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E-mail Hema Easley at heasley@lohud.com
After weeks of offering my 2-year-old different foods, I’ve come to the conclusion he’s a carbohydrate-loving toddler. Give him crackers, toast, noodles, even Singapore Mei Fun, he’ll gobble it up. I try and balance out the starchy food by given him multi whole grain bread and even toasted Weight Watchers pita, which has six grams [...]
I know I’ve frequently complained about what a fussy eater my (nearly) two-year-old is, but it was really driven home in the last couple of weeks when my sister came to visit from India with her husband and daughter, who is 22-months old.
While Aristu munched on his cheerios and fussed through his fried egg, Tilli [...]
While my husband and I agree on most things, the one thing we don’t see eye to eye on is milk. No, I don’t mean that while one of us thinks milk is good, the other disagrees. My husband thinks milk is yummy while I think it is yucky.
As a child, I would play with [...]
I seldom get involved in my son’s school projects. My view is that I’m done with school. It’s his turn sweat and fret.
But last week I succumbed to pressure when Billi appealed to my motherly instincts by asking me to help him prepare food for a social studies project. Each student was assigned a county [...]
I’ve lamented before on this blog about how my youngest is such a picky eater. For as far back as I can remember he has refused all kinds of goodies that other kids his age would eat. If it wasn’t crunchy or it wasn’t mushy, Aristu would refuse to eat it with an emphatic “no”. [...]
Hello, all experienced moms and dads out there. When do toddlers start feeding themselves? Our oldest was hand fed until he was 3, by which time he decided he would rather eat his food himself. The transition was fairly painless. There were no big messes or cleanups, and everyone was happy. It helped, of [...]
It seems a long time ago, but when my oldest son was going through his “I hate vegetables” phase, my husband decided to allow him one enemy vegetable. It’s good to give in once in a while, he said.
That is, until Billi decided he would change his enemy vegetable every day, depending on [...]
Good food is an important part of my life and I’m a half-decent cook. So, natuarally, I want my children to eat and appreciate good food. But it hasn’t always been easy.
My oldest, Agastya, would eat anything as a baby — as long as I fed it to him. Now that he’s 11, he has [...]
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As most parents soon discover, feeding a family is rarely that easy, whether its nursing a fussy newborn or trying to get a hot meal into a squirming toddler (or attempting both at the same time.) And that's not even the days when work runs late, the main course burns, or your adventurous little sushi eater announces from now on she will only eat food that is pink. As parents ourselves, we've been there, done that, even learned a few tricks along the way. And we're pretty sure so have you. Maybe together we can make eating together as a family -- gulp! -- fun again.    Hema Easley has been a reporter for The Journal News since July 2002, first covering municipal government and then nonprofit agencies, women's issues and the South Asian and Muslim community in the Lower Hudson Valley. In her previous job, Hema was a correspondent for the Associated Press in South Asia. She lives with her husband and two sons in Orange County. Katie Ryan O'Connor, a Journal News editor and 35-year-old mother of three, never quite appreciated the work that went into feeding kids until she had to do it herself as a mother. If she had a food-and-kids philosophy it would be something like this: try your best to offer as much healthy food as possible, but sometimes fruits just have to be counted as vegetables and there are far worse things than chicken and spaghetti. Again. Tracey Princiotta, a 37-year-old mother of one, loves to cook, bake and eat, and is relieved that her son appears to be equally willing to chow down -- even if it's baby food and formula right now. Despite her husband's intense aversion to vegetables, she has high hopes of nurturing a true chowhound who will try everything at least once. And if all else fails, she's not above sneaking veggies into other foods. Marcela Rojas has been a municipal reporter with The Journal News since January 2003. She is a native of Putnam County and grew up eating Peruvian food. She didn't realize until she was 13 that rice did not come with everyone's meal. After several years of living in Los Angeles -- where she grew a fondness for Thai food -- she returned to Putnam County where she now lives with her husband and daughter. Zyla (rhymes with Lilah) just turned 1 in March and, so far (her mother is pleased to note), loves to eat everything. Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, a Journal News reporter, started her career as a journalist in 1999 after graduating with a master's degree from New York University. Before joining the paper in 2006, Swapna worked as a municipal reporter for the Home News Tribune in New Jersey, and took a baby sabbatical to care for her two children, now ages 7 and 5. She has currently outsourced feeding her children and husband to her mother, who is visiting from India. Her friend and colleague Katie O'Connor, informs Swapna that she wouldn't mind being fed Indian food by her mother, too.
 Amy Vernon, a 39-year-old mother of two was fortunate that she, her husband and sons lived with her mother-in-law for the formative years of the little guys' lives. Now, even though she has her own home, she instilled a love of oatmeal in the boys. And whenever she's in town, she helps make sure the guys are well-fed. Randi Weiner has been a reporter with The Journal News since 1989, having covered police, government and schools in Westchester and in Rockland. An Ohio native and 1976 graduate of Bowling Green State University, she worked for daily newspapers in Ohio and Michigan before moving east. She has tended bar and danced in a beledi troup and sat on the boards of two community theaters. She plays mandolin with the Shamrogues, ConnecticutÕs largest Irish band. Randi lives in Connecticut with her husband and has three children. |
Copyright ©2007 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties in New York.
