The Carwash-Nutrition Connection

My friend Jaclyn has the cleanest car you've ever seen. She's had it for over a year and it still has the new car smell. What's amazing is that she also has two kids. And they ride in the car. Her secret? No food...

I'm a bit of a neat freak, so when I rode in her car I was more than a teensy bit jealous. My car is littered with zip lock bags, petrified cheese stick nubs, melted raisins and bits of carrot muffins. And dried up puddles of milk and juice. A week after we drove to San Diego I found a big hunk of rubbery banana in the well around the seat belt buckle.

So I thought about having the no food rule in our car too. A clean car. How adult! Someday I might wear dry clean only clothes again too.

But here's the problem. My son's attention span is the size of an atomic particle. And unfortunately that extends to eating too. He likes food, and - thankfully - he's back on the vegtables. But he has a hard time sitting still long enough to eat a full dinner. So he does his best eating when he's strapped down - in the car or the stroller.

I can hand him a little bag of carrots in the car, and he'll actually eat them. He's so hungry on the way home from swim class that I could probably give him a bag of sand and he'd eat that too. Some of our best eating is in the car.

So as much as I crave a clean car, I'm just going to have to wait until Miles is less squirmy. Besides, he loves going to the carwash.