Mermaid Progress Report

Well we've been doing the mermaid race for a few weeks now, and some people are doing well and some are a bit hit or miss. Sweetie has had a few days that she didn't get to advance and Honey hasn't missed a single one and is in the lead. These pictures were taken earlier this week so Honey is now up to #23 and only has to curb her saucy tendencies for another 7 days. She is very confident that she will be opening her prize next Sunday night. She says it's not that hard anymore and assures us she's got it all wrapped up.

Sweetie still struggles and has had many outbursts but usually cuts it right off as soon as we say "merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmaid!".

That brings us to Lovey. *sigh* The supper thing is driving me around the bend. Out of 23 suppers, she has eaten 10. It's not that she isn't cleaning her plate, she has actually refused to eat ANY supper 13 out of 23 nights. Last night I held her in my lap and shovelled bits of rice & salmon in while her sisters got out their pompoms and cheered "Go Lovey GO! Go Lovey GO!!!". Tonight she didn't want the baked ham, cheesy potatoes and corn niblets that were on her plate. She was so sure she wasn't going to even try a bite that she smeared mustard and the sugary ham dripping stuff all over the food. Then, Grammie brought out the cut up fruit & chocolate dipping sauce. I braced myself for the fit as she realized her contaminated supper was her only option. Imagine my absolute shock and wonder when she grabs her fork and starts digging in to her condiment smeared vittles. She didn't say a word in complaint and only had one question. "how many pieces do I have to eat?" She ate every scrap that I told her to and didn't gag, cough or puke up anything (unlike the salmon the night before)

I think this ratio, as pathetic as it is, is at least a slight improvement but it's still worrisome and discouraging. One day she didn't really like the hot lunch at school so I don't know if she ate much of that. Other than her breakfast that morning and whatever she managed to eat at school, she had nothing else all day. The next morning, she was crying in the bathroom because her stomach hurt so much. I'm now semi fearful that my 5 year old has some sort of junior anorexia going on! She can eat when she wants to but prefers to starve herself rather than have a piece of chicken and some potato!?!?!?!? We've tried just ignoring her, not making a big deal out of whether she eats or not but she'll go a week without having any meat or vegetables at all! I've tried making her favourite suppers and she'll sometimes eat and sometimes violently shove the plate away, making her grossed out face and say YUCK!!!!!! (which makes ME feel like a million bucks of course!). We've let her pick the meals and will still get the same thing sometimes. It's so random, I can't figure it out except that she's just playing around and messing with our minds, enjoying her little control game....

Anyway, we do have one superstar achiever who's right on track and this chart thing is right up her alley and so we'll be happy that our experiment worked on 1½ kids :)