20 - 20

Karston looks so skinny, and his head looks so large for his body (his head size, unlike his weight and height, is thoroughly above the 5th percentile line on the CDC charts). I'd love to feed him french fries right now just to fatten him up, but I only have yucca fries in the house; yucca is like sweet potato but less sweet. I mean, he's over 20 months old, and he's still under 20 pounds!

I think my > 20 - < 20 frustration is because I think twenty pounds is a milestone for sleeping in many toddlers. Karston naps fine! In fact, I just woke him up from his nap so that he would sleep decently well tonight (I hope). I just wish he would sleep as well at night (with fewer books, less cuddling, putting himself to sleep, sleeping well by himself). So I've been rooting for him to cross twenty pounds for a long while, for his parents' sake as well as for his own.

Plus you're usually older than Karston when your age in months is greater than your weight in pounds, you know?

Technorati Tags: Toddler

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Karston didn't eat well today, and we're still hoping he weighs more than 20 pounds when he goes to college, so I looked at various recipes through Google Cookin'. I had a lot of ground flax seed in the frig, and I found this Fabulous Fiber Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe on Recipezaar. I used 50% less fat margarine, and I'd use only 75% of what the recipe calls for next time since the batter seemed more moist than necessary (which makes them dry out and get very crunchy when they cool, so don't over-cook them). I also like more oats than that in my chocolate chip cookies, so I would at least double the oats, maybe quadruple. And then I would need to reduce the dry ingredients, so I'd probably subtract half the volume of the additional oats from the volume amount of the flax seed meal. And now you're starting to understand just how hopeless I am about recipes. Just can't follow one! I doubled the chocolate chips just in this test batch when I was trying to follow the recipe! Karston ate maybe 1/3 of one cookie, and seemed to like it. Unfortunately, the cookies tasted pretty good (a bit grainy from the coarsely ground flax seed, but what do you expect?), so his parents each had two. Oh well. I find super calorie cookies (161 calories per large cookie) that aren't too unhealthy, and we're eating them instead of Karston. Oh well, here's to a kid who some day will weigh more than twenty pounds! At least he really likes chocolate chip cookies.

Technorati Tags: Toddler

Mo' Grapefruit!

I'm so proud of Karston's grapefruit eating! He eats straight grapefruit, with no sugar added, like I've seen some kids do. It's not really eating grapefruit when you add a cup of sugar to a grapefruit; particularly the routine I saw that left a lot of grapefruit but no sugar in the bowl. So I am opposed to sugar on grapefruit for my kid. Karston has been demanding to join us when we split a Florida grapefruit for breakfast. When we started, Daddy and Mommy each got to eat half of a grapefruit because Karston only ate a few sections. Then more. And more. He worked up to eating a quarter of a grapefruit by himself, and he really enjoys squeezing out the juice and drinking from the peel just like his Daddy.

Well, this morning Karston out-did himself on grapefruit! He ate half a grapefruit by himself! We thought he was done, but then he said Mo'!, and started in on Daddy's half! Daddy had plenty left, but Karston was on a grapefruit-eating roll! He really does like fruit, particularly tropical fruit. His very first non-standard-baby-food was freshly squeezed orange juice, and he loved it. He also loves dairy products (cheese, yogurt, and cottage cheese), and saltine crackers. Some days that's all he eats, but when he's eating fruit with us, it doesn't seem like he had bad eating habits.

Technorati Tags: Toddler