Daily Multi Vitamins for Kids

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In a post a couple months ago I had mentioned how I was determined to keep the green yukky thick goopy noses at bay this year once my daughter started school. Well it has been 2 months now, and I am happy to say that so far, so good!! What I have been doing differently this year from previous years, is that I committed to giving my kids a daily dose of multivitamins. Not the store bought, industrialized, incapsulated, who-knows-whats-really-in-them-anyway?, and does-your-body-even-assimilate-all-this-stuff?, multivitamin. The real kind. The kind of vitamins you get from eating, or in this case drinking, fruits and vegetables. Every morning for the past 2 months, I have been making our family a green juice before I drop my daughter off to school. They drink it first things in the morning. It’s not always easy to get them to drink it. Some days it goes down fine, others I have to hold the cup for them, or sometimes make up games to get them to drink it. But it’s been SO WORTH it. By this time most school years, my daughter has brought home some gross runny nose. No other symptoms, just that nasty stuff all over her face that she wants to kiss and hug us with. Then she sometimes gives it to her brother. Not this year. I love kisses and snuggles too much to have them be ruined by excessive mucus. Up until now I have been making a juice that consists mainly on the stuff you see in the picture. Ingredients change a bit depending on what I find at the farmers market, but up until now it’s been pretty green pretty cleansing and detoxifying, as well as immunity boosting and all around just amazing. I really love having this kind of juice being the first thing I put in my body, and although my kids aren’t aware of it just yet, I am really happy that they get to experience such goodness too.

Here is a not exact recipe of what I have been making:

  • 4-5 cups of greens ( I rotate my greens weekly, you should too)
  • 1 cup herbs (I rotate mainly between parsley and cilantro)
  • 1 big chunk of ginger
  • 1 lemon, with peel
  • 2-3 stalks of celery
  • 1 small cucumber
  • 1 green apple, or 1 carrot, or 1 beet

Juice everything and drink it immediately!!!

I am about to switch up this juice recipe as I am feeling the need to get into more fall vegetables and I feel like our bodies could use some other nutrients than the ones we have been getting through so much green. But I am definitely committed to continuing juicing for my kids (and my!) health. Without a doubt, they are the reason I am keeping this up everyday. If I were juicing only for myself, I know I would have skipped a bunch of days or even would have taken a break from it by now. But why take a break from taking vitamins daily? Which is what juicing essentially is. While smoothies are great since we get a good dose of fiber in them, we tend to add other things in them as well and they are a little heavier to digest. And we cannot put nearly as many greens in a smoothie without feeling full as we can in a juice. Which makes it that we don’t get as many vitamins and nutrients. As the weather cools down and I have built up a good immunity for us up until now, I will be adding more smoothies in our diet and more colors to our juices. Stay on the lookout for those recipes coming soon 🙂

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Kids are Health!

It has been said many times before that involving your kids in food prep is the way to get them to appreciate health. I want to say it again: involving your kids in food prep a great way to get them to appreciate health 🙂 

My oldest is 6 now and she loves to be in the kitchen and do everything I do. While there are days where I chase her out because I am just trying to get through a meal and put food on the table, other days I take that opportunity to teach her about my beliefs around food and why I think some foods are better than others, as well as get her to taste all kinds of different flavors. She loves it and I get to instill in her health beliefs that I find truly essential to living a Good Life. 

School started this week and last year my daughter had a yucky goopy runny nose for weeks because of all the germs going around school. I want to do my best to avoid that and I know that boosting her immune system right off the bat will help. So everyday this week we have started off our day with a freshly made juice. I don’t have a specific recipe, but the ingredients that have been going in consistently are lemons (with rind), fresh ginger, parsley and celery. I will write a post soon about the properties of these foods. I add other things such as carrots or beets so sweeten it up a bit. When apple season comes around, I will be adding some of those to the mix as well. There are days where both kids drink the juice happily, and days where I have to fight a bit, but asking them to help me make the juice has proven to be the best way for them to get excited to drink it. It does add about 10-15 minutes to our morning routine, but it is so worth it. 

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Do you have any tricks you use to get your kids to eat healthy? And do you have any natural recipes to boost the immune system?Â