Eating "French"

We met our new neighbors a few months ago and they are lovely. The Mother is French, the Dad was born in Australia but raised in Ireland (with Irish parents). They have 3 kids just younger than my three - who are very polite and well behaved and speak French. I am completely enamoured with listening to children speak French, I could listen to them all day.

They were a few months behind us in building their house and planned to move in in July. I had already been thinking about my children's lack of general manners and planned "The Summer of Manners" for us but knowing we would soon have such delightful children across from us made me really determined to get on it.

Then I saw Karen Le Billon's new book on Lindsey's blog. I had just promised Rick I'd stop spending money so I stopped by the library to see if they had it. The didn't but said they could order it for me. You buy it instead of me? OK!

I couldn't wait for it to arrive and devoured it like a racy novel when it did (OK, I don't actually read racy novels but you get the picture.)

I have often, half jokingly, said that our girls are picky because they are not hungry enough! I come from a family of 8 kids. If you didn't want to eat it - someone else would! I love these food rules. They just seem to make good sense.

Although I think we mostly already ate according to a lot of these rules the one thing we were terrible about is snacking. My kids snack all the time and because I usually give them very healthy snacks, I let them. I've also been trying REALLY hard not to eat in the car. We've also started (gently) insisting that they try anything that is put in front of them. Just one bite.

I already tried really hard to vary our menu and include new things but I am being even more diligent about that now.

One happy change is that we have started having warm baguette with chocolate tucked inside it as a snack once a week - they LOVE that part!

 Lest you think it has all gone smoothly - here is Jane, crying because we told her she had to try a bite of the tomato in her stuffed chicken breast before she had dessert. (She eventually did, with little to no pressure from us.)

Overall, I am thrilled with the improvements my kids have made. They have been trying a wider variety of food and we have been taking them to real restaurants - one's without a kids menu :)

It's a process I think we'll be working on  ... well, forever but we are on our way.