All that food therapy for nothing

Joseph is a picky eater.  It took him years to get to that point.  He used to be ... I don't know, whatever it is that's 100 stages beyond picky.  It took two years of occupation therapy with a heavy emphasis on sensory integration, nearly two years of food therapy and a ton of work from us and him to get him to where he is now.

In spite of all the work he's done he's still a picky eater.  He doesn't like different types of food to be touching or mixed.  He doesn't like sauces or condiments of any kind, he refuses to dip or dunk any of his food.  Soups have been declared totally off limits for being "too soupy".  Anything too spicy or sour or crunchy or slimy or chewy or strong smelling "gross looking" is on his won't-eat list.

But...

Yesterday we went to a teppanyaki grill.  Joseph ordered shrimp with rice and veggies.  He cheered and laughed as he watched it be prepared in front of him.  When it was placed on his plate he dug in.  With chopsticks!  He dipped his shrimp in sauce!  On purpose!  And he said it was yummy!

All that time spent on food therapy and it turns out the real trick to getting him to eat is to first light his food on fire and toss it around in the air before serveing it.  Thanks teppanyaki dining!

Also, it would seem that the trick to getting me to eat scrambled eggs is to have a Japanese man toss them into my open mouth.

Three years ago today I was preparing for an embryo transfer.
Five years ago today I found out I was having a girl.

At least I can still enjoy glee club style medleys

Everything I love has fallen into a state of neglect. My kids, my husband, my house, my garden, my blog. I just don't have the energy to do much more than lay around and try to work up the energy to get something to eat. When I try to eat I find that 95% of the time the sight and smell of food makes me sick and I have to go lay back down.

In the past several weeks I've lost 13 pounds and yet my pants are starting to get tight. My conclusion? The babies are growing while I continue to shrink. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone would look at me and think "Oh my god! That girl needs to eat!" because I'm still fairly ... curvy. Losing weight when you're pregnant with twins though? Not a good idea. Not good for me and not good for the babies.

It's gotten to the point where people are bringing me food. My friend brought me the makings for buffalo chicken sandwiches. One of my aunts brought me a bunch of stuff for making dinners with. If I express the slightest interest in a certain food Jesse runs out and gets it. I think if I asked someone to peel me a grape they probably would. I would never do that though because the idea of eating a slimy peeled grape makes me want to gag.

I'm just so worn out and I want someone to promise me that it will pass. I want to know that someday I will have enough energy to do more than just lay on the couch, eating saltines and watching Golden Girls reruns. It will get better right? Right?

To make up for this horrible whining entry here's a neat video. You might enjoy it if you can get past this guy's horrible, crotch-cupping jeans.

This video makes me want to learn to beatbox. That would be a sight.

The proper way to handle whining kids

Dinner was rough tonight. It involved the usual whining and crabbing but this time it wasn't just coming from Joseph. Elle has started doing it too. I don't know if she's doing because she's copying Joseph or if she's doing it because she's two but she's started pulling the exact same stuff that Joseph does. I put a perfectly nice dinner down in front of them and right away they both start to whine and crab and push their plates away. "Augh! This is not what I wanted! I don't like this! Why did you make it like this!"

I thought back to all the great advice I got in comments, emails and phone calls after the last time I wrote about our dinner difficulties. After a little consideration I decided that the best way to deal with it was to ..... um, throw a temper tantrum. I slammed hand down on the table and yelled at them. I yelled at the kids for whining and I yelled at Jesse for yelling at the kids. Then I stormed up to my bedroom and pouted for a while. Then I went out to buy some tennis shoes.

I had a legitimate reason for going shoe shopping. I'm going to attempt climbing a rock wall tomorrow and I don't have the right kind of shoes. I've never climbed a rock wall before so I'm not sure how it will go. I predict that I'll get about two feet off the floor and then collapse to the ground in exhaustion. That will make my new shoes the biggest waste of money since the last time I bought a pair of tennis shoes in preparation for athletic activity.

But I digress.

I'm back home now and feeling a little better. Elle is asleep and Jesse is upstairs trying to get Joseph to sleep too. It doesn't sound like he's having too much success. They're starting to raise their voices at each other so I better get up there and separate them. Sigh.

(Just so we're clear here, we're not usually a yelly family. Everyone has their limits though and one too many nights of the same old crap kind of pushed me over the edge. I should be good again for another couple months now.)

Eat, Drink and Be Quiet

I am worn out.

I am tired of the dinner routine we have at our house. Every night is exactly the same. It starts as soon as I start making dinner. Joseph will wander in the kitchen and ask what I'm making. If the answer is anything other than pizza he will start to whine immediately. He'll ask me to fix him something different, he'll demand to "ask daddy" to decide if he has to eat whatever I'm cooking, he'll ask how much of what I'm making he has to eat before he gets something else. When he doesn't get the answers he wants he collapses to the floor and cries. Then he'll pull himself together and recharge himself for battle.

When I set the table the whining starts again. Sometimes it's not so bad. Sometimes it doesn't start until I call him to the table. Most nights it starts as soon as he sees the first plate touch the table. It's always a rehash of the same complaints from earlier.

Once I've called Joseph to dinner and he sees whatever it is we're having the whining changes. It' becomes more high pitched and frantic. He starts rubbing his face (I think this is a sensory thing) and flopping around in his chair. He begs for something else. He cries. He insists that he isn't hungry. He yells at me for making such a gross dinner.*

This continues on as the rest of us start to eat. Thankfully Elle is a champion eater and will try pretty much anything we give her. Jesse and I trade off trying to get Joseph to take a bite and/or shut the hell up so that the rest of us can eat in peace. Joseph continues to whine and cry and yell. I smother my urge to (and this is not very nice) smack him on the back of the head. (He's lucky I don't believe is spanking is all I have to say about that.) Because I'm the grown up and I have to keep control of myself I speak calmly and say things like "This is just chicken. You like chicken. Instead of worrying that you don't like it please just take a bite." instead of screaming "Knock it off! Please, for once in your life just eat like a normal person and stop ruining dinner for everyone else!" like I want to. Joseph gets more and more upset until we either:

a) send him to the couch and do our best to ignore him. Once there he almost always cranks up the volume because now, on top of everything else we're no longer paying attention to him. This gets him sent to his room where he continues to crab and complain but at least it's somewhat muffled.

or

b) convince him to take a bite. Almost without fail the reaction is "Hey! I like this ....... but I'm full now." After one bite. One stinking bite.

Most dinners end with him having less than five bites of food and that only comes after much convincing on our part. An hour later we will claim to be suddenly hungry and when we bring out the leftovers of his dinner the whining routine starts all over again.

We've tried everything we can think of to break this cycle but nothing seems to work. We have to keep trying though. I would love nothing more than to let Joseph spend every dinner in his room playing so that the rest of us could eat in peace but that wouldn't be fair to him or to us. We need that family time together and on those rare occasions when Joseph cooperates we really do enjoy dinner time. Just as important (maybe even more) is that Joseph needs to eat. It sounds so simple but it's not. He's seven and half and he weighs 38 pounds. He's the smallest kid in his class. The other day someone asked him if he was four. He cannot be skipping meals because there's already nothing to him. I can't handle seeing him not eat because he's so tiny, I hate to think of him losing weight.

If there was one thing I could change about Joseph's manifestation of Aspergers it would be this damned food issue. I hate that eating is such an issue for him. I think it's partly a sensory issue. Each meal presents an overwhelming number of smell, sights, textures and tastes that can be difficult for Joseph to navigate through. I think it's also an issue of control. Joseph can be very rigid and he only wants to eat what he wants to eat and when he wants to eat it. This would mean vanilla ice cream and pepperoni pizza once or twice a day. Anything else is different from what he wants and therefor difficult for him to accept.

A year of food therapy hasn't made meal time easier for Joseph. Punishments, rewards, indifference, Jesse and I have tried it all. I don't know how to win this battle. I don't know how to make it not a battle. I feel like I'm at the end of my rope.

Tonight I'll make another dinner that Joseph won't eat. I'll calmly ask him to try just one bite. I'll do my best not to raise my voice when I tell him to go to his room. When dinner is done and put away I'll sit on the edge of Joseph's bed and rub his back and remind him (again) why it's important that he eat. He'll pick at his fingers and promise that the next dinner will go better. And I'll smile at him and promise myself that I'll find a way to make that come true because I'm the mom and that's my job.

* This shouldn't hurt my feelings but it does. I take pride in cooking for my family and it stings when my efforts are called "gross" or "yucky". It's very rare that a night goes by where there isn't some negative comment made about dinner. We can't seem to get across to him that this is not appropriate but that's the subject of a whole different post.

What's eating Jen these days?

Right now I'm doing something that I haven't done since high school. Yes, I'm dieting. Ugh.

In the last couple years I have made changes to my eating habits because I wanted to try to eat healthier. Losing weight was never the goal. Now it is because I really want to lose this baby weight. And by "this baby weight" I mean "this weight I'm still carrying around from when I was pregnant with Elle."

I promised myself that I would not get pregnant again until I was at my goal weight. 22 pounds down, 26 to go. I think I can do it but it's not going to be easy. I have massive food issues that I wrestle with on a daily basis. (Or even an hourly basis.) I can't eat like a reasonable person so I have to set strict rules for myself. Nearly every morning since A was born I have started my day off the same way. It goes like this:

- Put 2 tablespoons of ground flax seed into a bowl.
- Put 3 heaping spoonfuls of Thick and Rough Cut oats into the bowl.
- Put a packet of microwavable oatmeal into the bowl.
- Add 1 cup and one splash of water to the bowl.
- Nuke the mixture for 1 minute and 30 seconds.
- While it's cooking get a glass of milk and a banana.
- Take out the oatmeal, add a splash of milk and a sprinkle of brown sugar.
- Eat the breakfast while fighting off a demanding toddler who thinks that every banana she sees is her banana.

If I don't follow that routine exactly then I run the risk of eating poorly the whole day. I find that if I don't get the day off to a good start then it's too easy for me to think things like "Well, I already blew today by not eating my oatmeal. I might as well eat half a chocolate cake now!"

I wish I knew how to find some kind of happy medium. I wish I could make good choices about food without having to impose a strict regiment on myself. How do people do that?