Food issues

I am having serious food issues.  And it's not even about me and food, it's my children and food.  I know - I should preface this by saying I shouldn't complain too much - I don't have children who won't eat. I don't have the stress of worrying that my children are getting enough to eat.  So for that I am grateful.

BUT.

My kids seriously won't stop eating.

They wake up. I try to get breakfast ready quick. Usually before I get it on the table they're begging for a granola bar (ola bar, actually as they're called in our house). If I know it will be a while, I give them one. We eat breakfast. Everyone is full and doesn't want any more. They finish and leave the table. Within 5 minutes they're begging for a granola bar.  If they haven't had one yet, I may give them one, hoping to fill them up before we're out of the house for the morning. I go to the gym, drop them off at the day care room. I go workout for my hour. I come back in to get them. As soon as I've set down the diaper bag to say hello and help get their shoes on, three kids have attacked the diaper bag and are trying to tear into anything and everything they can find - bananas, fruit snacks, and yes, more granola bars. Begging and crying at me to open their food for them. Anyone watching would think my children have never eaten before. I make them wait until we get in the car to eat whatever it is they've found. They have their car snacks, and more snacks wherever we may go after that. We go home, I try to get lunch. While I'm getting it, they storm the kitchen pulling out anything they can get their hands on from the fridge, cupboards, food storage under cribs - pickles, tomatoes, crackers, boxes of mac and cheese, apples...and keep coming at me with it demanding it be handed out or opened, thus impeding my progress to getting real lunch ready. I try to hold them off. We eat lunch. They finish. And go beg for more granola bars.

This repeats throughout the day. And I should say, they don't love the process of sitting down to eat. Dinner is an unpleasant battle of "eat your food!!!!" and timeouts. I really think it's just the having to sit still at the table part they dislike.  I try my best on occasion to not let them have any snacks to see if they are good and hungry and eat dinner more willingly, but it doesn't make a difference at all. They still don't want to sit and eat, and still rush around finding snacks as soon as we're done eating.  The other night I tried a different strategy and made sure they ate a lot at dinner so I couldn't question if they could still be hungry. We had chicken enchiladas. We had bowls of fruit. We had veggies. We had ice cream.  They ate it all. I was stuffed.  After dinner - they rushed over to the cupboards for more food. I couldn't believe it.

I just worry that my kids are going to get my bad habits - eating just cause they like to eat, not because they're necessarily hungry. I didn't think kids really did that - I thought their bodies told them when to eat.  Doesn't seem to be the case with my kids.

If we go anywhere with friends, they will swarm to whoever has snacks out. (Case in point - picture at the pool. Look at our poor little friend going - hey, what happened to all my food?? I swear this was full like 2 seconds ago....) One time we were at the playground and some little girl had a cup full of cheerios. They followed her around the whole time. At one point she dropped the bowl, sending cheerios all over the playground. You'd have thought someone just dropped a million dollars with how fast they dove for those, scooping them up gleefully like it was the luckiest day in the world.

I know it sounds like a lot of granola bars - it is. They're obsessed with them. But they eat tons of fruit and veggies. They squeal "bobbi!!" when they see broccoli and steal it off of their brother's plates when they're not looking. They eat cherry tomatoes like they're candy. They could eat a whole costco sized box of blueberries in one sitting if I'd let them. I put a can of mandarin oranges on the table for dinner, went to get the rest of the food and came back to find Phoenix had single-handedly eaten the whole thing (wow, you should see that come out the other end). So anyway, I know they get in plenty of the good stuff.  Just...how do I stop the constant eating?  I feel like it's all we do all day is get food and clean up food. Beg for food and try to say no to more food. And they're definitely not hurting for calories - I'm sure they eat more than they need. But they beg for it. They open it themselves. They scream when it gets taken away. I know people say wait till you see your food bill when they're all teenagers! But wow, I seriously feel like they eat ridiculous amounts now. I'm hoping they have a growth spurt to show for all this but it sort of just seems like a regular habit by this time.

And.  My biggest pet peeve. They can't even wait for me to open it things for them. Or they'll know I say no - so they just try to gnaw their way through packaging. At least 10 times a day. I am so sick of opening pulverized granola bars because they've already been gnawed to death before the wrapper was even open. Ryan is always so concerned wondering what happened to our blocks of cheese, fruit snacks, and yes, even cubes of butter and packaged hot dogs that have

been gnashed to pieces. No, it didn't come from the store like that, your starving children just tried to eat their way through the packaging again, dear....










Seriously, pull out food in the presence of my children and prepare to be stormed.