Contributed by INA member Tracey Chipps. Tracey is a Professional Nanny working in North Carolina.
Making good food fun is a great way to entice children to taste new foods they may otherwise snarl their little button noses at upon introduction. My little guy is a fantastic eater! There isn’t much I would change about his eating habits other than the fact that he strongly feels that using utensils slows his roll. We’re working on that!
Healthy eating has been a part of his life from day one. I made all of his baby food and when he became a toddler preparing finger foods for him was so easy because of the broad palette he had developed. Broccoli was his weakness. I know that sounds comical but it’s true. Chocolate is my weakness. Broccoli is his. While grocery shopping he would sometimes cry when he saw me put broccoli in the cart. He wanted to eat it immediately. “Go home. Eat broc” he would cry. As his verbal skills improved he would tell anyone who would listen “DaDa sewgen (surgeon). Mama torney (attorney). NanNan (<—that’s me!) broc cook” His parents have apologized to me for that but I carry that title proudly. You see he LOVED broccoli and he viewed me as the person who provided him with that green goodness.
Now that he’s 3 we have FUN with food in different ways. Each morning he tells me what he wants his “happy breakfast” to be. “I want a tractor breakfast NanNan.” “Can you make a tower to eat?” “I want to eat a rainbow today”. We’ve all see the variety of fun foods for kids on Pinterest. These are well planned and carefully selected foods to make just the right animal, pattern, or other elaborate creation. They’ve got nothing on NanNan! This boy is putting me on the spot! I have no idea what he is going to request for me to create or if we are going to have the foods in the colors, size, shape and texture I need to resurrect these masterpieces. Not only that, I’m also on a limited time frame to get him fed, groomed, and drive him to school. Creative juices must be flowing! It’s a good thing I start my caffeine intake before I arrive at work!
The following are some of the “happy breakfasts” I have prepared for my charge.
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A special thank you to to INA member Tracey Chipps for sharing her phenomenal dedication and creativity with the greater INA audience.
We are sure you will agree, Tracey exemplifies the wonderful, engaged nanny caregivers that make the International Nanny Association so strong.