Eating Habits

     Being pregnant, I have to eat all the time, and I dislike it.  When I was pregnant with Amelia, I was so sick the first few months that eating was a chore, something I had to force myself to do.  I'm pretty sure I lost weight before I started gaining it.  And then when I had more of a desire to eat, I got heartburn with almost everything I ate, so I was still really careful about what I ate and how much.
     And with this pregnancy?  I started out feeling fine, just needed to eat every few hours to avoid getting sick . . . and now it has turned into eating every few hours to avoid heartburn.  And I crave sweets all the time, which thankfully, we don't have much of in our house, but I'm continually tempted when I'm out shopping.
     The result - I've gained almost as much weight in my first 5 months as I did during the whole pregnancy with Amelia - yikes!  Ken reminds me that it's okay to gain weight when I'm pregnant, and my Dr. tells me I'm still within the weight gain where I should be, but I'm just not happy about it.
     On a more entertaining note, I thought I'd mention a bit of Amelia's eating habits.

• Amelia will eat almost every vegetable that we eat; chard, brussel sprouts (unless they're too bitter - and then even I don't care for them), kale, broccoli, peas, carrots, zucchini, and frankly, there isn't many foods she won't eat.  I'm hoping this doesn't change, but I'm expecting it to so that I won't be so disappointed when she turns into a picky eater.
• She is at a stage where she wants to eat everything that we have on our plates.  The other day she grabbed a kalamata olive I had on my plate and put it in her mouth.  We had given her one a few days prior and she looked like she was going to cry while it was in her mouth.  I giggled because her reaction was similar this time; perhaps she'll learn to like them when she's older.
• Amelia eats so slow.  It usually takes her 45 min. - 1 hour to eat a meal.  That kind of drives me crazy, but it's teaching me patience.
• I admit that I'm a bit obsessive about clean hands, and unfortunately, I think I have made Amelia obsessed about it as well.  She'll hold out her hands to me and do the sign for "dirty" if she's got too much food stuck on them.  If it's just a small crumb or something on a finger, I just tell her to lick her fingers.  I know, I'm probably creating a bad habit there too, but she thinks it's fun.
• And speaking of dirty/ clean, Amelia has been obsessed lately about a clean binkie, which is funny, because I've never been obsessed about cleaning her binkie.  She always wants me to clean it for her, even if I can't see any "dirt" on it.
• She's getting better at using a spoon, but that's still a work in progress.