A Vegetable Miracle!

Ok, so you all know that I’m a “personal journal” blogger not a “product review” blogger.  And honestly, that’s how I like it.

I generally skip other bloggers’ sponsored posts and product reviews because I’m more interested in their thoughts, feelings and stories than whatever item they’ve been given for free or been paid to write about.

Well…let me say that even though Ella’s Kitchen isn’t paying me a dime to write this post, I just had to write it because I’m still in shock!

Rewind to August.

I went to the BlogHer 2011 Conference in sunny San Diego.  It was an amazing trip for all of the reasons I shared in this post.  On top of all the fun I had, I also brought home some cool swag including a couple packs of Ella’s Kitchen Organic Baby Food to try out.

When Grace was starting solids, I was one of those crazy, hippy motivated new moms who purchased fresh, organic produce and whipped it up into ice cube trays of home made baby food.  It honestly wasn’t that hard and seemed to be a good value, so I figured it was a win/win.

Until…

Grace started getting tastes of “real” food and lost all interested in her hand-crafted veggie purees.  It was a sad day for me.

We had some success early on with thawing a cube of pureed broccoli and adding it to a peanut butter sandwich and after our freezer stash was depleted we started picking up a few jars each week of organic veggies to sneak into her meals.  We also offered her all kinds of solid veggies but she’d freak out immediately and refuse them.  Ugh.

At best we could sneak a tablespoon of jarred veggies into her food on occasion, but if there was any way she could work around it, she would.

I’d say, other than working on her communication skills, my biggest obsession has been getting her to eat vegetables.  She’ll eat carbs, dairy and fruit all day long but veggies are what I’m all about.

Fast forward to Monday.

Andy texted me that UPS dropped off a box for me.  He said it was from Ella’s so I was thinking my sister must have mailed me something, but no.  It was from Ella’s Kitchen which is the baby food company that I grabbed a sample from and filled out a comment card for at BlogHer.

I never thought they’d send me anything, but lo and behold!  They sent me a box filled with at least a dozen fruit and veggie packs!

I figured this would save us from a few weeks of grocery store pickups, but that’s about all I expected.  The same old tablespoon here and there of sneaky veggies.

Fast forward again to yesterday.

Grace was fussing and signing “please” over and over again, but could not effectively communicate what she wanted.  I was walking around trying to figure it out and ended up at the fridge. She didn’t want juice, but seemed really interested in the Ella’s veggie pouch.

I assumed that she just wanted to play around with the cap, per her usual tendency, but no!  She wanted to eat it.

So, I gave her a pack.

And she ate it all and asked for more.

And cried when that one was gone.

You know, because it was SO SAD.

So I gave her another.  And another.

And then she finally got full!