Bread and Jam for Frances

Lately we've been reading a lot of Russell & Lillian Hoban's Frances books around here. They are awesome, and I actually semi-remember them from when I was a kid. Frances (a badger, in case you were curious) is cute, full of attitude, and of particular appeal to Amelia, is often annoyed about having to be a big sister. In Frances' defense, she tries very hard, though. My favorite right now is Bread and Jam for Amelia Frances because Frances goes through a picky eating phase, and her parents handle it so well. It's nice for me to read books to Amelia about other kids and food, so that she knows, at least at some level, that all kids have their own weird food preferences.

In the book, Frances only eats bread and jam even though the rest of the family is busy enjoying an array of other foods (a lot of eggs in little egg cups, and some veal. Hey, they were written in the '60s, what do you want?). Instead of nagging her, Frances' parents finally stop serving her anything but bread and jam. Before long, she gets sick of it and starts eating other stuff.

This is a long build-up but for the past few months, I've periodically try to make Amelia a jelly sandwich, involing her as much as I can in the making of. We put a thin spread of grape jelly on the bread, then use this handy cut-'n'-seal sandwich maker thingee from The Pampered Chef to form a circle with crimped edges and no crust. It looks really pretty, if I do say so myself. Of course, Amelia will request one, then take nary a bite. Grrrr. It drives me nuts but I tried to go with the flow. The flow being 'say nothing and let this kid find her own way even if inside you're thinking, Eat the freakin' sandwich!.' Today I offered her one at snack time, naturally assuming she wouldn't eat it but that she could always make it up at dinner. Also I was sort of peckish and had my sights set on her leftovers. Either she was hungry, too spacey to realize this wasn't one of her usual foods, or the lesson of Frances finally won her over, because she ate the whole thing. Awesome!

Plus, in another not-par-for-the-course occurance, she nibbled on a few bites of carrot, and actually chewed and swallowed it, rather than take a bite, chew, spit it out, repeat. I think the carrot eating was due to the fact that Amelia spent a good 30 minutes helping me rinse the carrots we got at the CSA and maybe they started looking kind of appealing to her in their cute orange-y way. They were rather dainty and colorful.