I have discovered that my dd(6.5) likes canned pumpkin sprinkled with brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice, she will eat it like there is no tomorrow.

This is the child who didn't eat bread until about 6 months ago, who right now won't eat potatoes, has never eaten rice, except the rice flakes I hid in meatloaf. I love my dd dearly but it is hard to keep up with what she likes and what she doesn't.

Lucky you! My dd sometimes will sometimes won't eat the crusts.
I can't put disliked food on her plate at all or she will not eat anything, all portions are small, my dd won't chew and swallow if the taste or texture are odd. And she is VERY strong willed

She does have to try new foods at least 1 time for her to tell me she doesn't like it.

Dessert at our house is a rare treat with little extra money we manage most months to buy neccities.

I should add, my dd was born at 25wks 5 days weighing 1lb 13.25 oz and spent 5 months in the hospital.

I don't make food a battle, it won't get me anywhere with her, within reason I let her choose what to eat and what not to eat. I am lucky that she loves meat esp chicken and pork elk, moose, and bison, the last 3 being treats that usually we are given to us, fruit is another thing she really likes faves are apples,grapes, and bananas. Her all time favorite food is peanut butter, I swear if I could find a marinade for veggies and stuff she would eat it.
I have noticed that since I pulled her out of the public school she has a much better appetite(anxiety at work)

In the meantime if she wants pumpkin,pumpkin she shalll have- I am glad it is something healthy.

My theory is if they want to dip a carrot in ketchup, and they will eat it, then so be it.

You can do the same for PB. If she will eat anything if she can dip it there, then go for it. It certainly cannot hurt her.

We have had major food issues here, having an autistic son, so texture issues are rampant here as well.

* * * *


We are all under the same stars... therefore we are never far apart.

Topcat ~ Good luck with that monster size vine!

Oh I had to chuckle when you mentioned Kendra likes to eat the noodles out of the soup but not the soup.

Maxi used to love it if I put the big ziti noodles in the soup. Then he'd pick them up and put one noodle on each finger like a sleeve and eat it that way. He still prefers any kind of pasta to just about anything else.

I'm sorry your sweet child has such difficulties to face in her young life, Topcat, I really am. And as a parent we hurt when they struggle and cheer when they progress and sometimes life just seems to whirl and whirl around the fact that our child is so beloved.

All the best to you, Topcat, all the best ~

Merme

* * * *



"In the midst of winter, I learned there lives in me an invincible summer" Camus (maybe a paraphrase)

TKHooper, my daughter will not eat rice no matter how I cook it, I have tried rice pudding, I even put peanut butter in it and she still won't touch it, she has never eaten rice and I don't think that one is gonna change anytime soon

What an awesome idea there Merme! I would ahve never thought of that and I create all kinds of crazy stuff.

* * * *


We are all under the same stars... therefore we are never far apart.

Weezie,

I have 3 kids who will NOT use milk on cereal. We avoid it with Zack but Jonny will hardly drink it at all and Mikey has yet to start asking for it on his cereal. In fact, just this summer Lys started using it on hers. I have weird kiddos!

* * * *


We are all under the same stars... therefore we are never far apart.

Like many little ones, Maxi was lactose intolerant also. So after the breast milk failed and he was still so small, he had special soy formula. After THAT it was Lactaid milk -- very pricey! But now that he is older, he can seem to tolerate the low fat milks just fine.

But a good friend of mine has a child with MAJOR food allergies -- the kid is even allergic to GLUTEN, for heaven's sake! So they have to make all their own breads and she had a really hard time even finding calcium and other supplements that didn't contain gluten.

Yet her son has done really well on Rice Milk; I forget what it is called. He is 12 now and growing well, catching up in height and weight.

Sometimes, these things just take time as Weezie said, and other times it is a permanent thing that will have to be adjusted for throughout life.

I always enjoy hearing other's stories, reminding me of hope. There is hope. Even when the kid is refusing yet again to eat anything sensible yet again.

Merme

* * * *



"In the midst of winter, I learned there lives in me an invincible summer" Camus (maybe a paraphrase)

We don't have a choice here for seperate meals. Zack cannot have too much milk or it wigs him out. Something having to do with his autism. It really makes him spacey. Charlie is also allergic to milk but we are hoping he outgrows it, unfortunately he is also allergic to soy so he is on a special formula. Lys was allergic to milk but outgrew hers. Dunno what the deal with Jonny is but he prefers just about anything to milk. I figure they are eating the cereal so with or without milk is really no big deal.

We tailor dinners so that Zack can eat them by not mixing his foods and keeping things as clean as possible. Also we make everyone else at least try everything we are serving. Even if they have tried it before and not liked it. I guess it is the one bite rule. Eventually they will grow into more adult tastes and this way they get a wide variety of foods.

I always thought that my kids will eat what I put in front of them, period, but having an autistic kid who cannot eat things and others who are or have been allergic to them really changed my thinking and I am a bit more lenient now.

* * * *


We are all under the same stars... therefore we are never far apart.

I have Celiac disease and let me tell you you have to be rich to eat well.

My dd was so allergic to every formula we tried she ended up on a very special, partially digested formula.

I should back up a bit though and say that she was fed by ng tube for most of the first year + of her life, she also had horrible horrible GERD once we got that sorted out she started being able to keep food in her stomach longer.

She also has Nephrocalcinosis(calcium deposits on kidneys)for which she took medication for about 2.5 yrs then was taken off of it, but almost had to go back on it late last year- however of her accord she has almost completly stopped drinking milk.

My kids have never eaten cold cereal with milk on it, both right now prefer instant oatmeal.

I am completely ignorant of what Celiac disease is, topcat, but I take it to mean there are many food intolerances with it?
Celiac is an absolute intolerance to gluten, which is found in ALL the major grains, so no wheat, oats, barley(including the malt on most cereals), rye.

Symptoms include, toilet runs, grouchy days, bloating, fatigue(like I don't have enough of that with the fibro)

Heartbreaking, really. So we are working on the wieght and on exercises that he can actually do with his hypotonia.

Kendra has hypotonia as well, she can't stretch her feet down to normal ranges. As well the NLD causes general weakness on the left side.

She still has reflux now not often but sometimes it seems to be every day.

the pumpkin plant which started in the middle of a 44 inch wide garden has grown out and across the 44in garden I just dug and is still growing. I cut off some of the babies along the big vine and left the 2 inch pumpkin to grow.

Triss ~ "Hypotonia" is simply just general allover the body muscular weakness. Or "low" "tone" of muscle groups.

It can be severe, in which case the person can't sit or stand.

It can be more moderate, like Maxi's, who started having PT when he was 2.5 years old. And he has made significant progress!

He'd been in PT for about 2 1/2 years when he started at the local primary school for Pre-K. He would be out with all the kids, trying his best to do what they did, trying to run, to climb the ladder for the slide, etc. He was ENTHUSIASTIC! He was TENACIOUS! DETERMINED!

The playground teachers would stand there watching him with their hearts in their mouths so scared that he was going to hurt himself, but knowing if he was safe, he should be allowed to keep trying.

So the other kids would climb and go down the slide half a dozen times to Maxi's one time, but he wouldn't quit! He'd just keep right on trying.

He had an easel with newspaper paper on it so, When he was very young and I was trying to give him a sense of the passing seasons and holidays of the year, etc., I would draw some simple picture depicting the holiday as one would see in a coloring book. I'd tell him the story as I drew the picture, and let him color it in.

So when he showed an interest in writing, we of course turned to the easel. Maxi's hands were too weak to actually write, so he'd hold the marker and DRAW his letters about 16 inches high, using his shoulder to move the hand that held the marker.

Over time, with much therapy, by the time he started school, he'd gotten strong enough to write his letters about 3 inches high, but it has taken him to age 9 to develope a tripod grasp of his writing tool.

His doctor ordered a therapy chair for him to use here at home. It is called a Tripp Trapp chair. Made of simple wood and shaped rather like a Z, without the top horizontal bar, the Tripp Trapp has a moveable foot rest as well as a changeable height for the seat.

When Maxi is seated, he needs to be able to keep his feet on the floor because his trunk is too weak to keep his balance without assistance. So if his feet can't reach the floor, he uses his arms and shoulders to balance himself, making it very difficult to use his hands for fine tasks such as using a spoon or a pen. Put something under his feet, though, and he can maintain his posture and still write or eat or whatever easily.

The hypotonia has caused difficulties with bike riding as well. The summer he was 4, we got him a tiny two wheeler with training wheels. But he was too weak to push it. His PT told me that by the end of the summer she believed he would be strong enough to achieve riding it.

ALL summer they worked and worked on strengthening him to ride. And I tell you what, THE VERY LAST DAY OF THE SEASON, wearing his helmet and joint safety pads and his little Robin's Cape flapping in the wind, with Papa and Mama running alongside, the kid went wheeling down our street, proud as punch about what he could do!

He still needs training wheels, though, because of his balance issues and is terribly reluctant to let anyone see him ride his bike with trainers. I'm seriously thinking of getting a bike of my own, putting trainers on it, and letting us BOTH go for a ride through town that way!

Oh, sorry, topcat, I didn't mean to hijack your thread!

That celiac disease sounds very difficult to contend with! So you eat fruits and vegetables, meats, fish and poultry, mostly homemade things rather than processed, rice and some pastas?

No Couscous? What about cornbread?

Merme

* * * *



"In the midst of winter, I learned there lives in me an invincible summer" Camus (maybe a paraphrase)

Thanks for that explanation Merme. It really gives a lot of insite.

Zack cannot balance either, so we ended up geting him a 3 wheeler. It is really cool looking and he loves it.

I know what you mean topcat on foods being expensive. Trying to avoid all that bad stuff is not easy.

* * * *


We are all under the same stars... therefore we are never far apart.

Merme NLD stands for Nonverbal Learning Disorder(very common in tiny preemies), has nothing to do with ability to speak(well actually it does make for kids with wonderful vocabularies) I am not gonna explain it I will just give you a link to the site about it. www.nldontheweb.org

Gluten is in many grains so those are all avoided, in other foods it is either called what it is or it is hidden - some times foods will list food starch, well if I knew which food it came from it would be more helpful, but you find wheat esp in so many things. All commercial cereals are malted(this is a proccess with barley)so to eat cereal I have to pay the same amount as the rest for about 1/4 of the amount. Not fun, as for the fruit, I do think that $1.50c for a lb of apples is stupid.

I do all I do because if I don't or don't stand or the kids then nothing gets done I have my days where I don't want to do anything, sometimes I give into too!!

There are receipes for great gluten free baking etc, but when you need 3types of gluten free flour and a starch, and the flours are $5 $6 $7 per KG(about 2.2lbs?), it is still expensive and there are few alternatives

Really sorry to hear all that! Hope you can save some stuff.

* * * *


We are all under the same stars... therefore we are never far apart.

quote:

---

Originally posted by topcat:
I have sad news to report. earlier this evening we had a severe storm run thru with large hale and lots of winds-it appears to have shredded every plant in the garden!!

---

Any news from topcat?????

* * * *



Buckle up! It makes it harder for the aliens to suck you out of your car!

Sounds like you were able to salvage quite a bit. I am so glad that some things made it for you!

* * * *


We are all under the same stars... therefore we are never far apart.