5-4-3-2-1

There's a new game that we play with Shyla to get her to eat her food. It's called the "eat as many bites as I have fingers up" game. This has worked for numerous foods that we know she likes and will eat, but just because she's 3 decides on any given night she's not going to eat them.

She was eating cereal and we played the game. Have 5 more bites. 4 more. 3 more. 2 more. 1 more. Then I asked her to finish by taking one big drink of her milk. It's a peeve of mine to pour all that milk into a bowl just to eat the cereal and then waste the rest of the milk. It's good for you. Drink it! OK, so back to my story. Shyla looks at me with a blank look on her face. Turns to her father and says, "No, not 1 more, 5 more!" So the game begins again. Have 5 more sips. 4 more. 3 more. 2 more. 1 more. I'm not going to argue. If she wants 5 more of anything after we've played the game, she's more than welcome to play it again. Play it 5 more times. 4 more. 3 more. 2 more. 1 more.

She's a lot of fun to play these "trick" games on. I know they won't always work. When she was about 18-24 months or so, if we didn't want her to play with something or touch it, we'd just say it was broken and she'd stop. Yeah, that "trick" doesn't work anymore. She's too smart sometimes. Another night, a few weeks ago, Candy Grandma was over. Shyla had been riding her bike in the front yard with grandma. It was time to park her bike and go in the house. Grandma says, "It's getting dark Shyla, time to go inside." To which Shyla replies, "It's not dark, there's a light on my bike." Jake had taped a light onto her bike last year so when it was dark in the evenings and she was riding her bike in the backyard we could still see where she was. So, I know that the tricks will not ALWAYS work, but I will fully embrace whatever WILL at that moment, for I'm sure one day I'm sure NONE of them will work.