I have this innate desire to be crafty. I have purchased a TON of crafting materials, and have a million crafting blogs bookmarked as well as all these awesome ideas in my head of what I want to do. The problem? NO TIME! No time, and the simple fact that I am super crafty minded but not good at the physical act of crafting. I saw a listing on Etsy for this flower headband for babies and thought it was A-dorable. And also thought.. Hmm.. why pay $14.00 plus shipping when I can make this myself. So off to Hobby Lobby, and $50.00 later, I picked up some fake flowers and headed home. Being a hairstylist I already own a quarter of a zillion hair clips so I was set there. I also picked up some glue sticks which I later learned were too big for my glue gun that took me three weeks to locate. SO another trip to Hobby Lobby, a bigger glue gun (Yes I realize I could have gotten smaller sticks but that would be logical and go against every fiber of my shopping problem) and another $60.00 later, I had all the supplies needed. Then when Laney was napping and Ben was playing I decided to give the flower headband project a-go. Let me start by saying this flower headband that I saw had this big beautiful kinda over-sized flower that looked really cute on the model babies head. I am not a baby headband kinda girl either. So seriously, after an hour of pulling the flower apart to get that stump thing off and re-gluing it back together, I had finally finished. Only to find that the flower was huge, and floppy, and looked stupid. Which didn't make sense! In my head it was gorgeous, and the envy of all the moms. Sigh. I had also heard about needle felting and thought.. I can do that! So I purchased a ton of cookie cutters (to use as sort of a shape stencil) and all the needles and wool, and books and all the junk that goes with it. After attempting to felt a flower, I quickly realized that it doesn't have the "finished" look that I had hoped it would. I've since lost interest. And don't get me started on all the fabric I own but have never touched!
So I've decided to stick to the crafts I'm good at. The craft of getting my son to do things he doesn't want to do. My son is an incredibly picky eater. Which makes grocery shopping a breeze but its frustrating as a person who grew up eating all sorts of things with different flavors, and colors and textures. The other day I was trying to get Ben to eat a slice of ham that I fixed for him. Okay, I didn't "fix" him ham. I unzipped the ziplock bag and pulled it out. But its expensive organic ham! So I didn't want to waste it. One of the downsides to organic is that they don't have all the crap in them to preserve them for a hundred years like the other foods, so I really needed him to eat this ham! He proceeded to ask for foods that I didn't want him to have. Like the giant 5 gallon tub of cheese puffs my mother insists of bringing over every time the other one she left looks remotely low. Seriously mom. We don't need a lifetime supply of cheese puffs!
I know I hear you! Get to the point Angela! Okay- well to get Ben to eat stuff, sometimes you have to make it super fun for him. So finding the fun in random things like sliced meat isn't always easy. But, I'm crafty I tell you. So I told Ben that I wanted to make a Spider Man mask and needed him to eat holes for the eyes.. then the nose.. then the mouth. And soon, he wanted to nibble little holes through out the ham until it was gone. I do this for other things as well. Not the nibble holes thing but add creativity to his meals. My husband and I got him to eat these uber healthy waffles by buying a waffle maker that does them in the shape of animals. The kid loves it. I don't like to force Ben to eat things. Or force him to finish his food either. But I do try to insist he tries things a couple of times before he rules them out. I'll let you know when I come up with a crafty way for him to eat his veggies!
