Potato Chips Potato Leeks

C6 had the day off from school so C41 had the idea that we'd go to the potato chip factory in Pennsylvania today.

Excuse me, Herr's Snacks factory tour.

It was fun, a nice tour, warm potato chips are quite delicious. But a long way to drive for an hour tour, 5 degrees out, and really honestly exhausted me. All that sitting in the passenger seat, you know.

But C6 and Q4 both loved it.

Q4 still seems a bit sick. Her fever is gone, but she slept until we had to leave this morning (I had to wake her at 7:30) and was asleep by 7:05 this evening. Crazy crying temper tantrum at the drop of a hat tonight. Yes, I was in the wrong (I should have let her string that salt-dough heart) but her reaction to the offence was WAY out of proportion.

On a nicer front, our hard-line eat-it-or-miss-out-on-dinner-and-don't-have-a-temper-tantrum-about-it-nor-should-you-call-it-disgusting-or-you-are-going-to-eat-it-tomorrow-night-too-and-you'd-better-be-polite-and-use-your-utensils-properly campaign is going well. I cut pasta from their diet until they were more polite. First pasta yesterday after about 3-4 weeks (since Christmas!) and the pasta was a butternut squash lasagna which was heavenly, but not the kids idea of yum. They ate it without a fuss. Without a fuss.

This whole campaign is really not for Q4. She works the system; she'll try it and say she is full if she doesn't like it, or try it and eat it if she does like it.

The campaign is for C6. C6 will cry about new foods that look strange or she doesn't like the name of or she just thinks are gross until she finally calms down and does what she is supposed to do. Tonight, however, the issues was not using her knife and fork appropriately. So we took away the part of her dinner she was eating rudely (a veggie burger, which just a few weeks ago she wouldn't have eaten but due to this campaign she is now a fan of), which left the delicious potato-leek soup. She cried for 10 minutes, 15 maybe, because she said she'd never NEVER try the potato leek soup. Then my distraction techniques (20 questions where what I was thinking was a Chihuahua) worked and in order to ask questions C6 had to take bites of her soupe. She ate a nice chunk of her soup, and guessed Chihuahua in just a few tries.

Then, as always (or, almost always, certain foods just don't make it past two thumbs down. Foods like cooked spinach. I can see her point), she gave the new food a rating of "OK, not bad" (one thumb up, one down) and after a few more tries she'll be asking to put it on the menu.

C6 is really quite exhausting sometimes.