Sneaky Chef

I read the Sneaky Chef book by Missy Chase Lapine. Good reading. Definitely got some ideas on how to feed my picky little toddler girl (and picky husband). The book had a list of foods that children will eat, and that list alone was worth the price of the whole book to me.
So I decided to give some of the recipes a try.
First I got a ton of fresh veggies:
I got 3 bunches of spinach, some sweet potatoes, a few heads of broccoli, a head of cauliflower, some carrots, some zucchini, and some frozen blueberries.
Each recipe called for steaming the vegetables, so I was a washing and steaming machine. Then came the pureeing. I pureed according to the recipes. I also saved the veggie water from steaming to use as vegetable broth, which turned out well.
ABOVE: Clockwise from top left: White puree, spinach broth (in blue pitcher), carrot broth (in white pitcher), purple puree, orange puree, and green puree in center.

ABOVE: From left to right, From left to right:
Orange purees: carrots and sweet potatoes
Green Purees: Spinach, peas, and broccoli
Purple Purees: Spinach and Blueberries
White Purees: Cauliflower and Zucchini

I tried a few recipes that used the purees.
The brownies didn't turn out so well. My husband didn't like them but Cassie did. Sasha, my picky toddler, wouldn't touch them. I didn't mind them. You sure couldn't taste blueberries or spinach in them! I think I'll skip the wheat germ next time as it gave it a strange consistancy.

The meatballs were a disaster. Nobody liked them. I made spaghetti with meatballs, and the meatballs were mushy. The wheat germ gave it a terrible texture.

The meatloaf, however, was a hit! Cassie and I both really liked it. My husband (who is as picky as my toddler) didn't hate it, which is saying a lot.

I would probably get more use out of the purees than the recipes. This is sort of like when I was making homemade baby food, and I'd occasionally throw a cube of kale baby food into my chicken noodle soups. I could see myself using the purees, but probably not sticking to the exact recipes in the book.

Eating again

Eating!

Thank goodness she's eating again. The past few days, she's been a little eating machine, and I dare say I think she might be plumping up a little! It could be my imagination, but she looks taller and chubbier to me, and her feet look bigger.

Yesterday, she ate four whole meals. And not little ones either. She had a smorgasbord breakfast (noodles, cereal, grapes, bread), she ate a second breakfast with my husband. She ate a pancake breakfast at IHOP for lunch, and she ate some noodles (high protein noodles drizzled with flax seed oil and parmesan cheese) and crackers for dinner.

I know it's not my imagination that the two pairs of size 5 shoes we bought her last month are already outgrown. She had finally outgrown her size 4 shoes last month. So wow, she went through size 5 in less than a month. Time to go shoe shopping again. It looks like a growth spurt!

The Chocolate Milk Diet

My darling toddler has forsaken solid foods for chocolate milk and juice.
We are having such a difficult time feeding her. She is refusing everything. We try to offer her foods and she hits our hand and turns her head away. We are very worried.
I figure her 8oz boxes of chocolate milk are 200 calories each and I lose count of how many she drinks a day. About 4? Then her 6.5oz juice boxes are 100 calories each and she drinks several of those a day. So she's getting enough calories. I do give her a multivitamin daily, and also a gummy omega-3 fatty acid supplement.

In her defense, she is still teething. I am hoping that is the source of the problem. If her teeth come in and she still has eating troubles, I am going to be very scared for her. I think we are going to need professional help, and our pediatrician has been useless.

We're getting desperate. Any ideas appreciated. So far, if it doesn't come in a juice box, she won't take it.

Eating woes again

We seem to be having troubles getting Sasha to eat again. She has hardly eaten the last week or two. My husband and I are starting to worry. We fought hard to get her weight up and I fear she is starting to lose weight again. We are going to have to start putting fats in her foods again to boost her caloric intake.

More Teeth?

Sasha recently started spitting out food and refusing foods she usually likes. She does it even when I know she is hungry. I was so confused at first. She'll eat some foods just fine. Then what really confused me is when she asked me for a cracker and I gave it to her. She took a bite and started chewing, then spit it out. She usually loves her crackers so this was unusual for her. Suddenly she started spitting some foods out.
I finally realized later that she has two new teeth coming in (canines). It's been such a long time since we went through "teething" that I forgot about it. Teething this time is not like when she was little. She's mildly crabby, not as bad as before, and like I said she's spitting her food and eating different. She'll take foods that don't hurt her teeth. Her morning cereal (froot loops) have to be soggy or she'll spit them out.

Today she did something cute. She likes freeze dried blueberries. After her breakfast I gave her a small handful. She ate them all and asked for more. So I signed blueberry and gave her some more. It seemed like I turned my back for a second or two, and she was asking for more again. I asked her "Where are your blueberries?" because I thought maybe she dropped them on the floor or something. She proudly opened her mouth wide and pointed inside.

Oh and image above: Sasha put on my baby carrier and carried her baby around. She likes to give her babies lots of hugs and kisses. She's a good little mommy.

NUM!!!!

I haven't been updating as much as I should lately and I probably have a lot to catch up on.

My little Sasha, thank goodness, is now eating like a garbage disposal. Consistantly! Since I got sick with food poisoning and had to cut back on nursing, it helped us to start the weaning process. She now nurses about once a day, and I have no idea if she's getting any milk or if it's just a habit. If I'm not around, she's fine without nursing.
Her appetite has increased inversely proportionate to her decrease in nursing. I sort of expected this. She is now eating a LOT.
She cracks me up when she eats. She gets so hungry that she eats quickly. Sometimes she eats so quickly that she runs herself out of breath and has to stop and catch her breath to continue on.

If she likes what she's eating, she will loudly declare "NUM!!!!!!!" after her first bite, and will continue eating. I live for those moments. It's so satisfying to see her eat and enjoy what she's eating.
She can put away bowls of cereal for breakfast. Adult sized servings even! She loves noodles and rice and chicken. If she eats chicken, she will cluck like a chicken and pretend to wave her "wings" up and down. She now loves drinking milk and probably drinks way too much of it. She puts away many juice boxes a day.
She is just generally eating MUCH more than she ever has before. I fully expect a nice growth spurt soon.

Strange mealtime manners

We had a very strange dinner.
I made a beef roast, with side dishes of black-eyed peas and rice pilaf, and some broccoli. We all sat at the table for a family dinner. I gave Sasha some rice and some other foods because I didn't think she would be interested in our beef or broccoli. I did put two small spears of broccoli on her high chair table just to familiarize her with broccoli, but I really didn't expect her to eat it.
As I was eating, I was surprised to see Sasha pick up the broccoli and inspect it closely. I don't know what was going through her mind, but she made the broccoli dance. She just started bouncing it on her tray as if it was dancing around and said "dan dan dan" which is how she says "dance dance dance". We all laughed and she was amused with herself. I went back to eating. About a minute later she shoved the broccoli in her mouth and ate it. I was very very surprised and said "Oh look! She's eating broccoli". She really seemed to like it. She ate both spears. I gave her a few more and she started eating those.
That's my girl!
But strangely, about a minute later, her head started bobbing forward. She put her head down on her tray and stayed like that for a little while. I realized she just instantly fell asleep. I was scared at first, worried that maybe she passed out or something. But nope, she just got tired and fell asleep right there at the dinner table.

Snow Day

We had a little bit of a blizzard, and so today was a snow day. No school for Cassie. She spent the day at home. Today she actually did wish she could go to school.

Sasha had another non-eating day today. I barely got one single spoonful of rice into her and that was borderline forceful getting that spoonful in. She refused her juice boxes. She nursed like twice. I don't know how this girl survives at times. I get so scared sometimes when this happens. She didn't eat much yesterday or the day before either but each day she's eating less.

High Calorie Foods for Toddler Weight Gain

I spent hours doing some research into high calorie foods that can help me out with Sasha's underweight problem. She's finally eating, and I want to make sure that every bite counts.
I'm no expert. Just a desperate mother of a toddler who won't eat and is losing weight instead of gaining. Here's what I found and what I am doing.
First, I had to make sure that she's getting all the vitamins and nutrients she needs. She is now agreeably taking a half of a chewable flintstones vitamin every day so I don't have to worry about those nasty vitamin drops. The flintstone vitamins have more kinds of vitamins in them anyways. However they are lacking in CALCIUM, so I still have to make a special effort to get calcium into her every day.
Second, I needed to know exactly how many calories I should be getting into her every day. For that, I thank this website: http://www.silverscriptwellness.com/topic/calneed
I used it to calculate how many calories Sasha needs each day. She weighed 18lbs 8oz at her last doctor visit, and she is 30 inches long. Therefore her calorie needs were as follows:

She needs at least 595 calories to maintain her current weight and activity level.
Of this, 395 calories are required to meet her body's basic energy needs. That amount (your resting energy expenditure) is what she'd use up if she did nothing but lie in bed all day.
To gain about one pound per week, you'll need to bump up to 1,095 calories per day.

Next I tried to calculate how many calories she was getting. This was hard. After searching around I found this really neat website: http://www.calorieking.com/foods/

It told me the amount of calories in different foods, but I could get the amount of calories in different sizes so it was actually really helpful.
Let's see, she eats about 1/2 cup of brown rice mixed with lentils a day (108 calories), and about 2-3 juice boxes (100 calories each). Plus she nurses about 4-5 times a day (about 60 calories per nursing session). I calculate a total of 548-708 calories a day. Barely enough to maintain her weight. Not enough to gain any weight at all. She needs MORE calories. Much more. But she's not going to take more bites so somehow I have to find ways to pack more calories into the bites she does take.

I spent a few hours trying to find the most calorically dense foods. To do this I made a chart of the amount of calories various foods had per ounce and also per tablespoon. This is what I came up with:
food per oz, per other measurement
tofu 41,
whipping cream 98, 52/tbsp
butter 204, 102/tbsp
half&half 40, 20/tbsp
sour cream 61, 26/tbsp
milk whole 19, 9/tbsp
breastmilk 20,
avocado 45,
brown rice 32, 108/half cup
potato 26, 57 half cup
sweet potato 26, 57 half cup
lard 252, 126 tbsp
flaxseedoil 251, 120 tbsp
oberweis choc ice cream 79, 230 half cup
jelly 71, 50 tbsp
peanut butter 169, 95 tbsp
carnation 103, 130/packet
whipped cream 73, 8/tbsp
Hershey's Ready-To-Drink Milk, Chocolate, 2% Reduced-Fat, 8oz box 200 calories!

Basically it seems that fats are the most calorically dense foods I could think of.
Sasha eats mostly brown rice all day every day now, and chugs down a few juice boxes. I am thinking of doing the following:
1. Replace a juice box or two with higher calorie juice box containers of other stuff than juice, like chocolate milk. It has to come in a juice box or Sasha won't drink it. Hehe!
2. Butter everything.
3. Replace milk with half-and-half, or in some instances, even whipping cream. These are very very high in fat. Babies and toddlers do need fats in their diets, especially skinny little ones. I just have to be careful to make sure she's getting protein and carbohydrates in her diet as well so she's not on an all-fat diet.
4. Offer the occasional spoonful of peanut butter or even jelly/jam if she'll take it.
5. Ice cream and whipped cream! I got a can of that pressurized whipped cream and had my older daughter try to teach my toddler the joys of whipped cream. So far, unsuccessful. She giggles at her older sister with a mouth full of whipped cream but won't eat it herself...yet.
6. Make a super thick high calorie very rich drink with 8oz of half&half and some carnation instant breakfast. If you can get this into your toddler, there's 445 calories in this. Good luck. This tastes like heaven. It tastes like melted ice cream. Sasha wouldn't take more than a few sips of it.

I'm sure there's plenty more ideas but that's all I can think of for now. Basically don't let any bite go into that toddler's mouth that isn't dripping in butter, cream, or an oil of some kind.
These are the desperate measures of a mother of an underweight toddler who is losing weight. Once the weight starts to get closer to a normal range, I'll stop lacing all her foods with fats.

Please, if anyone has any other ideas or suggestions, or anything that has worked for you in a similar situation, please feel free to leave a comment. Or commiserate and share your experiences.

A Walking Stomach

Above: While I was loading up the dishwasher, Sasha decided her legos needed to be washed. I took those things out like 3-4 times and she kept insisting on sneaking them back in.

From one extreme to the other!
The last two days, Sasha has been a walking stomach, consuming everything in her wake. This is in stark contrast to the entire previous week where I was lucky to get a tablespoon of food into her after a whole day of trying. She suddenly decided she was hungry I guess. Now she's been walking around the house and asking for food every few minutes or so. Sort of a constant snacking rather than sitting down for full meals. Today, for example, she was eating from within minutes of getting out of bed. She would run around and play, then she would come up to me with her mouth open saying "ahhhh" and insisting I put food in her mouth. Like a little baby birdy. She decided she loves brown rice. So I keep a bowl of it next to my husband's computer, and throughout the day we give her spoonfuls of it, and eventually she ate the whole thing! Today I made her a bigger bowl of rice with lentils and carrots and a tiny bit of ground beef in it. She ate that just fine, plus she ate some avocado, potato chips, three juice boxes full of juice, some crackers, a few bites of peanut butter toast, some homemade banana pudding. Anything that I tried to eat, she insisted on eating also. I am surprised at all the juice she drank. I refilled her juice box with calcium-enriched orange juice and she didn't seem to mind, although if I try to give her orange juice in a cup she balks at it. I guess it's all in the presentation some times.

She seems to be healthy and in good spirits. She is as affectionate as ever. I swear my virgo toddler is the most affectionate child I've ever known. From the moment I wake up, she is smothering my face in kisses and hugging me. She kisses all her stuffed animals and dolls. Today she was constantly making me laugh. She's a little comedienne and enjoyed making me laugh so she was really putting on a show.

Her language has really been exploding lately. She's learning several new words a day and her vocabulary is building up. Yesterday my husband and I started teaching her about facial features (cheeks, chin, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, etc) and within minutes we were able to quiz her ("Sasha, where is dad's eyebrows?") and she had it down correctly. She even tries to say the words. I also swear she tries to sing the alphabet song along with one of her refridgerator magnet toys.

Vitamin D?

I've been thinking. File this in the thinking myself into paranoia category, but I'm starting to wonder whether a vitamin D and calcium deficiency might be a problem for us.
Sasha has been breastfed from the day she was born. She's not eating food very well and never has. She will not drink milk. We are a night shift family so our exposure to sunlight is VERY infrequent. This all is the perfect setup for Rickets, a vitamin D and calcium deficiency.
The thought crossed my mind when I noticed Sasha's belly is a little bit distended outwards. But she doesn't seem to have any other signs of a deficiency that I can tell...no bowed legs, her teeth keep coming in okay. But a deficiency can exist months before there are physical signs and symptoms. I think I can reasonably assume that Sasha has a deficiency of vitamin d, considering she has no current source of it.

I guess it's something that I need to keep an eye on though. I started to give her vitamin drops today. As I mentioned in my previous post, I'd prefer she get her nutrients from natural sources but since she's not eating I don't see much other choice. I will be glad once Sasha is old enough to eat children's chewable multi-vitamins, or if she ever starts eating again.

Recovery from Recovery

Sasha is feeling better it seems. At least she's in a much better mood and not so crabby. She doesn't seem to have a runny nose anymore. I think she's beaten whatever cold or flu that was ailing her. She is still not eating and her diapers are very strange looking (won't go into detail but trust me it's nasty) so I think her belly is still getting rid of something. Maybe a gastrointestinal bug?
I wish she would eat. She's been nursing like a newborn again and not eating food. Today for the first time ever, I had to force her to take a dropperful of vitamin drops against her will. I'm afraid that she might be suffering from nutritional deficiencies. I wish there was a better way but if she's not going to eat I'm going to have to give her the vitamin drops. I'd prefer that she get her nutrients from food.
If she's feeling better, I'm going to have to cut her back on her nursing sessions. I fear that her frequent nursing might be causing her appetite loss. I tolerated it while she was ill but now it's a habit that I have to break again. I am hoping her appetite will pick up once her nursing is cut back. Easier said than done, however. I know that cutting her nursing sessions back will mean lots of temper tantrums, whining, and a very crabby upset little girl. I have to keep offering her foods, even though she refuses, somehow without turning it into a power struggle. That's a delicate balance. I hope I have the strength. It's going to be a long weekend.

Meanwhile, my husband is feeling ill again. Didn't he just finish recovering from being sick? Blah can we get a break?

She eats!

Sharing a bite with her big sister.

Finally! After much worry about Sasha's reluctance to eat, she is finally eating. She has been for the last week and a half, I think. Tonight, she ate a HUGE meal. Well huge for her. I made my barley beef skillet for dinner last night, and had plenty of left-overs. Tonight I heated up some left-overs for Sasha and even though I pulled out way more food than I thought she'd eat, she ate it all. She ate maybe a half cup portion of it, which is a lot for her! She does like that barley beef, but in general, she's finally started letting us feed her. It's a good thing too because I was worried about her weight. In general, she has never really taken to eating solid food, preferring instead to nourish herself entirely by nursing and cheerios.

And on the baby sign language front, Sasha signed a new word today: Bath. Once she got the hang of it, she was signing it nearly non-stop for a while. It was cute too because she verbally said "baa" while signing it too so I think she was saying AND signing "bath". She was pretty excited about it, and so was I.

New Words

IDK my BFF Jill?
Sasha's had a significant vocabulary increase lately, both verbally and with her sign language skills. Every day she adds a new word or two to her vocabulary. Let's see if I can remember it all.
At the park yesterday, Sasha was distracted by the geese and ducks at the wading pond. I showed her the sign for "bird" and it didn't even look like she was paying attention. But later in the evening, I saw her looking at the television and signing "bird". Sure enough, there was a bird on tv. Although, to be fair, when a Comcast commercial featuring talking turtles came on tv, she pointed at them and signed "dog" excitedly. The "bird" sign was a sign she learned on her Baby Signing Time videos, so she probably remembered it from there. She rediscovered the "more" sign. It used to be one of her favorite signs but she hadn't used it in months.

I noticed that when she sees my husband's glasses, she says the same thing every time. It sort of sounds like 'dassis'. Eventually I realized that she was trying to say 'glasses'. Sure enough, when I pointed at his glasses and asked her what they were, she said it clear as day. It's her version of the word 'glasses', and it sounds very cute.

Tea! Sasha is a little tea fiend like her dad. My husband has a nightly ritual where he makes at least a gallon or two of tea in one big batch and she supervises the whole process from start to finish. Then whenever he drinks tea, she says "tea!" and makes him give her some to drink. She LOVES tea. But it's so cute the way she says tea. There's like no vowel sound at all the way she says it. It's just the "t" sound only.

Sasha has been a comedian lately. She's always trying to make me laugh. She tickles my feet, puts her finger in my belly button, or blows raspberries on my skin. She puts stuff on her head or hangs stuff out of her mouth and looks at me to make sure I'm watching her while she shows off. She really puts on a show!

I should also add that Sasha's got a new tooth! But this time it's one of the molars. I'm sort of confused by this. I thought she would get her canine teeth before she started getting any molars? But she's drooling up a storm. Fortunately she isn't so crabby anymore. She was about two weeks ago but now she's mostly in good spirits.