My name is Azure Kelty and welcome to iheartmealtime.com, where I post and share family mealtime advice, healthy habits, easy & delicious recipes, and the occasional proud-parenting moment (or parenting-fail if that’s the case). My goal with iheartmealtime.com is to help families eat better, make smarter food choices, learn healthier ways to clean and prepare meals, and lay the foundation for a lifetime healthy eating habits.
The “Quick & Dirty” About Me
I am an adoring and faithful wife to Scott, a loving mother to two beautiful toddlers, Jeremy (3 years) and Sierra (19 months), a skilled and compassionate registered nurse, and the funnest best friend ever! I am also a food lover with an adoration for delicious, healthful dishes. Read about my Nutrition & Mealtime Philosophy.
I am a registered nurse with a BSN from Sacramento State University and a California Public Health Nurse Certificate. I currently work with chronically and acutely ill adults in a hospital setting. BUT my passion is health promotion and illness prevention, with a focus on family nutrition.
My Inspirations
Jeremy
These are my two biggest inspirations for iheartmealtime.com. When I first started introducing solid foods to my son Jeremy, I followed all of the “experts” advice and guidelines for feeding babies. I started with an iron-fortified rice cereal, then vegetables, next fruits, then meat and proteins, and so on. He was doing great! By one year, he was feeding himself and he would eat anything I gave him. He loved avocados, corn on the cob, yogurt, and chicken.
Then when Jeremy was about two and a half years old, he started to exercise more control over his environment by being “choosey” about what he wanted to eat. As a nurse, I knew that this was going to happen. Developmentally speaking, this is what toddlers do. Knowing this fact still did not make it any easier when my lovable toddler started rejecting almost everything I made for him. I truly began to dread mealtimes.
Having a newborn daughter did not help our mealtime situation either. My husband and I were in survival mode for a couple of months. Balancing full-time jobs for both of us, a toddler, a newborn, and the household, left us in a perpetual state of tiredness. Preparing one healthy dinner was all I had energy for, let alone making a different meal that my son would eat. It was exasperating. My wonderfully, supportive husband (who is also a nurse) said something has to give, and it was NOT going to be our kids. I decided to stay home to focus on raising our children, so I took a per diem RN position (which is very part-time). It was the best decision I had made in a while. This time at home with my kids has allowed me to experiment and discover successful ways to teach my kids healthy eating habits.
Talk to Me!
The nurse in me loves to share experiences and knowledge that can potentially help even one person, but I also enjoy learning as well. Feel free to leave me your comments and feedback, so that I may bring you and improve upon desired post topics. I hope that you enjoy reading my blog posts, recipes, and adventures in creatively concocting healthy foods for my toddlers and husband.
Azure
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