Today was one of those days where you think that the hours will simply slide into each other, easily, quietly, without major merit, or major event. Tonight’s dinner for example, it was nothing spectacular, just a simple meal of breaded shrimp, fish sticks, mashed potatoes and corn. Typically, N would only have eaten the fish sticks, and after putting a small amount of the other 3 items on his plate we would have finished making him some cheesy noodles to accompany it. But, and this is where the evening changed to special, he ATE the mashed potatoes! For a child with such a self-limited diet, this was huge! Last week was the first time he didn’t have a meltdown from seeing a food he didn’t want to eat on his plate. Prior to then he wouldn’t have eaten anything on his plate until the food he didn’t want was removed, and he would have been desolate until you removed it. But between the trips to the delicatessens, and farms we’ve been working steadily with him on accepting new foods, not even trying them, just accepting them on his plate. I thought it would take much longer for him to be willing to try one of the new foods on his plate. But tonight he said he didn’t want the mashed potatoes, so we told him “then don’t eat them” and left it at that. A few minutes later, he was cautiously dipping his fork into them, and actually trying them. He ate all of them on his plate and asked for more! It was wonderful, and certainly made this day special for me. It marks a definitive progress in expanding his diet. It shows that the methods I’ve utilized to help him, really are helping him. The feeling of accomplishment I get from that is huge. I look forward to watching his continued progress with meal times. I know he won’t try everything every single time, I know that it’ll take time, but I see that glimmer that what I’m doing is working, that I was in fact reading him and his signs correctly, and that my intuition on how to help him in this area was correct, and that makes this day awesome.
Organizing Foods
N gets very excited by how foods are presented in bakeries, delicatessens, and the like. He’s happy to try many different foods from these places, but when presented with these same foods at home he is unwilling to eat them. I was speaking with a friend who asked me an absolutely brilliant question about it. She asked me if I thought it was because of how visual he is and how neat and organized the foods are in those types of places that he preferred them. She asked me if I’d put his food into lines on his plate before and if so what did he do. To be honest I hadn’t done it before. I’ve made pictures with his food (happy faces or cutting roasted potatoes in the shape of cars) but I hadn’t actually taken his foods and made lines on his plate with them. With how much he loves organization, and lines in general I am actually quite hopeful that this just might work to help him eat better/more. Considering he’s currently on supplementations of various vitamins as well as a meal replacement drink due to his lack of current food intake I’m totally excited at trying something that just might make a positive difference in the amount of healthy foods I am able to get him to eat and enjoy! Wish me luck dear readers, this momma’s about to get the mandolin out to make some super organized veggie and fruit lines 😀
Dietary Assessment
After a hopefully not too horrible trip to a laboratory near here for blood work for my youngest I then get to monitor every single thing he ingests for 3 days. All the way down to one bite or one teaspoon. All of this is for his dietitian appointment on Friday. With his self-limited diet I am concerned about his nutritional needs not being met. To that end I asked for an appointment be set up with a dietitian, and so while honestly I don’t really look forward to the blood work portion of tomorrow, nor to remembering to jot it down if I do get a bit of food finally into him I do look forward to the results from the appointment and of course the solutions that can be obtained from such an appointment. While I’d LOVE it if he ate healthily on a regular basis, with his texture issues that is not going to happen right now. So instead I simply wish to find out if Pedisure or something of that ilk would help to optimize his growth.
Banana Muffins
Original Recipe makes 12-16 depending in size, I tend to quadruple the recipe and just freeze the extras for quick snacks during the week.
Ingredients:
1 3/4cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
Directions:
1) In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
2) In another bowl combine, banana, egg, oil, milk, yogurt and vanilla using an electric mixer on medium speed until throughly mixed.
3) Combine dry and wet ingredients until just moistened.
4) Fill greased or paper lined muffin cups two-thirds full
5) Bake at 350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
6) Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire.
I hope you enjoy it, it’s the only muffin recipe I use. With how limited the boys are in their dietary choices, the recipe impresses me because they both love it, I think it’s the moistness from the yogurt that’s the trick to it 😀
When making them for others in my family who are not as limited in their dietary choices I sometimes substitute the bananas with various other things like pureed carrots, or pumpkin and spices and add an extra 1/4 – 1/2 cup milk for “dryer” fruits/veggies. Occasionally I’ll add 1/2 cup of raisins or chocolate chips, or nuts depending on the finished flavor I’m going for. 🙂 But everyone in my house loves them, even my husband who doesn’t like bananas lol.
I originally found this recipe on Allrecipes.com and printed it out, but when I went to look for it today on there to add a copy of the link, I couldn’t find it. So I didn’t create this, it’s not mine, but it’s definitely one I love to share because of how delicious it is!
Behind starburst eyes 