Aaaand Scene!

Sophie: I'm hungry.

Me: Do you want a string cheese?

S: YEAH!!

Me: (grabbing one out of the fridge) Are you sure you want a string cheese?

S: YEAAAHHH!!!

Me: (as I begin to unwrap it) You definitely want a string cheese?

S: Yes, yes, yes! (arms outstretched, jumping up and down)

Me: (holding out string cheese to her, big enticing smile on my face) Here you go, baby.

S: (turning away) Ummm, no.

Replay this scene about 114 times a day and you begin to understand why my kid is so skinny and my ass is still the size of Texas as I eat the stupid string cheese/apple/peppers/crackers/toast/bagel/egg sandwich because I'm tired of throwing food out.

Gobble Gobble

Trying desperately not to succumb to the tryptophan after a fabulous Thanksgiving meal.















Failing.

Hope everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving!

Sometimes Wishes Do Come True

Saturday night, Neil and I met a couple of friends at a local restaurant for a night of beer, crabs and laughs. Lots of laughs. For those of you not familiar with Blue Crabs, they are a delicacy that is native to Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay. When alive, the crabs are true to their name and are quite blue, but when cooked they turn a lovely orange/red color. Around here, we steam them (the only way to do it) and load them up with tons of salty Old Bay Seasoning. So much seasoning, in fact, that your hands (and shirt and pants and surrounding floor) are coated in the vibrantly orange stuff. It is not an overstatement to say that by the end of the night, you feel like you will never be able to get it all off of you.

I had never even heard of this style of crab before I moved to Maryland, and it took me years to develop the taste, but now I love them. Back home in Kansas, if you say crabs, you mean Alaskan King Crab Legs, of the Deadliest Catch variety. I still love those and the amount of meat you get out of them versus the Blue Crab, which is a lot of work for a very little meat*, is awfully appealing, but a night out eating blue crabs is an Experience.

It took the four of us three hours to pick our way through two and a half dozen crabs, but I wouldn't have traded a minute of that because during that time we traded stories, told jokes and caught up on each others lives. It's about more than just the food.

Sometimes easy isn't best.






















* An experienced picker produces less than one ounce of meat from the average crab.

** A rare photograph of me to be posted here. I swear I don't keep them out due to some sense of modesty or desire for anonymity as much as that I am generally the one holding the camera so there just aren't many pictures of me. I actually put on make-up for this little outing. Don't hold back, you can tell me how pretty I look. No really, you can tell me. It's okay, don't be shy.

Bribery

Add to the long, long list of things I thought/said I would never do as a parent: Doing ANYTHING to get my kid to eat.
















That would be Sophie. Eating an Eggo. In her Ikea tent. In front of the TV.

Does it make it better that the waffle is whole wheat?

Breakfast Blues

Friday morning, while Neil was at work, Sophie, my parents and I went to the local diner for some breakfast. Sophie was in great spirits, smiling, laughing and being extremely playful. Patrons at other tables, as well as all passing servers, smiled and waved at her while she hammed it up. Loving the attention she was getting almost as much as she was, I smiled and chatted up my parents while we enjoyed our breakfast.

In the last few weeks, Sophie has begun to be more adventurous when it comes to table food. She will try most foods, although she still has some texture issues. However, she doesn't seem to quite understand the need to thoroughly chew her food and often gags. Further complicating this, she grabs food and puts it as far back in her mouth as possible. I suspect with her less than perfect hand-eye coordination, she is just trying to ensure delivery, but it makes me nervous when she attempts to swallow her food whole, like an anaconda.

So as we sat at breakfast, it seemed an opportune time to introduce her to some new food. My meal included bacon and I thought we would give it a go. Neil considers it the perfect food and would be happiest if all meals included it. So how could we go wrong? She seemed to enjoy it, gobbling up several pieces as fast as I could tear them up. Heady in our success, I followed it up with a couple of small bites of waffle and eggs.

As I was telling my parents what a great kid she was, generally cheerful, good sleeper, etc, she began to gag. And not the is-she-or-isn't-she kind of gag, but the lookout-it's-coming kind. I registered someone at a neighboring table say "Uh Oh!" and then out it came. And came. And came. Despite my attempts to catch it, it went all down her front, the high chair, the floor, my arm. I was absolutely mortified.

I swear karma has it out for me.

Tough Guy, Eh?

I thought I was pretty much okay with anything my daughter could throw at me. I've been puked, pooped, peed, snotted, drooled and cried on. I have accidentally stuck my finger into dirty diapers and walked around with spit-up on my shirt for the better part of a day before realizing it. I have mocked my husband when he gagged as he changed a poopie diaper. I have told him off in language so colorful it is not appropriate for a family blog when he woke me up to ask me to change a poopie diaper because he "just didn't think he could take it." For a time there, I even thought her poop smelled good. Which now sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I'm telling you a diaper full of exclusively breastmilk-fed poo is really not so bad. All in all, I thought I was pretty tough.

Then I took Sophie out to lunch today.

It all started innocuously enough. I was 15 minutes late, as usual, despite having left in plenty of time to get there punctually. I did not, however, leave with enough time to get halfway there only to realize I didn't have any food or drinking implements for Sophie, necessitating a return trip home. Once settled in at the restaurant, though, things were actually going pretty well. Sophie was nibbling on a tortilla chip and being her cutie patootie self, hamming it up for her grandparents and aunts. She continued to be good, eating a whole container of Yo Baby, or as I like to call it, yogee. Because everything gets shortened and ends in an "ee" these days. Hence, diapee changes. I know, pathetic. Anyhoodle, our food comes and she takes one of the french fries off my plate and eats it. I'm over the moon. She's eating real food! Then she takes another one. And another. I think it might have been the fourth one when we ran into a snag. And by snag, I mean she threw it all up.

This is when I discovered that watching chunks of a virtually unchewed version of what I am at that very moment eating come flying out of my daughter's mouth, along with a whole mess of other things, completely turns my stomach. So much so, that once we had her cleaned up, I was barely able to finish eating. I can tell you, I didn't eat any more french fries. AND I passed on dessert, for maybe the first time ever.

Meanwhile, my father-in-law was cupping a napkin under her mouth to catch the spew with one hand while still eating with the other hand.

Now THAT is tough.

Would You Like Whine With That?

We got the results back from Sophie's bloodwork and, as predicted, everything is normal. Turns out she's just small. Go figure. Of course, then I start to think that maybe she's a primordial dwarf. That's what I get for watching that Oprah show.

At any rate, the sleeping thing seems to be getting better. She slept through the night three times last week and 6, count em SIX, times this week. Hallelujah! But now that I'm alert enough to focus on the bigger picture, I'm increasingly aware that we have another problem. The girl won't eat. I mean, she eats, but not nearly as much as she should and she has gotten to the point where pretty much the only thing she'll eat is YoBaby with cereal mixed in.

Before you suggest different foods, I have tried pretty much everything. She'll take one bite, if I'm lucky, and then turn her head away. At this point, I have thrown away so much food, I could have saved a whole village of those starving kids in Ethiopia my mom told me about as a kid. The doctor suggested I give her Pediasure mixed in with ice cream or something. Well, she won't eat ice cream. And Pediasure is all sugar. Sure there are healthy things in there, but her teeth will rot out from all of the sugar. We're still nursing, and she drinks cow milk at mealtimes, so I feel reasonably confident that she's getting a fair number of vitamins, but clearly she needs more.

So help me out, moms. What do I do? Please tell me that this kind of thing happens all the time. It's a phase she's going through and will grow out of it. I know that kids can be picky eaters but I just wasn't expecting it this early. Is this just another example of my own badness as a kid coming back to haunt me? For the eleventy millionth time since I got pregnant: I am SOOO sorry, Mom.

**PRESS RELEASE**

BABY EATS PUFF!

Following months of encouragement and three canisters* of offered puffs, the majority of which landed either on the floor or in her mother's stomach, Sophie Bean voluntarily ate a Beechnut Sweet Potato Puff on Saturday, November 29 at approximately 6:45pm. Although she has swallowed a few puffs when her mother or father surreptitiously tossed one in to her mouth as it gaped open for yawning, talking or smiling, she has never picked one up, placed it in her mouth, chewed and then swallowed it.

Sophie took this monumental step while her mother, father and great uncle Steve sat nearby eating a dinner of her mother's world famous** Thai Basil Shrimp over Coconut Rice. She followed up by further eating a handful of puffs while her audience clapped and cheered. She abandoned her pursuit when her urge to clap overcame her desire to partake of the light but flavorful treats.

*Roughly four thousand puffs.

**By "world famous" I mean that Neil really likes it.

Lunchtime Observations*

• Grilled cheese must be cut in twain to be truly enjoyed. And you must say, "cut in twain" while you're doing it.
• One slice of cheese is good, two slices, much better.
• Turning away for just a moment to make googly faces at baby makes a grilled cheese burn.
• A slightly burnt grilled cheese makes a lot of smoke.
• When eating a slightly burnt grilled cheese, burnt side up is best.
• String Cheese must be eaten in strings, somehow it doesn't taste as good in bites.
• Sophie starts crying after approximately three bites of a grilled cheese sandwich.
• I can do two "hard" Sudoku puzzles while eating a grilled cheese sandwich, a handful of chips, a string cheese and one pickle spear.
• Sophie can be counted on to throw her sippy cup on the ground approximately 58 times while I eat lunch.
  
• I'm starting to think the cat likes being squirted with the water bottle, he gets up on the table so much.
• Whoever said that two cookies is a serving clearly did not like cookies.

*Some of my longtime readers might recognize this post from the early days of the blog when it was still B of B. I'm in kind of a funk right now and instead of pouring out more of my negativity, I thought I'd replay something a little more lighthearted.

**Sorry for the picture quality, but oh. my. god. Is that kid cute or what??

Cue The Broken Record

Last Friday I had to take Sophie back for a follow up visit to the pediatrician. She's petite, my little bean, and that has the doctor worried. Me? I go back and forth. On your average day I can tell myself that she is healthy, happy and smart. She's meeting her milestones and is one energetic little thing. Plus, I was a small baby. Heck, I was a small kid. At 11 years old, I was five feet tall and 65 pounds. Think about that for a moment. That means I was just five inches shorter than I am now and roughly 1/3 the weight. (I don't actually weight 195 pounds, but I'm closer to that than to 130, which is double. HUGE sigh.)

But then I go to the doctor and I see the words: Failure To Thrive on Sophie's chart and I lose all my confidence. My eyes fill up and I have a hard time saying all of this to the doctor. The doctor says she just wants to run some tests to make sure there aren't any obvious problems because she has only gained 5 ounces in the last month and she should have gained more like a pound. She wants to make sure there isn't something wrong with her thyroid or anything. She says she would love to send her to a pediatric nutritionist but that the only one in the area is full of kids that are overweight and it would be six months before we could get her in for an appointment.

I hate this. I hate feeling like I need to shove food down my daughter's throat. I hate keeping a journal of everything she eats. I hate trying to find the most calorie-laden food to give her so she gets the biggest bang for her buck. I worry that all of this will have a greater effect on her, that she'll wind up with some sort of eating disorder because I was stuffing her like the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

Mostly, though, I pray that nothing really is wrong with her. That the bullet I feel like I dodged when she came out perfect won't catch me now.

Sophie's Super Saturday Spectacular!!*

Spooooooooooon!

*Am I overselling this picture just a tad?