An apple (or a banana!) a day keeps the doctor away

I try to have a balanced and healthy diet; and of course, I also want my children to eat proper and healthy food. Nowadays parents are being pushed by the food and beverage industry to purchase ready-made food. One of the reasons for it is that those products have a huge profit margin.

All these pre-packaged food is actually very convenient since you can buy it in advanced, store it, and then, after few seconds in the microwave, you have it ready for your baby.

I personally refused using those little pots. My son has always eaten unprocessed fruit. Of course, some fruits are easier to eat than others. During the summer he loved eating strawberries (in The Netherlands we have a great deal of those), cherries and grapes. Bananas are also very easy to eat, you can take them with you everywhere and they are quite "clean".

At the beginning, the whole process of eating does require being very patient. My son got all dirty (as you can see below), the table got dirty, the floor got very dirty!



But at the end, it pays off. Now he can eat his fruit in his own, I am sure he is eating healthy food, we are not dependent on having a stock of pre-packaged fruit, and we save money! And, he even does not get that dirty anymore...



By the way, have you heard the news? Will an Apple a day keep the laptop away?

Coloring with Carla Bruni

Coloring and painting is something that all children like. I thought Paul was too young for it, but as soon as he could hold a pen in his hand (a bit after he was one year old), he started being really passionate about it. Now he is almost two and he loves it. At the beginning I just let him paint a bit on his own, but now we just do it together.




We sit on the dining table, each one of us in one chair. All I need is some paper and coloring pens for him. I discovered it is very enjoyable to paint myself; right now I am coloring a drawing made by Nathalie Leté I got at the Flow magazine, and I am using simple pencils I bought at V&D. You can also download pictures to color at http://www.flowmagazine.nl/Home/Downloads/ > ‘kleurplaten’; they are really great!




If you add some nice music to it, it feels almost like a meditation session. Right now we are listening to Carla Bruni, ‘Quelqu'un m'a dit’; it is sooooo relaxing!