy, called a TinyDiner, from the markdown bin at buybuyBaby.

TinyDiner, all rolled up and ready to go

That was a good and lucky thing. You see, this rubbery, fruit roll-up looking device helped me reclaim a part of my social life that’d gotten lost with motherhood: eating out.

Now, you know your saling is really on point when you pick up something for a giant discount for which you’d otherwise be willing to drop major coin… and that’s what this little rubber mat has become to me. Seriously.

At the time that I came across it, I had less than a vague notion of what it was, nevermind the gobs of stress and mess it’d spare me. (Isla was only a couple months old and still nursing, so the days when we’d be taking her out to ‘dine’ seemed about as far off as the day she’d leave for college.)

Yet, I tossed it into my cart because 1) it was on sale, and 2) it was made by Summer Infant, a baby brand that I love for practical items (like an easy-to-store bath pillow, sleep sacks, and fool-proof swaddle blankets). (There were a couple other elements that went into the complicated logarithm that help me determine whether this was a worthwhile sale, but I’m not going to get into all that right now.)

I had completely forgotten about my purchase until I came across in tucked in the back of a shelf in our closet a few months later and thought,

Oh, yeah. This TinyDiner thingy!

I tossed it into the diaper bag ‘just-in-case’ it might be of help. And guess what? It has stayed there—a precious staple of meals ‘out’—ever since.

When we’re at a restaurant, I simply clear anything breakable out of Isla’s arms’ reach, and then suction this rubber mat down to the table. Viola! It’s an instant clean place to put bits of finger-sized foods for Isla to feed on while we eat.

Isla, getting it done at The Harlem Tavern

In addition to being a clean, unbreakable ‘plate’ to place food, it also has little rubber lip that catches a surprisingly large portion of what misses getting into Isla’s mouth. (And let me just take this moment to apologize to all parents of past whom I thought disgraceful for leaving a floor full of foodstuff under the table after a meal out. ‘Twas not fair of me to judge!) When we’re done, I clean it with a baby wipe, roll it back up and stick it in the dishwasher once we’re home. Very easy!

Isla, enjoying a girls’ night out with me in Lake Placid

Back to saling and clean water…writing this post got me thinking about how I can put my skills to good use. I just donated the $$ I saved on my TinyDiner (the $$ I saved and then some, since it cost a measly $10) to Food & Water Watch, an organization that, among many other important things, is working with the U.N. to fight for human rights to clean water.

H2O, fresh from the faucet

With an estimated 1.7 billion people are without access to clean water and 2.3 billion getting sick from water borne diseases each year, I’m feeling seriously lucky to have clean and safe this at my finger tips for baby and I whenever needed. Hopefully, FWW‘s efforts will help increase the number of other children who have access to it, too!

The Takeaway