Free rewards from Stonyfield

What kind of yogurt do you give your kids? We prefer organic. We bought YoBaby yogurt (basic flavors & veggie mixes!) for quite a while. It was nice to know that I could at least guarantee they were getting a serving of veggies on their more picky days. After the kids turned 18months I got less worried about giving them whole fat yogurt. They get cheese and other fats in their diet so I switched to buying the tubs of lowfat vanilla yogurt. I puree veggies and freeze portions, or buy organic baby food to mix with this yogurt.

Why is this worthy of sharing? Well, lots of kids eat yogurt and I figured you might want to get something free for all the money you spend buying it! Stonyfield has a great rewards program. They have codes on the lids of the YoBaby products and their yogurt cups and tubs.  You sign up for their program, sometimes they ask a few questions about their products, enter your codes and then get to pick free stuff! I like to get Happy Baby coupons. For something like 22 points, Stonyfield sends me 4 coupons. Two are for a free Happy Baby product and two are buy 6 pouches get one free. I like to use the free coupons for yogurt melts because they are the most expensive Happy Baby product that we buy. (We also love their puffs!) The Happy Baby food pouches come in very handy as well.

This week I got my rewards coupons just in time. My daughter was having more meltdowns than usual so I checked her mouth for owies. Sure enough, she had gotten another canker sore. Poor girl! Back to a mostly soft food diet for her. Baby food and yogurt are her best friends when she has a canker sore. I get non-citrus baby foods with veggies and fruits mixed in and mix them with her yogurt. The tough part is trying to stay away from any foods with tomato in them! Catsup is the canker sore’s arch enemy and my daughter LOVES catsup.

Anyways, if you are buying yogurt for smoothies, snack, lunch, or for yourself, get something out of it! Thanks Stonyfield!

What to do with a mouth owie

Recently, during her post-nap bouncing around in the crib routine, my daughter bounced the wrong way and somehow wound up putting one of her teeth through her tongue. Oh what fun. Of course, I was at a doctor appointment and my sitter was freaked out by the blood that was on her sleep sack and running from her mouth. That phone call ranks up there with the one I got from my husband after a car wreck. JOY! Anyways, she was fine. After a good inspection I called my pediatrician’s office and spoke to the phone nurse to make sure I was doing everything I should be doing. It wasn’t continuing to bleed and didn’t appear to need stitches so I was instructed to give her Ibuprofen for the pain and any swelling and to give her cool soft foods for a few days. Thank goodness the mouth heals so quickly! Problem. My daughter loves to eat. She is 20 months old and loves her REAL food. She has been getting finger foods since 6 months and can use a spoon eloquently, so keeping her on soft, cold foods was a challenge.

I started with yogurt. My kids love it. My son has gone through stages where he didn’t want to eat it but that was very short lived. I don’t know if you have ever seen the YoBaby yogurts that mix fruit and veggies in with yogurt, but they are a hit with my kids. Yes, the pear and green bean yogurt is their favorite. Since yogurt would be a staple I decided to get a big tub of it and add my own extra ingredients. Adding things like carrot, green bean, broccoli/zucchini mix, non-citrus fruits pureed (or from a baby food jar) made life easier. Yogurt melts, puffs and fiddlesticks met her need for chewable foods. Make sure to stay away from salty foods or anything with vinegar. Those burn! I also added some cooled baby food oatmeal to yogurts or hearty baby foods. Cottage cheese worked well for her also. For breakfast I scrambled some eggs and added some cheese on top and let them cool. I was happy to get some protein in her! I also got some organic canned black beans and kidney beans for some protein too. I knew all this bland food was going to be a drag for her so I cooked up some squash, added some cinnamon and let that cool before giving it to her. She ate so much!

Two weeks after her tongue incident my daughter got a couple sores on the inside of her upper and lower lip. SERIOUSLY? So, we were back on this cold, soft diet for another week. Poor thing. Damn us for giving her kisses! This is precisely the reason I didn’t want the kids getting kisses on the lips from anyone. The problem is, if you are affectionate at all in front of your children (and I hope you are) they will see a kiss on the lips. Of course they will want to imitate that. So after being repeatedly “kissed” by my son (which, in the beginning, meant licking your face) I got over the “no kissing on the lips” hangup I had. Look what it got me, or rather look what it got my daughter….