Beverages

What do you  (and your family) drink at your home?

That sounds like a silly question, but as I poured out a glass of  organic apple juice for Peter (60% diluted), I thought about the amount of fluid intake he has on a regular day and I have to say I am glad we made a switch of our children's drinking choice years ago. 

We all know too much sugar in drinks is not a good thing for children, especially in the early growing years.  Besides the fact that it would make them supper hyper, there's also the teeth.  Imagine the sugar coating your toddler's teeth, all day. 

To get our kids on board way back when, Robert and I had to switch with them as well. We eliminated all the soda and punches (we called them sugar water) from our home, except for the coffee - both Robert and I were/are coffee drinkers (black regular for Robert and decaf with half of a tsp. sugar for me, well, that's if we were/are not at Starbucks or Coffee Beans. LOL!)

Our two older kids drink coffee now.  I think Erik drinks soda and coffee (not sure about the frequency, but I think he still likes juices), Christine drinks when she has a social gathering/work meeting with her friends at Starbucks.

So, what do we drink in our home?  Currently, drinking water and juices - and some milk.  Purified, sweet drinking water, apple juice and pomegranate-blueberry-blened juice are delicious and healthy.  We always dilute the juices with 50%  or more of water after we poured them into the glass.  We love fresh squeezed orange juice as well.  We also keep in our fridge the 2% fat milk.

As we do encourage our children to drink healthy beverage, we do not "deprive" them from drinking other sweet drinks and soda.  They enjoy other drinks when given (like my Christmas Gatorade for Joshua) or offered at gatherings outside of our home.  These are what we call sweet treats.  I just remind them to brush their teeth after we get  home. They actually love drinking water and juices.  We have milk for cooking and cereal and a glass for Peter's morning drink, we are still skeptical about the "benefits" of milk. Oh, I forgot to say we use milk to make our avocado shake as well. Yep.  That's not a typo.  Avocado Shake rocks in this house. :)

Below are two pictures of Peter enjoying his OJ.  I just noticed the T-shirt Peter is wearing has been worn by his two big brothers.  Must be a good quality T-shirt we got there. :)