If you are what you eat, Heidi's a cupcake...

So, in our continued efforts to prepare Heidi's little body for incubation, we begin our journey into introducing Heidi into a more complete food pyramid; one not just supported by corn and cupcakes. Heidi has the world's best metabolism, however, it is not based on the highest level of actual nutrition. So, today we went to Borders and bought a book on pre-pregnancy nutrition. Now, this is likely to be one of my favorite parts of preparation. I obviously love food. I mean, I really love food. Heidi, eh, not so much. She eats to live, I live to eat. Now, we need to get to the same point where we both eat to live healthier. So we started a new journey today...healthy eating! Heidi took the initiative to learn all about her cervix and uterus (kudos to her!); I will own the responsibility of learning about her nutritional needs. Now, one must understand what an undertaking this is. Heidi is not exactly receptive to new foods. The ONLY vegetable she will eat is corn. Buttered corn. Correction: buttered, salted corn. I finally got her to eat asparagus, unfortunately, it has to be completely wrapped in bacon. Baby steps, but still a ways to go. I take on the role of "Dominating Donna" when it comes to getting her to try food, just taste it even. So I anticipate this will be a daunting task, to say the least. I mean, I don't know that I can actually force feed her, I mean, I can, but really? She's a wirey little thing. She can wriggle out of most grips and if I'm also trying to hold food, well, let's just say I don't know how successful I would be.

So, she's watching gymnastics today and I'm reading her book, learning about the importance of different vitamins, minerals, calories, wives tales, etc. I pick a couple of recipes to ease her way into healthy food. Again, baby steps. I read her the recipes. Eh...not an overzealous amount of excitement demonstrated by my beloved. LOL Tandoori chicken with a mango orange salad. And, yum, banana muffins for breakfast tomorrow. Off to the grocery store we go! I decide we are going to spend most of our time in the produce section...finding different fruits and vegetables to try. Again, received with less than stellar enthusiasm. We pick some fruits. Well, I pick several, she picks strawberries. Baby steps...

Oh, insert one more obstacle here: Heidi is, well, to say it kindly "thrifty". She'll pick up a bag of cherries and exclaim "$2.99 a lb.? This is like $7 worth!". Organic chicken is more expensive than regular chicken, don't think she didn't notice. And don't think I didn't see her little nose wrinkle up when I put flaxseed, and wheat flour into our cart. Those don't even SOUND good. We agreed on a wheat pasta enriched with calcium and vitamin A. She was looking less and less hungry the longer we shopped. This is going to be more difficult than I anticipated.

Well, much to my amazement, she sat in the kitchen with me while I marinated dinner and prepared her muffins for tomorrow. She saw me mix the flaxseed. She saw me add oats. She saw me mix in the wheat flour. And she still agreed to try the muffins for breakfast. She watched me make the mango orange salad. Not too bad looking...she even said the muffins smelled good when they were baking. Then dinner...she ate almost all of her chicken, all of her mango salad and of course, all of her corn. And even though she was full, she actually ate a muffin...and said it was good!!! Maybe there is hope! Maybe this will be a lot easier than I thought! Maybe she is so excited about the prospect of having a baby that she is willing to sacrifice her normal diet of cupcakes and corn to include actual nutrition! I'm on the verge of speechlessness!

And here she comes enjoying a desert. She is enjoying vanilla ice cream with hot fudge. Again, baby steps...she did, after all, try to add fresh strawberries. LOL