Does a Body Good

In the last month, Ella has finally realized the relationship between food and her body. And is starting to understand that some foods are really good for you to eat and will give you energy and help your body grow while other foods just really aren't that good for you, even if they taste really yummy. A couple things have helped her come to this conclusion. First, I've been telling her for a year about different foods, how they are good for your body or not so good. Or course, my teaching wasn't really what made it sink in. :-) We read The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food, which is a really great book. It talks about how sugary snack foods are not the best things to eat and it goes into the different body systems. Shows the skeleton, the heart and blood vessels, muscles, etc. It also shows each food group and explains how it affects your body.

After we read the Bears book, she happened to attend her gym camp and the theme that week was Healthy Kids so they talked all about what are good things for your body and things that are NOT good for your body. When I took her to the store this week, it was amazing. She was telling me how juice, milk and water were good for her body and how oranges and bananas were good for her body. We went through the whole store and she told me everything that was good and also told me, pop was not good for your body. Chips were not good for your body, candy was not good for your body. Yada, yada, yada. Now, the best part to this whole story is that I have gotten her to eat more fruits (she wouldn't touch them before! Now, she'll eat watermelon, pineapple, banana, blueberries!) and healthy foods just by telling her its good for her body and I've discouraged her from some not so nutritious snacky foods saying those probably aren't so good for your body. And it's worked! Now, "good for your body" is her favorite thing to say and we hear it multiple times a day from her. We have to watch it now too, because she'll let us know if something we are eating is good for us or not. ;-)

On another bodily note, Little Miss Lily is pretty much potty trained!!! Whoo hoo! Now, all we have to buy is diapers for night-time for her! (Ella is finally night trained too!) We did the potty prize thing with Lily just like we did with Ella (you may recall the Little Mermaid Vanity Post from about a year ago). I took Lily to Target and let her pick out a toy she wanted and she chose a new stroller with a backpack/car seat carrier with it. We put the box in the bathroom with a chart and stickers. She got a sticker every time she went on the toilet and it only took her about a month to get it done (less time if you don't count the time we took off when we were in Wisconsin). Here are pictures of her "winning" her prize and getting to open it.":

Lily with the box and sticker chart on the front of it.



She's in big girl underwear most of the time now and has even been successful with #2 (I know, TMI, but that's a big step!). We still have about one accident a day or so. But she is getting so much better! I think she'll be 100% day-trained by the end of the summer! Since potty-training has been without a doubt my least favorite parenting experience, I'm thoroughly happy to have this behind us!

Lily has been really cute lately with the stuff she says. We are continually astounded by her verbal skills and the very complex sentences and stories she tells us. Going from Ella not talking at all at 3 1/2 years to Lily being a Chatty Cathy at not even 3 is so amazing to us! Anyway, she says things like, "Where's my Ella?", "Mommy, Daddy, and my Ella". I think that is so cute. We never really use the word sister just because we're always saying "Ella and Lily" or "Where's Ella?", not "where's your sister?".

Okay, I'm feeling better about being caught up on the blog now. Whew! I do have one more post to be completely updated. We're home now for the rest of the summer so hopefully that will make it easier for me to stay caught up. :-)