Braces

C got her braces 3 weeks ago. At first they hurt but now they are fine. She brushes her teeth in her bottom jaw every morning and just before bedtime. I brush, clean, and brush again the teeth in her upper jaw. She chose purple and pink bands. I think she is impressed with her braces. Everyone in her class loves that she has them. She's the only girl in her class that has braces (twin boys have but boys don't count apparently) and every time she opens her mouth the other girls squeal and make a comment about the braces. C is also a drama queen deluxe so this centre of attention thing she has going is right up her alley.

J hasn't teased her at all, his bff S tried but J told him to stop. Big brother went balastic on his friend. Poor kid. He won't be teasing anyone again in a hurry.

Along with the braces, she has had to embrace a whole new way of eating :

No gassy drinks (not that we live off the stuff, she only ever drinks coke zero at the Spur a few times a year and at parties she gets invited to, which is also a few times a year).
No sweets (not even marshmallows).
No sugary treats or biscuits (gone are the rusks she likes to dunk in her morning tea sometimes and the melted marshmallows inbetween marie biscuits).
No nuts of any kind.
No droe wors.
No biltong.
No mielies.
No popcorn.
No chips.
No chewing meat off bones (my little carnivore really struggles with this one).

Everything must be cut up into bite size portions. She can't bite anything with her front teeth for the next 9 months.

Her school lunches went from sandwiches with ham, or peanut butter or wraps with chunks of chicken strips to sandwiches with marmite and cheese or a thin spread of smooth peanut butter cut into tiny pieces, fruit cut up into small pieces, cooked carrots diced or grated fresh, sweetcorn mixed with bits of ham. She meticulously checks the lables on all food products to see if it contains any sugar. If it does, she doesn't eat it. Yesterday I treated J and his friend S to cheese rolls with strawberry jam, a coke in a glass bottle (gotta love the old fashioned bottles) and a 7Up. C had a slice of brown bread cut into 11tybillion pieces with some butter and a thin layer of strawberry jam and a bottle of water.

Breakfast is ok now. She loves Special K but hates it warm so we switched to oatmeal with vanilla, green food colouring and a bit of butter with milk. Dinners have become times to really experiment with food. Last night I made mini meatball curry with sweet potatoes and carrots. She ate more vegetables than meat, even though the meatballs were small enough to cut in half and put in her mouth. She's eating more healthy now than she ever did before (tomatoes are still a huge no no though but we are working on that one).

She is living for the day 6 months from now when the orthodontist takes those braces off. She's started a list of all the things she is going to eat on that day.

I've won the blueberry battle!

I posted a long while back about how J is a vegetarian and how C is a carnivore. For the longest time I have found myself back at the dinner table struggle with C. J is quite content to eat mostly vegetables (he's slowly abandoning the idea that meat is all bad but still loves a plate piled high with just veg) and enjoys all kinds of fruits. C however, fights me tooth and nail to eat healthy and more diverse. She'd live on a diet of meat, meat, meat, sweet carrots, meat, cheese and bananas, strawberries with ice cream and peanut butter. Every once in a while I buy blueberries, hoping to tempt her into at least trying one berry. But no, she pulls away in disgust every single time.

So you can imagine the horror on her face yesterday when I showed her what I'd bought besides all the meat. A punnet of fresh blueberries. No biggie I told her, she didn't have to eat it. J and I would.

This morning while making their school lunches, I cut up some fresh strawberries with pieces of pineapple for her and added a handful of blueberries to J's. She stood watching me eat a handful myself and when I held one out to her, she ate it. Absolute disgust all over her face. Then I held out two more. She took those and ate them too, same look of horror and disgust combined. Then a few more, still with the disgust. When I started to close the punnet, she came round the counter and very politely asked if I would put a few in for her too. I nearly passed out.

The little container has about 30 blueberries in it....I wonder how many will be eaten and how many will find their way back home. Actually I don't care if any make it back home, just the fact that she ate a few this morning and asked for more must surely mean I'm slowly getting through to her?