Spring Break - Kindergarten Style

Well, we had our first spring break this year with Rita in kindergarten. I thought some time at the beach would be good for all of us. The girls had a great time feeding the pigeons and seagulls, blowing bubbles and flying kites on the beach. We came home with bags of sea shells as souvenirs. We went to Brigantine, NJ which is one beach town north of Atlantic City, NJ.

The first night we were all down together, we went to a seafood buffet at Harrah's Marina. The food was delicious. Grace had been refusing to eat for days prior and was having a few low blood sugar incidents. Well, she tried to make up for all her missed meals in this one meal! Grace ate about 30 bay scallops, 10 pick and peel shrimp and several crab legs. The beauty of it was she loved dipping her food into the melted butter. She ate way more than she should have for a given meal. Tom and I justified her eating frenzy saying it was only protein and fat and we were very careful to not let her have any carbs. We gave her extra oil and heavy cream after that feast but there is no way we kept to he 4:1 ratio with that meal! It was amazing to see the effect of food on Grace. She was animated and full of energy the next day. There was a lot less 'carry me' going on the next day.

Running and playing in the ocean air tired both girls out. They both took naps and Gracie slept really well at night. Rita was up by 6:30 every morning. It is so ironic that she is starting this sleeping habit already - on days off, she doesn't sleep; on school days, it is really difficult to get her awake!

We have expanded our eating out attempts. We try to keep Grace to the diet (not like the night at the buffet). Since we have a feel for what the portion sizes of most of her staple foods are, we can make good guesses when we are out. Most of her meals, we just order something she can eat and let her eat off one of our plates. She still eyes up the carbs she sees on other plates though. She is very interested in french fries and pancakes! It is somewhat sad to deny her the food that she wants but we know the results are worth it so we stick to it.

The biggest discovery of the week was Mini Vanilla Wafers - cookies. One of the mini wafer cookies is a carb serving for Grace. She was so HAPPY to have a cookie. I think she thanked me 20 times for a single cookie. We let her hold it when she was half-way through her heavy cream and she was allowed to eat it when she was done the heavy cream. She actually walked around hugging the box! I think the cookies may be coming to school next week for some snacks!

The pictures up top were from the week. Grace tried to weight herself on her food scale - she is the only one in our house that could fit on the scale! There are some photos of the birds and the girls!

Marie