Sadie

Sadie is a pretty fun girl.  She is SO loving and touchy.  She will often give hugs to me and/or Kaden three of four times as she’s leaving the room to go brush her teeth.  And she will say, “just one more kiss!” when I’m already frustrated with her running late to whatever.  I will also often hear Sadie getting mad and then yelling, “Mom!  Kylee won’t let me hug her!”  It’s just so funny and ridiculous.  I usually say, “Kylee, hug your sister!” I try to act serious so Sadie thinks I’m serious, but Kylee knows I’m being silly.  Sadie is no fool, she knows I’m being silly too.  But it is hard for Kylee sometimes.  She just isn’t as touchy and I get it.  But how hard is it to just hug your sister?  Kylee will say, “She’s hugged me like five times already!”  Seriously, if these are the worst fights in our house, I think we’re doing pretty good.  But no, they are not the worst.

Sadie is not in a hurry.  Ever.  I will hear her going potty.  And then twenty minutes later I will hear her still in the bathroom, singing a song, possibly washing her hands, possibly still sitting on the rug trying to pull up her pants.  She likes to take her time.  Which is great when there is nothing going on.  But a lot of times we do have places to be or things to be doing.  I’m not so much a slow person so this is hard for me.  Especially when I’m asking her to clean something up that I could easily clean up myself, but I am trying to teach my kids to clean up after themselves.  It’s hard.

Sadie always wants someone with her.  Well, at least when she goes downstairs.  She wants someone to go with her to get her clothes, or put her to bed.  But lately she is just fine going outside to ride her bike all by herself.  I think she’s actually getting better at being alone and enjoying being in her own head.  She doesn’t need me to entertain her constantly during the day and doesn’t ask for electronics very often at all.  She mostly asks us to print out pictures for her.  Then she will color them alone in the kitchen.  So I think that’s a good sign.  But she still hates going downstairs alone.  She used to say something about monsters, but we always said how ridiculous that was, there are no monsters.  She doesn’t act scared, just lonely.

She has gotten especially sassy and Ryan and I have been trying to teach her appropriate ways to speak to parents and other adults.  The other day she was screaming at me because I put Kaden on his stomach.  She kept yelling that he doesn’t like it and I need to turn him over.  I told her he was fine, but she kept getting more and more worked up until she was screaming at me!  I’m like, “who is the mom here?  I will decide what the baby needs.”  She left screaming downstairs.  Funny, she doesn’t have a problem going down alone when she’s upset.  That’s not the worst though.  It’s when we will ask her something, like ‘get your toothbrush’ and she will snap, “I AM!”  Ugh.  The line between respecting your parents and being friends with them is very small and hard for kids to understand.  Like Kylee and her “sor-RY!” or “…duh!”  I’m glad we’re friends, but you can’t treat me like an idiot.  Or sass me with your unapologetic sorry.  Moving on…

I took Sadie to the Dr with Kaden a couple of months ago so she could get her Kindergarten shots.  I told her about it way ahead of time and she was strangely excited about it.  She kept asking and asking.  I had to cancel the appointment once because she had gotten that stomach bug and was throwing up.  So then she was asking when we were going a lot after that.  Finally the time came, and I told her if she was good I would take her to go get ice cream afterwards.  Well, I ended up with my serious sinus infection at that time so Ryan is the lucky one that got to take her to get ice cream, though I did make it to her appointment with the help of some Tylenol.  Sadie passed with flying colors.  Dr Edwards asked her to count for him and he said he was impressed that she didn’t skip 14 and she clearly said THIRteen and FOURteen.  She didn’t always get that clear so I’m glad she’s doing well now.  Anyway, she could do everything he asked, hop on one foot, etc, etc.  She even took a hearing test and passed great.  Her percentiles were Height:  39.5 in = 27% Weight: 35 lbs = 38%  BMI:  15.77 = 66%  She seems to be dropping in height.  Her weight has raised but her height has dropped.  She’s a little shorty.  But I’m happy to see that she is gaining weight at a normal rate because she doesn’t really like to eat.  But I’ll get into that.

The time came for her to get her shots.  She did the opposite of Kylee.  She screamed and cried as soon as she was shot, but seconds afterwards she smiled and giggled and wiped her tears.  (When Kylee did it she was trying to be tough so she held it in until the nurse left, then she was a big mess of tears and nearly inconsolable.  Funny that I remember that so clearly.  I don’t remember Dylan’s as clearly, but I know he never tried to be brave.  He screamed nice and loud.)  Afterwards she was just fine. 

I told the Dr my only concern with Sadie is that she doesn’t like to eat.  He said it was very normal for 2-4 year olds to not eat much.  As long as she’s eating one out of four meals or something like that.  So the fact that she will often only eat a few bites of breakfast and a few bites of dinner is just fine because she generally eats a normal-sized lunch.  Okay, great.  So I don’t have to worry about stunting her growth (although she is rather short…)

But here’s my problem.  Dinner is where we get to try different foods and flavors and veggies.  Lunches are generally the same.  We have the same 6 or 7 meals that we rotate through.  A lot of the time she will just have a slice of ham and cheese.  We always have fruit and veggies, but the veggies are one of three or four that are good raw- carrots, snap peas, sweet mini peppers, celery.  Sometimes they get a fruit/veggie squeezer instead.  So in order to get different veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, onions, kale, edamame, squash, etc, etc, etc, we put them in dinner.  Sadie just rarely wants to eat dinner.  It’s not because she doesn’t like it.  She just doesn’t want to eat.  She will often wander into the kitchen when I’m cooking and say, “it smells yummy” or “I like that”.  But then when we sit down to eat, she will say she doesn’t want to eat.  Sometimes we will spend a half hour trying to convince her to just take one bite.  After she screams and throws a fit down in her room, she will often come back up and let us spoon-feed her a bite.  More often than not she will then say, “mmm, I like it!”  Half the time she will eat okay after that and half the time she will still refuse to eat, even after she just said that she likes it.  It is SO frustrating to me.  Like I said, I know she gets enough food, but I want her to have a variety of foods and to experience different flavors.  I cook a lot of different things and I always ask that my kids try a few bites.  Kylee does really well.  There’s not much that she has to choke down.  Dylan does okay.  Occasionally he will struggle and sometimes choose not to finish and I can only imagine he’s still somewhat hungry when he goes to bed, but he never complains.  I’ve never had a kid complaining about hunger right before bed.

I can’t tell you how many hours we’ve spent trying to convince Sadie to eat just a couple bites of dinner.  She has gone to bed without so much as a bite for dinner more than once.  At least half the time she would get mad when we kept hounding her to take bites, or threatening her with whatever punishment if she didn’t at least try it.  She would get mad and run off screaming.  I hate it.  I hate fighting at dinner.  I hate that dinner lasts an hour longer than it should because she takes that long to take a bite.

I was at my wits end and decided to try something I’ve heard others try.  I got sick of her refusing dinner, and then having oatmeal or pancakes or whatever in the morning.  So I told her if she didn’t eat her dinner, I would heat it up for her in the morning for breakfast.  She still tried to refuse it, but I knew she would go to preschool and have a yummy snack there and then she wouldn’t be starving and willing to eat the darn dinner.  So I told her she couldn’t go to school if she didn’t eat.  Now, I get that this is a bit extreme.  I was really tired of the dinner fight and looking for a solution of some kind.  Plus, I think it’s irresponsible as a parent to send a kid off somewhere like school without feeding them something first.  The child will not do well and eventually whine to the teacher about how hungry they are and the teacher will have to deal with it.  So in the end, she ate her food (I had to spoon-feed her, but that’s another battle).

I voiced my frustration on Facebook looking for some support from people who had gone through this, hoping they would say it only takes a few days and then their children were happily eating their dinner normally.  But instead I got SO MANY opinions from all over the spectrum.  It was really eye-opening and crazy.  Some stories were really sad and obviously unhealthy for the children.  Some were “just let them make a PB&J for themselves if they don’t want dinner (or cereal)”  CRAZY!  Not only because that doesn’t have much nutrients in it (and that Sadie doesn’t even like sandwiches very much) but what about the other two kids?  The ones who eat their dinner just fine most of the time.  What happens when they see their sister eating yummy PB&J or cereal for dinner?  I’ll tell you what happens.  They immediately decide they would much rather have Sadie’s dinner and they would cry injustice and demand the same treatment.  I’m telling you, crazy.

There was talk about food aversions and kids that really struggle with certain foods, especially veggies.  I thought about it, and she certainly doesn’t love bread the way most normal people do.  But she actually really likes most veggies.  Sometimes I will make a meal and have asparagus as a side, and Sadie will ONLY eat five or more spears of asparagus.  She loves it.  And at lunch she is constantly asking me “what’s for a fruit and veggie”.  I can’t get away with a lazy lunch with her, she knows there’s supposed to be a few different food groups there.  I knew right away that Sadie didn’t have unhealthy relationships with food like some people had described from their kids.  And I knew that I wasn’t the type of parent to just let her have cereal every night (*shudder*).  But I also agreed with people who said forcing them to eat the food for breakfast was not the best idea, nor was making such a huge deal about food.  And fighting at dinner every single night was not good either.

My solution was that Sadie was not allowed a snack.  The kids get snacks after school every day.  They need them.  My two older kids are active and growing and they eat quite a bit of food.  But Sadie doesn’t need that much.  For starters, her lunch is eaten later in the day so she isn’t as hungry at snack time.  And she’s not as active as they are.  But I don’t want her to be miserable so I told her she is allowed fruit as a snack, but nothing else.  She accepted that and it’s been our basic rule for awhile now.  I sat her down one day and told her what my expectations were- nothing but fruit as a snack, no more screaming at the dinner table.  If she tried the food I made, she could then have a side of fruit or whatever else with it.  If she ate all her dinner, she could have a small treat.  If she refused to eat, she still needed to join us at the dinner table and no more screaming downstairs. Setting the expectations seemed to help a lot.  She started asking me when she could have regular snacks again and I told her she could if she ate dinner really well for awhile.  And ever since this started she has been doing better.  She still has her moments.  But it’s not like it used to be.  There are even days where she just eats.  She just sits down with us, picks up her own food and eats it.  Crazy!  She would always at least ask us to feed her.  Sometimes we would adamantly refuse and she would get upset.  Before the baby was born we tried to break her of this.  We explained that we have to feed the baby so we can’t feed big girls.  I don’t know why kids think food is so much easier to get down when they don’t have to actually put the fork to their mouth.  All my kids have preferred to have us feed them if it’s something they don’t like.  Well, sometimes it’s not worth the battle with her and I will just feed her.  But she has been doing much better.

The problem then arises when she’s playing with friends before dinner and she ends up eating something.  It doesn’t matter what she eats, if she eats ANYTHING big or small after 4 pm, she will not eat dinner.  SO frustrating!  Especially since she is not responsible or mature enough to be able to turn down fruit snacks at a friend’s house because I won’t like it.  But that whole battle is for a different post…

I’ll post about Preschool and Dance later too.

Sadie is going through a bit of an awkward smile stage.  Most kids do at this age.  For the most part, she does this little closed-mouth, head-tilt smile that I think is supposed to be a sweet look.  But it's not much of a smile.  I do love her eyes, though.

When I try to get her to smile bigger, she will often scrunch up her face and end up looking angry.  Joys.  Can't wait for family picture time... (sarcasm).

All in all, Sadie is stinking adorable and a joy to be around.  I'm not just saying that because I'm her mom.  Grandmas love to be around her too.  And Dad.  She is a SWEETHEART and we want her to stay this same age forever and ever.