Nursery

Once a child in our church reaches the ripe old age of 18 months, he or she becomes eligible to attend the nursery for a portion of the church services. Normally this is a hard milestone for me, because I guess I don't like the reminder that my babies aren't so much babies anymore, but for Oliver it was especially difficult because snacktime is an integral part of nursery.

Sending him to a place where food was involved made me a bit anxious. Obviously, the traditional nursery snack foods of animal crackers, goldfish, and the like aren't Oliver friendly. I couldn't have asked for better nursery leaders. Well, technically I could have since just before Oliver came of age, it was time to find new nursery leaders and by virtue of my "job" at church I was able to recommend people for the position. So basically if there was a better choice of people, I could have asked for them, but I'm pretty sure there isn't.

They knew about Oliver's restricted diet and several weeks before he was eligible for nursery, they were asking Jordan and I for snack suggestions. We never intended for them to completely revamp the nursery snack menu but they did and we certainly aren't complaining!

So, just what does a child who can't have wheat, dairy, eggs or soy eat for a snack? Rice Chex or Corn Chex and apples or bananas or carrot sticks are in the current rotation. I've also made him graham crackers that I'm not completely sure if he likes or not. At home, he eats Kix and Chocolate Cheerios and I've recently found some pretzels that he can have that he really does like. Checking out the snack food section really makes me wish he could have soy, that seems to be the one ingredient that is in all of the wheat-free, dairy-free snacks.