We've having a bit of trouble the last few days; Elsie has gotten into the habit of snacking throughout the day and consequently, not eating much at meals. I knew exactly how to stop this behavior: cut off the snacks. But I didn't want to be telling her not to eat food; that just goes against everything I've been doing for the last two years. I had a nice chat with Heidi, our feeding specialist, and she helped me through the situation. We set up guidelines on when to offer food and when to tell Elsie to wait. It's not going to hurt her to wait for a snack and to learn to eat more at meals. It will hurt her in the long run if we let her develop poor eating habits and not help her to continue developing her eating skills.
Anyway, we've been implementing our new eating/snacking schedule over the last day or two, and while sometimes it's hard to deter Elsie from snacking all the time, we have seen an improvement in how much she's eating at mealtimes.
The other night, Elsie was particularly hungry by the time dinner came around, since she had been denied her usual snacks. So when it was time to eat, she really ate. She really enjoyed the meal, and there were very few spit outs, if any. And then it hit me, what we were eating. It was chicken pot pie! Remember this post from a year or two ago, when I wrote about making chicken pot pie on the night Elsie was born, and then my return to loving chicken pot pie after a long separation? And now, here we are, two and a half years later, and Elsie is eating and loving chicken pot pie. We have come full circle, ladies and gentlemen. We have come full circle. Or, in other words, we have come full pie.
