A Cookie Like My Heart

It has been over a year now since my son had a sudden and violent allergic reaction to a peanut butter cookie, after years of eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and peanut-flavored granola bars and Peanut M&Ms and french fries fried in peanut oil without a problem.

I've already cried over it; I've already ranted; I've already reorganized my pantry and sent lists to the school and compiled the careful, well-researched, incredibly short list of Restaurants That Are Mostly, Probably Safe. I've already dutifully, repeatedly reminded myself of the much longer and much more upsetting list of Childhood Diseases That Could Be Worse.  I've already adjusted to the constant mental presence of  this terrible knowledge, that the wrong bite of food could hurt or kill my son at any moment. I've made the syringe that contains the emergency medication that could save his life as essential an extension of my body as my glasses or my purse.

Out of life-and-death necessity I keep his allergy in mind every waking minute which after a while from an emotional standpoint is pretty much the same as not thinking about it at all.  There seems to be a part of my brain that just does it, now. Like the part that remembers how to walk. I read ingredients and thoroughly question and instruct teachers and party hosts and babysitters and waitresses on autopilot. Solving a safe path through the world for him has for the most part become an intellectual not an emotional enterprise.

If I weren't like this, now, I'd be constantly crazy with worry and guilt and regret over aspects of childhood that I never recognized as being all that important until they were lost to him. Which just wouldn't do. Anxious, guilty, regretful people make mistakes, and this is an area where I cannot bear allow myself room for serious error.

But there are still moments, once in a while when the fact of his allergy hits me like a kick in the chest, the way it did on the day I first learned of it, and I struggle for a minute to breathe.

Like today when I was at a fancy little boutique grocery store and walked past their bakery display, blooming with beautiful extravagantly decorated heart shaped Valentine's cookies in every flavor and size.

I used to make a point, when he was younger, of buying my son, on the spur of the moment, little surprise presents of candy or food. Ridiculous things, sometimes, like rainbow lollipops the size of his head (that I knew he would never finish). I'm quite a stickler for health food in general -- in my house, whole, natural foods rule the table and fruits or vegetables are required with every sit-down meal .  But I'm also a foodie, and a hobby baker, and I'm not ashamed to confess that I've never met an oversized artisan brownie I didn't like. And my son started out as a pathologically picky eater -- so resistant to eating, in fact, that for a frightening period of time he made himself  ill.

So once his palate began to expand it became a joy to me to surprise him on impulse with pretty and decadent foods. Once in a while, when I saw a giant, artistically frosted cookie or a beautiful piece of chocolate artifice at a store -- the sort that makes your heart skip a beat when you see it, that reminds you of pressing your childish face to the glass in sad longing while your mother said, "No, not that, the smaller one" -- the sort you aren't supposed to spoil a child with -- I would buy it and give it to him, trying to tell him without words, See, this is what I wanted to tell you about the fun of food. This what you have been missing.

But today I knew without looking -- I've shopped hear before -- that not one of the beautiful heart shaped cookies would be labeled PEANUT FREE. I couldn't just pick one without thinking and buy it and meet him with it at the door when he comes home from school. The cookies at the bakery are just another one of so many things -- like the cake at most birthday parties and the candy from most candy shops and the ice cream from ice cream parlors -- that are off limits for him now, and may be off limits for life.

Which is why this weekend I am fairly certain I will wind up baking more homemade heart-shaped cookies, in every hue,  than one child could possibly eat, and wishing I could make them as pretty as the ones at the store.

Things I Have Recently Learned

I have recently learned that teachers who can tell the difference between a picky eater saying a food tastes weird because he's picky and a picky eater saying a food tastes weird because he's suddenly and totally unexpectedly developed an allergy to it and is about to go into anaphylaxis are worth their weight in gold. Especially when that teacher tells you later that she is so sorry this reaction happened under her watch. (Sorry? For jumping in and making my kid toss out the Cookie of Death when lesser classroom heroes may have told him to shut up and eat? Seriously, that action earned you possible naming rights to my next kid.)

I have recently learned that yes, despite his eventual total recovery from his allergic reaction after a double dose of Benadryl, my son did in fact show several bright waving red flags indicating anaphylaxis during his allergy attack, and the emergency room doctor who treated him should have given him a child-sized shot of epinephrine immediately instead of a second dose of Benadryl, and in fact took a big fat unnecessary risk by not doing so.

(So, if your small child ever eats something and then immediately complains of an itchy tongue, breaks out in hives, develops facial swelling, flushes red all over, complains of stomach cramps, and then starts coughing without cease, and you take him to the hospital and some stonefaced overtired ER doctor who seems irked at having to even speak to you tells you to just give your kid a little more Children's Benadryl, PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE STICK HIM WITH HIS OWN NEEDLES make sure you politely insist that the doctor give your child an age-appropriate dose of epinephrine.)

I have recently learned that if your primary care doctor's office staff, who are normally quite competent, call the wrong phone number to tell you the results of a key blood test indicating the possible severity of your son's brand new peanut allergy, even though you had called the office just one hour prior to confirm with the staff which number they could reach you at to give you the results, and then they leave a useless message on your answering machine saying that the results have come in without actually telling you what those results are, even though you've officially authorized the doctor's office to leave a message with the actual test results if you don't answer the phone, and then they close their office phones ten minutes early on a Friday, so that even when you miraculously manage to arrive home and hear the useless misdirected message just in time to call the doctor's office staff back according to their publicly stated phone hours, you still can't get a hold of anyone to give you the damn blood test results, and you realize you won't be able reach anyone at the doctor's office at all until Monday, and so you track down the number of the blood lab that did the test to call the lab yourself, by God — when that happens, some really nice guy at the blood lab named Pete, when he hears you trying not to cry with frustration as you relate this story to him on the phone, will totally bend protocol and fax you a fast-tracked application form so you can get the test results faxed straight to your house from the lab. (Thank you, Nice Blood Test Lab Guy Named Pete.)

I have recently learned that all those parents of kids with serious food allergies were totally right when they told me about so many people, smart people, good people, even medically trained people, not taking food allergies at all as seriously as they take other serious, potentially life-threatening health problems.

That it's really difficult even for me to wrap my mind around the idea that my child could theoretically now be as seriously endangered by a large bag of peanuts as a loaded unlocked gun, because that idea just feels so patently absurd.

That many people will ask you what medical steps you are taking to deal with a brand new food allergy, and many people will try to help you find information about food allergies, and many people will tell you all about how happy hearing about your experience makes them that their kids don't have food allergies, and many people will remind you how lucky you are because "it could be worse!"

But only a few very kind and thoughtful people will think to ask you how you feel about having just a few days ago watched your child narrowly escape death by cookie. By a #&@!& @!*&%!!! cookie!

I have recently learned that I feel pretty awful about that whole experience of holding my kid's hand in a speeding car and feeling totally helpless while he flushed redder and redder and his lips swelled and he coughed uncontrollably and I tried to stay totally calm and comfort him by talking to him about innocuous things in a cheerful voice all while wondering whether he might stop breathing at any moment, and what I would do if he did, all because he had taken two bites of a cookie.

That if I think too hard about it now, I can relive it in excruciating detail. That the whole watching your child have a bad allergic reaction thing is wretched, actually. That it sucks. That I really don't recommend panicked trips to the hospital as a regular family excursion.

I have recently learned that those really thoughtful people I mentioned, those people who take the time to ask a parent who has just experienced her child having a serious allergic reaction how she feels about what just happened, can make that parent feel a whole lot better.

I have learned that I am lucky, that it could have been worse.

I have learned that my five-year-old does not cry when I tell him he can't eat the fries at his favorite restaurant, or when I say he can't always have the same treats other children are having school. That when he sees other children eating what he no longer can. right in front of him, he does not scowl at them or mutter about how life isn't fair.

That he did not throw a fit when I took the bag of candy his grandmother sent him, and gave it away to the kids next door.

That instead of getting angry or upset about the long, long list of restrictions he now suddenly faces due to his allergy, he will instead (usually) tell me that chips are just as nice as fries, that he doesn't mind asking his teacher first before trying a cookie, that we can always buy more candy, that EpiPens aren't quite as scary as vaccine shots, that he doesn't want me to worry about him.

I have recently learned that my son is braver than I am.

That stylish, durable, comfortable, affordable, boyish medical alert bracelets for brave little boys that are not made of mystery metal or mystery plastic or some cheap nickel alloy are nearly impossible to find locally in St. Louis, but are available on the internet.

That your friend with a daughter with diabetes will not only answer your middle-of-the-night emails about where to find nice kids' medical bracelets, but ask her Twitter friends to help you out.

That I find having to wait several days for my kid's medical ID bracelet to arrive in the mail really, really, really annoying. Like, annoying enough to consider buying myself an engraving machine and making my own.

That my son's favorite kind of candy, that he wanted to give out on Valentine's Day, plain M&Ms, are now totally forbidden to him, because Mars does not segregate its production lines and Peanut M&Ms sometimes slip into the plain M&M package.

That I can order nut-free candy-coated chocolate pieces that theoretically also melt in your mouth and not in your hand on the internet. At double the price of the regular kind. Plus shipping.

That I am willing to pay double the price of the regular kind plus shipping. Not just for my kid, but, if necessary, for his whole elementary school class. Just so he can feel normal on Valentine's Day.

That Chipotle and Cici's Pizza and Burger King are peanut-free restaurants. That Chick-fil-A and Chili's are not.

That I am channeling so much ridiculous energy into things like getting my kid a decent ID bracelet and finding some nut-safe candy before Valentine's Day and making spreadsheets of restaurant nutrition information because those are problems I can fix. I can fix those things. I need to do things I can fix right now.

Because I can't fix him.

I can't fix the peanut allergy.

Not right now.

Maybe not ever.


***

Bonus Thing I Have Recently Learned:

That, according to the long-awaited results of his allergy blood test, my son, who has been begging me for a pet cat almost every day since the day he spoke his second word (which was "Kit-tee-cat!" which later changed, adorably, to the inventive Spanglish hybrid,"Gato-ki!" a joyous cry I heard sung out daily, for years, to real cats toy cats and pictures of cats and shadows that sorta looked like cats, with more enthusiasm than "Mama," until he was somehow suddenly old enough to hand me written explanations of Why We Should Have Cats instead) is apparently not only suddenly allergic to peanuts but also suddenly allergic to cats.

Nice one, universe. Nice.

*sigh*

Things I Need To Know

How do I transition from, "I know your sensory disorder sometimes makes trying new things harder for you than for other people, but remember, new foods are not going to actually hurt you. If something tastes bad you can just spit it out. It won't kill you. Please try new foods. Try everything!" to "Always ask an adult before you take a bite out of anything you haven't had before. Read labels on food packages. Don't eat or even touch anything that says PEANUTS or PEANUT BUTTER or PEANUT FLAVOR or MAY CONTAIN NUTS or MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF NUTS. Don't allow other kids to share food with you. Don't eat at a restaurant, ever, unless I am there with you and I've brought your Epi-Pen."?

How do I do this? How do I tell a child who once spent an entire year of his life starving himself nearly to the point of mandatory feeding tube insertion because he was afraid of eating food that certain foods he could eat without trouble a week ago can now, suddenly, KILL HIM, without sending four years' worth of constant effort to get him to eat well careening back to square one?

How do I convince a child for whom certain shirt tags feel like little knives constantly stabbing his back, a child who can feel a tiny crease in his sock as though it were a rock in his shoe, a child who is terrified of needles, that he must now carry an Epi-Pen with him at all times, and practice repeatedly with a dummy pen to learn how to inject himself with it, and that if he feels a severe reaction coming on and there is no one around to help, he must use it, he must stab himself with a needle, and he must hold it there on his leg, and he must hold still and let the medicine flow, no matter how much it hurts him, no matter how scared he is?

How do I protect a child who was already quirky, skinny, short, bookish, nerdy, dreamy, uncoordinated, red-haired, and dangerously smart from getting teased by children or excluded by adults even more than he already was before, because he now has an allergy that many people seem to find so inconvenient to deal with that they'd like to isolate the children who have it entirely from other kids at school?

How do I convince not-so-medically-savvy family friends and relatives who have seen my kid eat peanuts before without trouble that no, he can't have just a little, and yes, in fact, three bites of a peanut butter cookie could actually, now, kill my son?

How do I make myself really believe the words of our brand new allergist, that my child probably won't die from this, that he may even outgrow it, that there are treatments down the line that could help him overcome this entirely in five years, or ten, that this won't change his life to terribly, that really, truly, everything will be okay?

Notice

Well, @#$%.

The Reaction

When Isaac was eight months old, he had emergency surgery to remove a periorbital dermoid cyst — a sort of benign tumor on his skull, next to his eye — after a CT scan had determined it was less than a millimeter away from infiltrating his brain.

After the surgery, my son, who had already proven himself quite a finicky eater in my early attempts at introducing table foods, became extremely orally defensive, and began to refuse solid food almost entirely. I did not know, at the time, that he had sensory processing disorder, and had no idea what was causing him to refuse food, or what sort of therapy might help him.

In the months that followed, his weight dropped lower and lower on the growth chart, and his growth slowed, until he finally met the criteria of failure to thrive. We took him to see several pediatric medical specialists without a successful diagnosis. During our months-long search for answers and help, we had him tested for common food allergies with a simple blood test, but the test came back negative.

We were advised at one point by a pediatric dietician to introduce peanut butter into his diet, because of its high nutrient and calorie content. (It is, after all, what doctors feed starving children.)

I was skeptical of this advice. Back then, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that parents delay introduction of peanut products until age 3 to reduce the chance of allergy (this advice has since been shown to be not only totally scientifically inaccurate but in fact detrimental — think the "All those doctors who have been telling parents for decades to put babies to sleep on their stomachs to prevent SIDS have just been scientifically proven to be totally talking out of their posteriors! Because they've been actually CAUSING SIDS with that unscientific, unproven advice! Who knew?"sort of wrong and detrimental — but of course I did not know that in 2005).

Plus, having seen his strong gag reaction to other really sticky foods, I wasn't optimistic that he would appreciate the finer points of peanut butter. But at this point I was desperate. And we had already had him tested for allergies once, hadn't we? So I took the dietician's advice. And at the age of 14 months, I fed my son a spoonful of peanut butter for the first time.

He promptly spit it out. And gagged. And made a face. And cried. And refused to eat or even touch anything else on his plate, apparently on the grounds that it might have been tainted with the Horror That Was Peanut Butter.

Fifteen minutes later, his eyelids puffed, and his cheeks swelled to twice their normal size.

And. I. freaked. out.

I was home alone with him, without a car. My husband was at work several minutes away. I called 911. Two burly EMTs from the fire department down the street showed up with the fire ambulance.

And they laughed at me.

"I don't see anything wrong with that baby," one said. "You're overreacting, I'm sure he's fine," said the other. "I don't see this swelling you're talking about."

I realized with horror that because my son was so thin for a toddler — he was in the third percentile for weight — the EMTs could not tell his face was swollen at all. They thought he looked like a normal baby. He did look like a normal baby. But not my baby.

They took my child's temperature and then left, refusing to take me to the hospital. I gave my son a dose of liquid Benadryl, scooped him up, and ran to our family doctor's office, which, thankfully, only was a mile and a half down the street. As soon as I walked in the door the receptionist, who had seen my son before, could tell there was a problem.

By that time, the swelling was already going down, and my annoyed and itchy toddler was returning to his normal cheerful self. But our doctor ordered a series of allergy tests at Children's Hospital just to confirm that peanuts, which seemed the obvious culprit, had truly been the cause.

For days, waiting for the testing appointment, I worried, convinced my child had a peanut allergy. I rounded up all the food in our house that was not clearly labeled peanut-free — including several of my son's few accepted foods — and despaired at the thought of throwing it all away. I already had an underweight child who was afraid of food for no apparent good reason. How many orders of magnitude more difficult would it be to try to help that child overcome his fear of food if he now had a legitimate reason to be afraid?

In those few days I lived the afflicted life of a parent who has just discovered her child has a food allergy. And then came the tests.

And they all came back negative. Every single one. Including the one for peanuts.

"He's not allergic," the allergist said. "There is no way he would have a total lack of reaction to peanut protein in a skin test if he had just had serious a reaction a couple of days before. It's something else in your house. Maybe he put his hands on a counter right after you cleaned it and then rubbed his eyes and got cleaner in his eyes, right before lunch? Kids this age have sensitive skin. We see mysterious reactions like this fairly often. You might never know what it was. Just hope it doesn't happen again."

So I threw out all my synthetic household cleaners. And a few weeks later, I tried peanut butter again. He still didn't like it. But his face didn't swell up.

In the four years since then, he has never taken a liking to peanut butter sandwiches. But he's certainly had the occasional Reese's Peanut Butter cup, and Peanut M&Ms. He's had trail mix with peanuts, and chocolate sundaes with peanuts, and peanuts in granola. He's eaten french fries cooked in peanut oil more times than I can count (Before you judge that junk food list, Judgy McJudger parents: remember — picky eater! Who needs to gain weight).

He certainly doesn't eat peanut products daily, or even weekly. But he has had them at least a couple of times a month for years.

Two days ago, at a school assembly, he tried a peanut butter cookie. And he made a face. And he spit it out.

And he broke out in hives.

And flushed bright red. And developed a blister on his upper lip. And he started itching all over, and complaining that his stomach hurt.

And then he started coughing and he couldn't stop even after a Benadryl Fastmelt and we had to take him to the emergency room. Where a doctor with a bedside manner about as warm and friendly as an avalanche falling on you gave him a double dose of Benadryl, prescribed us an Epi-Pen, terrified my five-year-old by jabbing a dummy demonstration pen into his thigh just to show us how it worked, without explaining to my son what it was first or warning him (and without telling him it had no needle in it) and then charged us $200 for ten minutes of his time.

And now I'm waiting. Waiting for an appointment at the allergist's office. To find out whether my son is allergic to peanuts.

Food Karma

A few days ago, I found myself sitting at my dinner table, silently rejoicing because, for the first time ever in his life of five and a half years, my son ate a whole hot dog, complete with bun, without my prompting, wheedling, or bargaining with him to get him to finish it.

A hot dog. And not one of those fancy organic locally processed free range all-natural nitrate-free hot dogs, either. Just a hot dog. From Oscar Meyer. I bought it in a bright plastic package at the grocery store, on sale, plucked from a whole refrigerator case full of processed meat.

All right, it was a turkey-based highly processed, highly packaged, nitrite-filled factory farmed meat hot dog. But still.

I am a vegetarian. I am an environmentalist. I am a gardener. I am a from-scratch baker. I read every book Michael Pollan writes. I am concerned about the health and environmental consequences of our heavily industrialized food system. I feel morally troubled, not so much over human consumption of meat in principle (hunting animals for food is, after all, a thing we apex predators evolved to do), but over the particular treatment of domestic animals in the factory farm system.

When I can afford it, I try to buy locally grown and/or organic food. In the summer, I grow my most of my own vegetables and buy my much of my fruit at the farmer's market. I sneakily swap free-range chicken and beef into my carnivorous husband's diet.

And yet I take my son to Burger King and let him choose a hamburger that has probably been processed with a mechanically rendered beef fat slurry treated with ammonia. I let him eat cheap chicken nuggets sometimes from Tyson (which once plead guilty to 20 violations of the federal Clean Water Act in a town just three hours away from mine, was investigated by the Justice Department for illegally smuggling Mexican undocumented workers into the country to work for little pay in dangerous conditions, and was investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for animal cruelty after a shocking video released by PETA).

And I rejoice when he eats a hot dog.

Before my son was born, I, like so many people who do not have children but plan to, held a vision of my future as a parent that was thoroughly colored by idealistic naivete.

Certainly, I had encountered children who were picky eaters before I myself became a parent. I had gone to school with children who would only eat cheese pizza, plain hamburgers, and french fries; I had been a babysitter to a girl who would not eat anything that was green; my own (much) younger brother once went through a month-long phase during which all he would eat willingly was white rice seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

Outwardly I sympathized with the parents of these children (including my own beleaguered mother), and would never have breathed a word of criticism to their faces, but, secretly, I judged them. By and large, I thought, parents of picky eaters who subsisted on junk food simply hadn't tried hard enough to get their children to eat more wholesome things.

Wasn't my own mother much more lax with my little brother, her youngest child, in every regard than she had been with me, the oldest? Didn't she allow him liberal access, as a toddler, to nutritionally questionable foods like white bread and soda, both of which had been largely forbidden to me in my early years in favor of wheat bread and juice?

Not that I blamed her, exactly, for going a little soft with my kid brother — she was much busier as a mother of three than she had been as a mother of one, after all — but, well.

I was sure I that, whenever I got around to having my own child, I would be capable of preventing any junk food addictions and overcoming any picky tendencies with proper planning and diligence.

My child would learn to prefer fresh fruit to cakes or cookies, because I would limit sweets and provide a wide variety of the tastiest fresh organic produce at all times.

But, at the same time, my child would not develop a secret, deprivation-driven obsession with desserts and confections, because I would not deny them to him altogether; he would have candy at Halloween, and cake at his birthdays; I would be reasonable.

My child would learn to love broccoli and spinach, because I would introduce vegetables at an early age, and eat them at every meal myself in front of him.

My child, if he ate meat, would learn to be ethical in his choices. I would do my best to serve him organic, hormone-free milk, and eggs from free-range chickens. I would offer him sausage from locally hunted wild deer, or hamburgers from ethically raised grass-fed beef. We would not eat at fast food chain restaurants except under serious duress. (Not that I always followed this rule myself, of course. But I would when I was a parent.) When he was old enough to understand, I would tell him why I, as his mother, made these choices about our food.

My child would never develop a taste for highly processed, environmentally hazardous junk foods, like Oscar Meyer hot dogs, because I simply would not have them in my house.

My child would never go on a month-long rice-only jag.

Right.

I had no idea, before my son was born — in fact, I had no idea before I started trying to feed my son solid food — that I would one day find myself praying desperately to a variety of divine beings I don't even necessarily believe in that my son would eat even just one bite of white rice.

That despite my best intentions, despite my most diligent efforts, despite my careful consultation of all the most respected child-rearing manuals (from Sears to Spock), despite advice from family members and friends and pediatricians and dieticians and nutritionists and, later, as the situation grew more obviously dire, a whole host of medical specialists with much longer titles, the goal posts for getting my child to "eat healthily" would move from "Teach him to eat organic vegetables and whole grains!" to "Teach him to eat, um, anything besides breastmilk and three flavors of baby food?" to "Dear God, please get my child to eat ANYTHING AT ALL."

Yet that is where I found myself, just a few years ago: at the table, in a house with a pantry and fridge filled top to bottom with healthy, tasty, natural food, facing an underweight, slowly wasting toddler with failure to thrive, desperately trying to feed a clearly desperately hungry child who would eat almost nothing I offered him.

At his thinnest during this period of self-imposed starvation — at around 12-18 months,when his weight was no longer even present on the growth chart for a child his height and age — Isaac was so thin he looked sick to me. Though he was an energetic, intelligent little boy with bright eyes and a quick smile, when his clothes were off, you could count every rib and see every knob of his spine. He lacked the characteristic pillowy paunch of a toddler. His belly, instead, curved inward. I could not bear to look at his terrible thinness, and yet I could not look away. He looked like a public service poster of a starving child. But he was a real child, in front of me. He was MY child.

These were, without a doubt, the most frustrating, depressing, terrifying few months of my entire life. When I think back on it now, I still shudder. I've been attacked on the street for the last ten dollars in my purse; I've spent nights sleeping hungry and cold in car too young to understand why I'd lost my home and not knowing if I'd see a home again; I've had my heart so utterly broken by a lover's betrayal that I felt it might never beat again. And I would take any of those days over my worst days of fear and helplessness worrying over the health of my son.

I spent thousands of dollars I did not actually have at this time taking my son to expensive medical specialists. An endocrinologist. A pediatric gastroenterologist. A pediatric food allergist. A child psychologist. He was tested for every genetic disease, every bacterial or viral infection, every hormonal imbalance or food intolerance or oral-motor developmental delay or structural intestinal defect these experts could think of that might cause an otherwise healthy and normally developing child to simply refuse to eat. I held my screaming toddler down while phlebotomists with impossibly large needles withdrew vial after vial of his blood from his tiny arms. I strapped him to a table while specialists taped bizarre plastic devices to his private parts to collect urine samples. I restrained him while an allergist pricked his naked back with 40 simultaneous needles. I watched him wheel away, sedated and anesthetized, to a room where a doctor would shove a camera snake down his throat to examine his intestines. Every time I held my child and allowed someone to hurt him in the name of helping him, I wished desperately that they were hurting me instead.

And for months of this, no one could give me an answer.

I was constantly worried that my son might stop eating altogether require surgery to install a feeding tube. I was terrified — cold sweats, nightmares terrified —that someone among this team of experts who could not solve the problem of why my child would not eat would decide that I must be purposefully starving him — that I was abusing him, that I was one of those awful evil Munchausen by proxy parents (which I only even knew existed after watching The Sixth Sense). During my nightly fevered internet searches for things like "failure to thrive" and "post surgical post-traumatic feeding disorder of infancy" and "infantile anorexia" and "Dear Sweet Internet Gods, why the F@#K won't my starving child eat?" I had come across a single message board posting by the friend of a relative of an innocent woman who had supposedly had her failure to thrive child taken away from her by the state under suspicion of abuse, only to have child services discover that the child would not eat in foster care, either, and in fact had a terrible medical condition underlying her self-starving ways, which of course only worsened during the stress of separation from her parents, etc.

Because I hated myself (what mother who can't successfully feed her child doesn't hate herself?), I bookmarked it and reread it from time to time in ritual self-flagellation.

In reality, I spent nearly every waking hour either attempting to get my child to eat, or thinking about how I ought best to attempt to get my child to eat.

I was a terrible bore at playdates and children's birthday parties. "What is going on with you?" the unsuspecting might ask. And I would say, "Oh, my son still isn't eating well at all. I'm very worried. I don't know what to do." And then, compulsively I would relate, in obsessive detail, my latest medically-guided attempt at intervention. A detached part of myself would observe my nervous patter and mentally shout, "Change the subject! Talk about the weather!"

But for me, there was no weather. There were only Days When Isaac Ate Well, and Days When Isaac Did Not Eat.

Friends and family gave me constant well-meaning advice that made me want to punch them in the face. It's not natural, or at least is certainly seems unnatural, for a seemingly healthy, hungry child to refuse all food for months on end, and so naturally most people with casual knowledge of my situation assumed I must be making some simple parenting mistake.

"Don't try so hard to encourage him to eat." "Try harder to encourage him to eat." "Stop breastfeeding him." "Nurse him more often." "Strap him to his high chair and don't let him leave all day until he's finished his whole plate." "Tell him if he doesn't eat one bite of peas you'll make him eat the whole bowl." "Try plainer foods." "Try spicy foods." "Let him see other children eat in front of him." (When he ate with other children, he would, in fact, helpfully give the other children all of his food.) "Get someone else to feed him." (His father, his grandmother, and his aunt had all tried.)

Others assumed I was exaggerating the extent of the problem and advised me he would simply grow out of not eating if I just left him alone.

Every time I spoke in public about my son's eating problems, unintentionally hurtful judgment and well-meaning but uninformed advice surrounded me until I thought I would drown in frustration and self-loathing. And yet I had nothing else to speak about. Because my days were consumed with trying to solve this problem.

When an occupational therapist finally helped my family find a diagnosis — sensory processing disorder — and I finally, finally found therapies that would slowly but surely help my son overcome the severe tactile sensitivity and texture aversions that were driving his fear of solid food, every bite my son took of every new food seemed like a blessing. It didn't matter, to me, whether that new food was a fresh-picked organic locally grown Winesap apple or a hot dog. It was FOOD, damn it, and my son was eating it. My new motto became "If it has calories, and it's not obviously poison? He can eat it."

I know better, now, than to judge the parents I see feeding their children chicken nuggets and fries and soda at McDonald's. Not until I've walked a mile in their shoes. Not until I've taken the beam from my own eye.

But now, with a solid space of four years between me and the worst trauma and fear over my son's initial failure to eat enough to thrive, I am beginning, once again, to judge myself.

Has my gratitude at his graduation from pathologically picky eater to typical picky eater — his transformation from a child who was thisclose to life on a gastric feeding tube to one of "those" picky children, who only (ONLY?!?) reliably eats plain-tasting sweet breakfast cereals (that must be dry), toast, plain, white flour pancakes with plain syrup, plain scrambled eggs, bacon, chicken nuggets, hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, plain quesadillas, plain macaroni and cheese, Swiss (it must be Swiss!) cheese and crackers, french fries, corn chips, potato chips, ketchup, applesauce, sugar-sweetened cooked carrots, mashed sweet potatoes IF they have marshmallows on top, strawberry-flavored fruit leather, the occasional raisin or dried blueberry, vanilla ice cream, and vanilla or banana-flavored yogurt — has my utter, blessed, soul-healing relief that my child finally eats enough of a variety that we can take him to a fast food restaurant and order something he will actually eat off the menu, given me an unjustified feeling of permission to stop trying in the healthy food department?

Have I given up entirely on that dream of a child who blithely eats homegrown tomatoes, organic green vegetables, Indian lentils, and Thai curried tofu?

How do I feel, really, about my weekly purchase of Tyson chicken and nitrite-laden Oscar Meyer hot dogs?

The truth is, there is a little unhappy voice in the back of my brain that still protests every time when I plop factory-farmed meat and preservative-laden snack foods in my grocery cart. Even when I know we can't really afford this week to try the organic grass-fed beef hot dogs, at the very real risk that my son will reject them because they don't "taste right" like the brand he's accustomed to and they will rot and I will have to throw them away.

I struggle regularly with how hard to push my son about the fact that he eats no green vegetables, at all, ever.

As soon as he was old enough to hold a trowel I started involving him intensively in my work in the family garden, hoping that his enthusiastic affection for the bean and pepper plants he so carefully planted and watered himself might translate into some sort of affection for green peppers or green beans, but that hope was in vain. Oh, he's gamely popped fresh homegrown organic baby peas just picked off the plant into his mouth at my insistence, more than once, and screwed up his face in displeasure, and spit them out again. And I let him.

I've tried ordering beautifully presented, perfectly seasoned vegetables for him at restaurants, and he dutifully tries them and spits them out, and I let him. I've tried hiding vegetables in sauces (which he doesn't much care for anyway) and homemade breads, and he tries them and spits them out, and I let him.

After such a long exhausting battle to get him to eat enough solid food at all, I don't want to make his life, or mine, all about his eating now. But when he's grown, if he still hasn't developed a taste for vegetables or fresh fruit — if his limited diet starts once again to affect his health — if he, ever the sensitive soul, always rescuing stranded earthworms after a rain and asking his father to put spiders outside rather than smash them — realizes the impact of his childhood diet on animals and the environment — will he blame me?

Will he think I didn't try hard enough? Will he think I tried too hard?

Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: From Picky Eater to Cheese Snob

MOTHER: I'm about to get started making lunch. What would you like to have for lunch today?

CHILD: I want a grilled cheese sandwich please.

MOTHER: Okay. One grilled cheese sandwich coming up!

CHILD: I want Havarti cheese on it.

MOTHER: Okay . . .

CHILD: Havarti not Cheddar or American. And I want a slice of Swiss cheese on the side. Not on the sandwich.

MOTHER: Okay, I'll put Havarti cheese on the sandwich.

CHILD: And a slice of Swiss cheese on the side. Cold.

The State of Isaac's Diet

For those who haven't been reading my blog since the beginning, I offer today my very first post.

This wasn't supposed to be my first blog post. I didn't originally envision that my blogging debut would be a piece about my son's baffling, terrifying refusal to eat enough food to grow.

I had been reading other people's blogs for quite a while before I started my own, and I had considered becoming a blogger for a long time before I took the plunge.

I had a Livejournal account, back in high school, before blogging was cool. Before blogging was even blogging, actually. Back then it was pretty much just called online journalling, because no one had thought of giving it a hip new name. So I had a Livejournal account, with an online journal. But I never really wrote much of anything in my online journal. I had a Livejournal account so I could read other people's online journals.

Some years later, I got myself a Fotolog. This was technically a blog-- a photo blog-- but I didn't really think of it as a blog so much as I did as a cool place to store and share my photos.

However, after my son was born, I discovered this newfangled blog genre called Mommyblogging. I loved to read other women's personal stories about parenting. Reading about other new mothers' total exhaustion made me feel less tired. Reading about other new mothers' isolation made me feel less alone. Reading that other new mothers had ALSO had to stifle the occasional disturbing impulse to toss their screaming newborns out the nearest window at three in the morning made me feel a WHOLE lot less crazy.

And as the "captions" on my photo blog began to grow suspiciously long, I started to wonder, should I start a blog?

I came up with the perfect name for my blog. I came up with the perfect subject, too!

(And that subject was?

Um, well, politics, actually. I originally thought I wanted to blog about the intersection of parenting and politics. With a little social and cultural criticism thrown in for spice. I know, I know. . . )

And then I proceded diligently not to write a blog for several months.

You see, something was happening in my life that was starting to distract me, a lot, from any ambition I might have had to become some sort of intellectual love-child of Erma Bombeck and George Orwell.

My son, my ONLY son, my baby, was getting very, very thin, sickly-thin, and refusing to eat. And I didn't know why. And neither, it seemed, did any of the expensive specialists I had been taking him to.

So when I finally wrote that post, that first post, here on that blog I'd so cleverly titled The State of Discontent, it wasn't about the intersection of parenting and politics. It wasn't a clever, sarcastic social critique. Because, frankly, at that point, I didn't give a rat's ass about that crap anymore.

When I wrote that post, it was a cry for help, in what I thought was an empty room, an echo chamber. It was a scream into the aether. I didn't expect anyone to read it, really, let alone respond.

But, people did. Mothers did. Offering me a supportive ear I even realize I'd needed so very desperately.

So I wrote more posts. And more people responded.

And then, offline, I found a diagnosis. Online, I found Lisa and Dawn, who each had a child with the same diagnosis. I finally found some good doctors. And a good occupational therapist. And
as the months went by, my son still struggled. I still struggled. But slowly, he kept getting better.

The other day, Peter asked how Isaac was doing in terms of his picky eating problem. And I realized I have not been updating my readers much recently on his progress.

I know a lot of people come here searching on Google for things like "why won't my child eat?" because their own children also are, or once were pathologically picky eaters. I have gotten another of emails from other parents of children with severe eating issues over the past couple of years, asking me for advice, offering me some advice or just wanting to commiserate.

I hope what I am about to write gives some encouragement to other parents who are dealing with this issue.

Isaac is still exceedingly picky, and still doesn't eat as much as I'd like, but, sometimes I lose perspective on how far my son has come.

He will now consistently eat: butter crackers, water crackers, graham crackers, Goldfish crackers, Wheat Thins, yellow corn chips, blue corn chips, potato chips, wheat bread, white bread, sourdough bread, plain bagels, blueberry bagels, asiago cheese bagels, cheese garlic bread, garlic nan, plain croutons, toast, french toast, pancakes, tortillas, hard pretzels, soft pretzels, Fruity Cheerios, Frosted Cheerios, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Life Cereal, granola, butter, cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese, American cheese, colbyjack cheese, cheese quesadillas, chicken quesadillas (without salsa), grilled cheese sandwiches, chicken nuggets, soy nuggets, popcorn shrimp(!), cheeseburgers (without toppings), french fries, sweet potato french fries, sweet potato chips, dried carrot chips, raisins, golden raisins, dried blueberries, dried apricot, dried pineapple, dried coconut, dried mango, fresh sliced apples(!!!), plain dark chocolate.

He will now occasionally nibble at: deli ham, scrambled eggs, gouda cheese, orange slices (!!!), blueberry muffins, bran muffins, banana bread, cupcakes, cake, cake frosting, vanilla ice cream, chocolate ice cream.

He will now consistently drink: water, apple juice, grape juice, berry juice, orange juice, lemonade, fruit punch, cow's milk, chocolate cow's milk, chocolate soy milk, chocolate milkshakes, strawberry milkshakes(!), mango lassi(!!), vanilla Pediasure.

All right. So, you'll notice, there are no fresh vegetables on that list. The fresh fruit selection is limited.

Rice is not on that list. Neither is pasta.

(Trust me, the fact that my child will not eat rice or pasta drives me up the proverbial wall on an almost daily basis.)

But, let's look at that old list again:

"The only things he is willing to eat in any quantity with a smile on his face are dried fruit, dried coconut, apple juice, and Breyers vanilla ice cream."

I think he's doing quite well these days in comparison. Don't you?

Jaelithe's Tricks for Tricking Picky Eaters

Since I started this blog, I have had a number of other mothers, and fathers, leave comments or send me emails telling me that their children are picky eaters, too, and wondering if I had any good advice.

I'm not sure I do have good advice, but I can give advice based things that have worked for me, with my child, in my home.

Since I know very well how stressful and upsetting it can be for a parent when your child won't eat, I have decided to provide the internet with a few of my strategies.

Note of course that I am not a nutritionist, or a child psychologist, or an occupational therapist, or a news channel talking head. I'm just a mom with an underweight, exceedingly picky kid, and I have seen and talked to a lot of experts and tried a lot of different strategies in the course of my ongoing quest to help my son become a better eater.

So, without further ado:

Jaelithe's Tricks for Tricking Picky Eaters

Let your child play with his food. And I don't mean just at dinner time. Let her help you get it down from the shelf and put in the cart at the grocery store. Let him help you prepare the food in the kitchen. If you have an older child, you might want to talk about where your food comes from. Say, "Apples grow on apple trees," or, "Pasta is made from flour, which comes from a kind of grass, called wheat." Let your child help pick berries at a farm, or grow a backyard vegetable garden. Get your child interested in food outside of the context of eating it.

At play time, let your child paint pictures with chocolate pudding or applesauce—it's really not any messier than finger paint, is it?— or build towers with banana slices. If your child is reluctant to play with certain kinds of food because of an aversion to the food's color, scent or texture, start playing with it yourself and allow your child to join in at his leisure.

Roleplay cooking, serving and eating food with toy food, a toy stove and toy utensils.

And, yes, assuming you don't eat out every night at a five star restaurant, let your child touch her food and get it all over her fingers if she wants to at the dinner table.

Picky eaters are afraid of the unfamiliar, and so, the more familiar a certain type of food becomes, the more likely it is that the child will eventually become willing to try it.

Don't let your child's reluctance to touch a food get in the way of her eating it. If your child really dislikes getting sticky fingers while eating fresh fruit, cut an apple or a pear into small pieces and let him eat it with a fork. Make sure there are plenty of napkins around within your child's reach so that if he does drip some food on himself, he can clean it off quickly before it starts to bother him. And let him use the napkin himself—don't do it for him unless he's utterly distraught. Learning that he can take care of uncomfortable sensations himself will help him feel more in control of the situation.

Or, if your child won't eat the food with utensils, she may allow you to feed her the food yourself (but don't force it into her mouth—ask if she would like you to put a piece of the food in her mouth for her, and then do so slowly and gently.)

Now of course, your ultimate goal should be to get your child feeding himself at all times, and accepting the same food in many different forms (i.e., you don't want a 13-year-old insisting that all apples must be cut into bite-sized pieces and eaten with a fork, preferably a fork wielded by her mother). But, I have found that after a texture-averse child has been assisted with a certain food multiple times, she will eventually become more comfortable about touching the food with her hands, feeding herself, and accepting the same type of food in a different preparation.

Go ahead and bribe the kid already. I know that some nutritionists will take issue with my saying this, because our nation's bad eating habits have led to a childhood obesity epidemic, and everything you do to influence the way your child views food when he is three will influence his entire future including whether he gets to be world president, or winds up scrubbing toilets at McDonald's, etcetera, yada, yada, yada.

But, listen, in my completely unprofessional, from-the-trenches opinion, if you're like me, trying to feed an extremely picky, extremely underweight child, who NEEDS to gain weight RIGHT NOW, in order to maintain proper health and growth, the last thing you need is to be worrying about on top of your other worries is whether bribing your super-skinny child to finish her meal by offering her one chocolate chip cookie for dessert today will somehow find her sobbing at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting twenty years from now.

Of course it's important to model good eating habits for your children, but, I believe that developing a healthy relationship to food is an ongoing process, and I don't believe the occasional offering of a bite of dessert in exchange for a bite of broccoli will necessarily permanently destroy your child's future with food.

But, the good news is, you don't even necessarily have to use unhealthy food as a bribe.

Many picky kids have at least one healthy food that they like. For example, I often bribe my own son with dried coconut or dried fruit. Think about the healthy, or at least not-unhealthy, foods that your own child likes. (And remember also that unhealthy for adults is not the same as unhealthy for children, especially underweight children. Children need a good deal more fat in their diets than adults do, for brain development. So, fatty foods like coconut, avocado, nut butters, cheese and whole milk can actually be good for kids who aren't overweight.)

I generally find that the best way to bribe a child into trying a new food, or eating a familiar food the child will only occasionally tolerate, is to offer a small amount of a food the child likes in exchange for each bite of the new or underappreciated food. For example, don't say, "If you just try this spinach once, you can have a whole apple pie!" Just say, "If you try one bite of this pasta, you can have one chocolate chip."

Use reverse psychology. I suspect this works especially well if your child is in the two-to-three-year-old age range, but it will probably work to a certain extent with older children, too.

If your child refuses to eat the food on his plate, very casually say, "Oh, you don't want that food? Well, can I eat it, then?"

This will often trigger an immediate change of attitude toward the food. What once was just a stupid plate of weird overly mushy mashed potatoes is suddenly MY plate of mashed potatoes, that Mommy or Daddy wants to TAKE AWAY FROM ME! If the food on the plate is something you have had some success in getting your child to eat before, this will often work on the first try.

However, if your child says "Yes, please eat it!" don’t give up. Start eating small bites of your child's food, right in front of your child. Your actually eating the food will sometimes cause the child to demand that you give the plate back to her if simply asking for it won't. As you eat the food, try saying things like, "It's too bad Janey didn't want this muffin. It tastes really good. I guess she just doesn't like muffins." But don’t overact or make a huge deal out of it—with picky kids, it's always best to try to keep dinnertime drama to a minimum.

Now, obviously reverse psychology doesn't work every time. It all depends on whether your child's territorial instincts (and general desire to prove his parents wrong) are strong enough to override his aversion to the particular food you are offering.

(By the way, if you have a two or three-year-old, reverse psychology also works pretty well when you want your kid to dress herself, or put away her toys. "Oh? You won't help me with this? All right. I'll just do it myself then. I guess maybe you're not old enough to help me yet.")

Seek out new nutritious foods that are similar in form and texture to food your child already eats. Did you know that Whole Foods Market carries vegetable chips made from real whole sliced vegetables? If you have a potato chip lover, try sneaking some veggie chips in instead. If your child won't eat fresh fruit, but loves raisins, have you tried offering him dried blueberries, dried cherries, or dried apples? If she'll eat bread all day long, will she eat banana bread? Zucchini bread? Pumpkin bread? Have you tried it?

Be as understanding and patient as you can manage. Remember that your child most likely really is afraid of trying new foods, and really isn't refusing to eat just to be ornery.

Watching your child refuse to eat perfectly tasty, nutritious food that you purchased and prepared for him yourself can be an incredibly frustrating experience, especially if it happens several times each day, and even more especially if your child's poor eating habits are leading you to be concerned about her health. Providing food for your child is one of your most fundamental duties as a parent, and it can be absolutely maddening when you feel as though you are doing everything right to provide your child with a nutritious diet, but your child is still refusing to cooperate.

It's okay to get frustrated. It's okay to get mad. It's okay to excuse yourself from the room and go cry and punch a pillow, if you have to. But try to keep your cool in front of your child at mealtimes, and try to remember that your child is refusing the food—not your love.

Everyone tastes foods differently, and we all have certain foods we don't like. When your child makes a face after trying a new food, try to imagine how you would feel if someone were trying to force your least favorite food on you.

We also all have irrational fears. Are you scared of heights? Leery of elevators? Nervous about driving? Terrified of harmless bugs that can't even sting you? Imagine the way you felt the last time you had to face one of your irrational fears, and remember that that may very well be how your child is feeling about eating, every day.

Making your child's fear of certain foods real in your mind can help you become more attuned to his feelings while he is eating, and being more attuned to your child's feelings can help you judge whether a particular moment is a good moment to push your child to take another step in overcoming his fear, or if it would be better just let things slide and try again next time.

Above all, remember that this situation is not your fault. It's not your child's fault. It's just an obstacle the two of you are faced with to surmount, together.

Food

This morning while tending my vegetable garden I noticed the first bell pepper fattening on the vine, its waxy green skin glimmering new and unblemished under an umbrella of broad leaves. As I left, thinking of the taste of a fresh roasted golden yellow pepper a month from now, I double-checked my garden's chicken wire fence to make certain there weren't any gaps that would let a rabbit in to steal my prize.

Back inside the house, I brought out my good heavy mixing bowl and started gathering the ingredients to make biscuits for the strawberry shortcake I had planned for tonight's dessert after dinner. We had Bisquick in the pantry, but I skipped it, opting instead to make the biscuits from scratch: flour, salt, sugar, cream, butter, baking powder.

When the dough came together, I rolled it out and cut it into heart shapes with a cookie cutter.

While the biscuits baked, I took out a box of ripe strawberries and selected the nicest ones and rinsed them. The strawberries were too red and juicy for me to resist eating a couple. I sliced the rest, and put them in a bowl with some sugar. Then I put the sugared strawberries and fresh-baked biscuits in the refrigerator to chill.

When the neighbor girl came over around midday to play with my son, I made a point of showing her the first pepper. She had helped me plant some of the herbs in my herb garden, and I thought she'd want to see how quickly the vegetable plants across from the herbs had grown. She was excited about the pepper, but impatiently disappointed to see the tomato plants I planted just a few weeks ago covered in yellow blossoms, but no fruit.

Later this afternoon, while running errands, I stopped at the hardware store and found that the herbs were on sale. I picked up a peppermint plant and a chamomile plant to put in pots on my patio. Between those two and the spearmint I already had growing, I thought, I'd be set for the rest of the summer for fresh herbal tea.

At dinnertime, despite the rain outside, my husband fired up our new grill for the first time, grilling hamburgers and veggie burgers and ears of corn over charcoal and soaked hickory chips under the shelter of the carport. The new grill made a quick, clean fire and the burgers came out tender with crisp edges.

When we'd finished our barbeque, I brought out some heavy whipping cream, mixed in sugar and vanilla, and whipped it into a rich whipped cream. I spread this over the biscuits I'd baked earlier, and added the sugared strawberries.

As I bit into a crumbly, strawberry-juice-soaked, cream-topped biscuit, feeling utterly decadent, I considered that the simple recipe I'd used for my strawberry shortcake was probably not all that different from the recipes used by women fifty or even a hundred years ago. Only, I imagined that the whipped cream would have tasted much better a hundred years ago, if it had been skimmed earlier that same day from milk milked that very dawn from one's own personal cow.

Still and all, I decided, this strawberry shortcake was pretty damned good.

But my son wouldn't eat the strawberries, or the shortcake, or the cream.

He didn't care for the barbeque sauce on his burger, either, come to talk of it, and he didn't even want the grilled corn touching his plate.

The chamomile plant and the mint plant I bought earlier today? They will both make great tea to soothe upset stomachs the next time one of us gets sick. But I know my son won't tolerate even a drop of warm tea on his tongue. Not even with sugar in it. I've offered it to him when he's been sick before, many times.

The fresh peppers and tomatoes and beans I'm growing in my garden? The basil, parsley, oregano, and sage? Chances are, he won't willingly take a single bite of any of these things when they're ready to be eaten.

Because none of these things are on his list: the list of things he is willing to eat. That list that has grown so much over the past year, after so much work, into something that, finally, sort of resembles a sustainable balanced diet. That list that has grown so much, yet sometimes still seems so terribly short to me.

For as long as I can remember, since I was a very little girl, toddling after my mother in the kitchen or my grandmother in the garden, growing and cooking and eating good food has always been such a pleasure for me. Despite the issues all sorts of people, including me seem to have with food these days-- worrying about this or that food making us too fat, or causing cancer, or heart disease; worrying about where our food comes from, and whether making that food harmed the planet or caused other people suffering, etcetera-- despite all that, food has so often been a source of so much wonder and joy for me.

And the fact that my only child doesn't seem to enjoy food much as all is so devastating to me when I think about it in the context of the joy I have experienced in connection with food. It's the same to me as if a person could, somehow, hear, but not hear music; the same as if a person could walk, but could not dance.

And my sadness over the world of happy experience I imagine my son is missing out on now haunts every happy moment I experience watering a tomato plant (and breathing in the sultry tomato scent the plants give off each time they are watered), or kneading bread dough (and feeling the elasticity grow beneath my hands, and imagining the fine texture it will produce in the finished loaf), or biting into a tart new apple or a slice of fresh-baked cake.

Blah

I haven't disappeared.

I was in the hospital over the weekend with a sudden, serious infection.

I am not dying, so don't get your knickers in a knot. And I am feeling much better now.

However, hospitals suck.

I intend to write about just how much my latest visit sucked, later, when it doesn't pain me to relive the experience.

My bathroom faucet broke. Now the old faucet and a new faucet are both in pieces in my bathroom, but there is still no faucet attached to my sink, because apparently we need some obscure sort of nut type thing to connect the new faucet to our decidedly not-new pipes.



Isaac ate a whole banana last week. A whole, fresh banana. He wouldn't touch the edible part of the banana directly with his fingers, but he ate the whole thing. With a smile on his face.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

Words I Have Waited Nearly Three Years to Hear:

"I love this food, Mommy!"

I Know He Was Not Switched at Birth

MOTHER: Would you like some milk?

CHILD: Yes, I want some chocolate milk, please. With chocolate in it.

MOTHER: Okay, I'll get you some chocolate milk.

CHILD: With CHOCOLATE in it. Chocolate milk. With chocolate.

MOTHER (handing Child a cup of chocolate milk): Here you are. Chocolate milk.

CHILD: With chocolate in it?

MOTHER: YES.

CHILD: Mmm. I like chocolate.

Pardon Me While My Head Explodes, Metaphorically

Hey, so, apparently my post about evilly destroying my son's avant-garde temporary art installation was deemed by the talented authoress of Bub and Pie to be worthy of a Perfect Post award for September.* What can I say? I'm verklempt (and I'm not even Jewish). But I didn't get the button up until today, because, DUDES. I am busy this week.

I have started a new contract project. I am trying to arrange a workable schedule for a (*GASP*) regular part-time babysitter so I can actually finish the parts of said project that require me to spend a couple of hours a week in an office. With grown-ups. Wearing office clothes. And makeup. And heels. All at the same time.

I have to train said babysitter tomorrow in the art of attempting to feed a severely underweight child with SI disorder who hates 95% of food.

I have been trying to work out some sort of crazy insurance issue with Isaac's OT provider. My insurance company is currently claiming the office Isaac's OT works out of is out-of-network, when in fact, the office is in-network, and has the current paperwork and network-provider number to prove it. Hmmm . . . Either way they are claiming they will only cover 20 visits per calendar year.

(Like I am going to let them get away with claiming my underweight child with severe eating issues only needs to see an OT to help with his eating for half an hour once every two-and-a-half weeks? When the OT herself wants to see him at least weekly right now, and his PCP agrees?

I don't think so, insurance bitches. Tiger Mama is now officially on the prowl. Tiger Mama eats deep-fried meaningless medical bureaucracies for breakfast, and often enjoys a refreshing frappe of the strained egos of ineffectual call center lackeys afterward to wash away the annoying aftertaste of red tape. I'm sure all my mothering readers out there have met Tiger Mama, so you know what I'm talking about.)

This week I have also been researching and calling several different financial institutions, because I am trying to find a fantastic deal on a first-time mortgage, preferably with low interest and low closing costs, despite having only average income and only decent credit, without paying tons of money to a broker.

(Stop laughing already.)

As part of this whole trying to get a great mortgage deal process, I have also been trying for weeks now to get one of the three major credit bureaus to admit 1.) that it does not know how to spell my maiden name, and 2.) that I, being an erstwhile bearer of such name, do in fact know the correct way to spell it. I spell my name correctly. Not them. Me.

(I told you to stop laughing, didn't I? Are you going to make me whip out my ruler, class?)

And, oh yes. I am still shopping for my very first honest-to-goodness, no shady landlords cuz I own it and that's that HOUSE.

I am looking for a three-bedroom, two-bath with a full basement, a garage or carport, and a fenced yard, with no major structural defects or health hazards, in a halfway decent neighborhood, for, oh, I don't know, less than $150,000?

Oh, okay, you can laugh at that one.

Or cry, if you live on either coast of this country, because that's actually POSSIBLE here in the Midwest! Ha! So there, you blue state suckers! With your five-star restaurants, and your critically acclaimed theatres, and art galleries, and good schools, and congressional representatives who don't enable child molesters, and . . .

(*Sigh*)


*Okay, so, apparently, she actually liked a post I made back in August better, but, hey.

Cruel, Careless Mother Destroys Precious Avant-Garde Artwork by Child Prodigy

A Missouri housewife by the name of Ms. Jaelithe J was denounced by the international toddler arts community today for prematurely destroying a masterpiece temporary art installation completed just minutes earlier by renowned child prodigy abstract artist Isaac J, who is Ms. J's son. Child artists and art lovers everywhere will be shocked to learn that Ms. J apparently ruined the piece in full view of the artist, despite the artist's desperate pleas that his work be left intact.

Entitled "Ice Cream Railroad," the work, created with melted vanilla ice cream on a glass table top, depicted an abstract interpretation of the artist's grandmother and grandfather eating ice cream while riding on a train, according to Isaac, who was quite distraught at the sudden destruction of his most daring work yet.

"My picture, my picture, my picture! Mommy cleaned up my good picture! My picture is all gone," the boy genius is reported to have lamented, sobbing for nearly thirty minutes straight after the drawing was ruined.

The child artist's mother, apparently oblivious to the inestimable aesthetic value of the ground-breaking installation, seemed puzzled at the outraged response to her removal of the work. "Well, I told him it was a very pretty picture, but that Mommy needed to clean it up now, because melted ice cream just doesn't belong on the dinner table. I tried to explain to him that ice cream makes things sticky, and I told him if I left it there for too long it might attract bugs. Besides, how on earth were we supposed to eat breakfast the next morning off of a table that was half-covered in ice cream? Of course I felt kind of bad, but I told the boy that if he wanted a picture he could keep, well, he could always just use fingerpaints or crayons and paper."

Despite this sad incident, Isaac maintains he will not be daunted in his quest to create thought-provoking yet accessible art installations for his adoring fans. In fact, he is already working on a new project involving shredded cheese and carpet.

"Some people, especially from the previous generation, just don't understand the true spirit of post-modern art," a source close to the artist said. "But Isaac won't ever let that stop him from trying to enlighten them."



Update: Nominated for a September Perfect Post Award by Bub and Pie! Thanks!

Man Plans, Fate Decides. Woman Gets Stuck Working Her Butt Off Regardless.

So, I didn't finish my aforementioned post yet because my husband told me at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday that he had decided that instead of leaving on Friday morning for our weekend at the family lake house, we would leave around noon on Thursday.

(Because, I mean, I won't care a whit if he totally changes our weekend plans on practically no notice without consulting me beforehand, because I stay home and therefore have no life, and nothing to schedule, right?

Yeah.)

Anyway, I had to pack four (not three) days' worth of clothes for three people, pack four (not three) days' worth of food for The Boy Who Only Eats Twenty Things*, and re-pot my wimpy, suddenly-claiming-to-be-rootbound basil plants so they wouldn't die of dehydration while I was gone on Wednesday night, a day earlier than I had originally thought I had to. And then Thursday morning, under a calm, mild, sunny sky, my power went out.

You think I'm joking? No.

It did come back on, but after that I was afraid to turn on anything. So I didn't. And then we left.

However, Husband brought the laptop on our little excursion, and it turns out there is in fact wireless internet access out here on the lake. So, hey, maybe Nature will inspire me, and I'll finish the post sometime this weekend.

I thank my legions of (eight) adoring fans for the encouragement, by the way, but when I say the post is not finished, I mean, not only is it not polished: it has no end. So it would not make sense if I just slapped it up. But I do really appreciate your apparent desire to read even my really bad unfinished writing :)

*Twenty, it must be noted, is a marked improvement over five. Hallowed are the OTs.

Hot Cross Buns Banana Muffins

Today I was going to post about what a wonderful day Sunday was.

Because, you see, Saturday was a terrible day for me. One of those days where the boy wouldn't eat anything all day, (and wouldn't poop all day, either, after several days of voluntary constipation) and overreacted again and again to a billion seemingly ordinary things, and just seemed generally miserable. One of those days when I found myself feeling less-than-optimistic about his progress so far in overcoming his sensory issues. One of those days spent treading and retreading worn roads in my mind, familiar pathways of blame (Did he inherit this disorder from me? Did I drink too much that one night, before I knew I was pregnant? Did I take the wrong medicine, before I knew? Did I stand too close to a smoker one too many times? Was I too stressed out during pregnancy? Did I work too much? Did I worry too much? Did I not want him enough, before he was born? Did I not hold him enough, after he was born? Was it the surgery on his skull? Did I choose the wrong surgeon? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS???

Me? Hah! What about him? See? There you go selfishly thinking about your own troubles when HE'S the one with the disorder that interferes with nearly every aspect of his life. You're a SELFISH mother. THAT'S what's wrong here. You worthless bitch.)

Yeah, Saturday was a bad day.

But Sunday? Sunday, I got my son to try fresh grapes.

And he asked me for more.

Twice.

(Yes, they were cut into quarters so he wouldn't choke on them, safety police.)

This may not seem so monumental to some of you, dear readers, on first glance, but I have been trying to get this child to eat fresh fruit now, well, let's see, since he was old enough to eat fresh fruit. Which would make it, like, A YEAR AND A HALF. He loves dried fruit, mind you, but for the longest time, he wouldn't eat fresh fruit at all. For months upon months, I've been trying; various pediatric specialists (including Michelle the hallowed OT, may She return from her maternity leave healthy and well-rested posthaste) have been trying.

But so far, what has a small army of adults accomplished? Only this: He will OCCASIONALLY eat sliced apples. Granny Smith or Gala apples, specifically (no substitutions -Mgt).

And each slice must be lightly patted with a paper towel to remove excess juice before he will touch it.

So, this Grape Incident was a HUGE deal. Not only did he just increase his fresh fruit repertoire by 50%-- he did so by volunteering to eat STICKY globes filled with JUICE!

I am convinced that somewhere, angels wept.

Later that day, we took him to a park, and not only did he do all sorts of new climbing tricks on the playground that he'd been scared witless to try just weeks ago-- he also ate the sliced deli ham I packed for him as part of our picnic dinner. He ate the deli ham. Which he has been categorically refusing to eat for three months straight.

And, the icing on the cake?

My husband, who refuses to consume:

green salads
soups
stews
hot drinks
spinach
artichokes
asparagus
beans
most nuts besides peanuts
anything containing mayonnaise

(And I blame myself for the boy's picky eating? Oh, oh. I know.)

told me the broccoli-cheddar quiche I'd made for our family picnic was "good."

An adjective which the man ordinarily reserves SOLELY for cookies, cheesecake and lasagna.

Holy smokes! What an awesome day, right?

Yeah, so that's what I was going to post about today. In much more touching detail than I just did. With charm and wit, etcetera.

Then, something happened.

And I got angry.

I mean, "You won't like me when I'm angry," angry.

Someone made me angry.

Someone who, incidentally, isn't too fond of, say, asparagus.

Or walnuts.

Dammit, I love walnuts.

So, lacking a doghouse to send him off to, what's an angry housewife to do?

Aha! The same thing angry housewives have done for the past 2000 years, that's what!

I'll drink.

I'll drink . . . I'll drink, and blog!

No, no, no. Wait. That's been done before. I'll do one better than that.

While I make my S.O. put the boy to bed and fold the laundry, I'll drink, and blog, and BAKE!

Let's see . . .

I've got these brownish overripe bananas. Aaaaand . . . some walnuts. Yeah, walnuts.

So, first, I'll down this large, refreshing, brim-full glass of white wine. Last of the bottle. Thanks for leaving that, happy couple friends who came by for dinner Friday night. Okay . . .

Rip off banana peels. Hurl forcefully into trash can. Tear bananas into pieces. Smash bananas. Smash bananas. Smash them some more. Add melted butter, and vanilla, and smash.

Beat eggs. Lightly? Screw that. Beat eggs vigorously. While glaring at them. Add to bananas, and beat some more.

Stupid eggs.



Pour a glass of the claret. Take a sip. A bit sharp, that. What's that? 2004? Pffffft. Too young for my tongue. Heeeeeeeeeeh heh heh. I'm hilarious. But hey, it was free! Them's damned good friends, leavin' two half-full wine bottles behind.

(Did I mention the husband won't drink wine, either? Yeah. I know. Philistine.)

Okey-dokey. Now what? Flour. That's right. Don't forget to substitute a third of a cup of the fancy stone-ground whole wheat. That's my secret ingredient, bitches. Adds body and texture, and stuff. Plus it's healthy. Yeah, I think about health stuff even when I'm baking drunk. WTF?



Okay, I must not actually be drunk yet.

Drink more wine.

Now add white and brown sugar and BEAT--

Holy crap! I almost forgot the baking powder!



Whew! That would have totally sucked. "Angry Woman's Unleavened Banana-Nut Sludge, anyone?" Sheesh. More wine, please.

Now, for the walnuts: I don't have chopped walnuts. I have shelled walnut halves. So what do I do?

Crush each half into smaller pieces with my bare hands, of course.



Crush nuts. Crush nuts.

Hmm, let's put in twice the walnuts called for in the recipe! WALNUT-banana muffins.

*Cackle*

Drink.

Stir.

Drink.

Bake.

Have long conversation with husband.

Who is really, come to think of it, a nice guy.

So, maybe I won't move to Antarctica.

Eat muffins.



Ahh, love.

However, I Am Ashamed . . .

That I couldn't hide my frustration with the boy when he refused to try even one bite of the little rolls I made for him out of slices of American cheese and deli-sliced ham. That I had to fight to suppress my anger with him when he wouldn't even hold a miniscule piece of a ham-and-cheese roll in his hand.

He has been known to eat American cheese, frequently. He has been known to eat deli-sliced ham, rarely. He likes the taste of the ham, but doesn't like its slipperiness on his fingers. Which would be why today I, decided to try rolling it in slices of cheese.

Cheese, and ham. Ham, and cheese. Two things he has eaten many times before.

And yet, if I put the two together in a roll, suddenly, apparently, in his mind, I am serving him a suspicious-looking object that is most probably poisoned.

Feeding it to his toy trains and cars didn't help. Unrolling the roll to show him exactly what was in it and how I made it for him didn't help. Eating a bite of the cheese myself, even though it was all covered in ham juice, and I don't eat meat, didn't help.

Even my clever Green-Eggs-and-Ham-based poetic improvisations didn't help. And I am the master of situation-based improvisational motivational children's poetry! The author, after all, of such smash hits as "Here We Go Brushing Isaac's Teeth," and "Even Thomas Trains Have to Go Night Night in their Cozy Box on the Bookshelf."

Heavens, I know this is normal behavior for a child with SI. But even after months of knowing why he acts this way, it is so hard for me to get used to throwing out platefuls of food . . . and still hard for me not to get angry, even when I know it's counterproductive.

*sigh*

I Am Not Ashamed . . .

To admit that I just now chopped a tablespoon of butter off the stick and let my son eat it plain.

Hey, he asked me for it!

Do you think if I can get him to eat a tablespoon of butter with lunch every day for a month he might make it up to the 5th percentile by his next weight check? Hmmm . . .

Not the Same

Note: I am working on that audio post idea, everyone. It is going to be long and I might have to break it up into multiple posts. We shall see. Now, to this post:

The Tuesday before last, at 9:30 a.m., Isaac turned to me and said, hopefully, "Michelle coming?"

(I was surprised. Michelle, Isaac's occupational therapist, who makes housecalls, always came Tuesday mornings, but I didn't know how he knew it was Tuesday).

"No," I said, "Michelle isn't coming today, Isaac. Michelle had a baby! It was a surprise-- the baby was born early. Now she has to stop working for a while and take care of her baby, until the baby gets big and strong, and then, when her baby is big and strong, she will come back and play with you again."

"Michelle has baby?" he whispered, his eyes wide. "Oh!" Then he smiled. "Isaac has baby, too!" And he ran to get a baby doll from his toy box, but shortly got distracted by his toy trains.

Last Tuesday, at 9:30 a.m., Isaac clasped his tiny hand around mine, and asked, "Today Michelle coming?"

"No, baby," I said, "Michelle is not coming for a long time. She has to take care of her baby. But Michelle's office said they would send one of Michelle's friends to come play with you instead until Michelle can come back."

This Tuesday, as we rushed about in the wee hours of the morning trying to get ready for me to go to an 8:00 a.m. dentist's appointment, he said, in a voice that seemed to expect disappointment, "Go see Michelle?"

"No, Isaac, I'm sorry. Michelle's still not coming. Michelle's friends are trying to find someone else who can come and play with you, but they still haven't called Mommy back."

Today, a woman named Jackie called me to say she would be Michelle's replacement.

"I know you've missed a lot of sessions while we tried to find someone," she said, "So I was thinking I should definitely come every week. Only I can't come at all this week, or the week of the Fourth of July. Oh, and I work with students in August, so I can't come at all in August. But I can come every week other than that."

"Um, isn't Michelle coming back to work at the end of August?"

"Well, yeah, I think so . . . " Jackie said.

"So, you're basically saying that you can come for three weeks in July, and that's it?"

"So, when did Michelle usually come by?" she asked.

I sighed and told her that Michelle came on Tuesday mornings at 9:45. "Isaac usually eats lunch around 11," I explained, "and so she would usually stay until right before lunch so that he would start getting a little bit hungry just as she was starting the food therapy at the end of the session."

"You're saying Michelle would stay for a whole hour?"

"Yes, usually, sometimes more. Why?"

"Oh. Hmm." Jackie paused. "Well, if eating is a problem for him, I don't want him to get stressed out by having someone new around when he's trying to eat."

"Well, actually, you see, Michelle was working on his eating because his eating is his main pro--"

"How about I come at 9 a.m. next Monday and we'll take things from there? I haven't looked at any of his charts yet or anything, and I don't know if I'll get to it this week, so we'll probably need to start from scratch. I don't know if I can stay for a whole hour on Monday, but I can try."

GRRRRR.

Your company has had eight months to prepare for this absence, and you haven't read my son's charts?

I don't like you, Jackie.

Oh, sweet, sweet Michelle. Please come back, as soon as you can, Michelle. You can bring your baby! You know can nurse her right in front of me-- I'll give you nursing tips! I'll hold her for you, and sing to her, and change her diapers, while you try to get my son to play with peanut butter. Or, hey, could we come to your place? I'll cook you lunch. I don't care if your house is messy; I know you've got a new baby. In fact, I'll wash your dishes and do your laundry and scrub your toilets.

Micheeeeeellllllllle . . ..