It got so bad at one point that we had to do the glycerin suppository thing, at which juncture I realized that we HAD to figure out a way to get this kid to eat more vegetables.

He’s not ENTIRELY opposed to vegetables, like he will take a bite or two of broccoli or cauliflower, loves cucumbers red peppers and cherry tomatoes, but that’s where it ends and it clearly wasn’t enough.

That’s when I started hearing about Plum Baby Organic “Mashups” from a few different sources.

My friend Ami had been giving them to her three-year old daughter and suggested them to me, but I didn’t see them in the health food store I frequent and never followed up. Then, coincidentally, my mom who has been working doing demos of different products in health-food-stores ended up demoing the same products and I finally got one for Jasper to try, the Plum Baby Spinach, Pear & Peas Mashup.

It was love at first bite (or suck, or squirt?) and since I knew no one would actually believe me that he goes NUTS over these things, here is the video proof:

He usually requests seconds or thirds!

The only downside (as my friend Ami warned me) is that at your local store these can run you $2+ each..which is fine for an ocassional snack, but Jasper eats A LOT of them. So I was thrilled to discover that you can get them on Amazon’s subscription service and then they only come to just over a dollar each AND delivered to your doorstep. Love it!

Obviously, you might want to try ONE first before ordering a case of 24 to see if your kid likes them. If so, they are in the baby food aisle of your local health food store, not the freezer section where I had been looking for them (my only prior experience with premade baby food was the frozen kind!).

In fact, you will find several different flavors by several different manufacturers. Let me warn you though that they are NOT all created equal..

After the enthusiastic reception from Jasper for the Spinach flavor I bough some of the Happy Baby brand Mashups when my health-food store was out of the spinach. He HATED them. I tasted them too and I have to agree with him, they just did not taste good. Whereas the spinach one tastes vaguely like a not-so-sweet applesauce, the Happy Baby one I tried was just bitter.  I feel bad posting that because I like Happy Baby as a company and Jasper loved their infant food (the frozen kind) but I have to be honest and tell you that the mashups were NOT yummy.

Let me also state that I am aware that it is FAR preferable that your kids eat their daily servings of fruits and vegetables from FRESH sources – if for no other reason than training their palate (yadda yadda yadda) and if your toddler’s favorite food is fresh kale or dandelion greens then god bless you!

But for the rest of us, I’m so happy that there is a way to get a few servings of something other than yet another variation of  wheat or  cheese into our children’s daily diets!

What if that had been Jasper and not me eating it? He could have really choked, or had it damage his asophogus on teh way down. Just thinking about it is terrifying.  So I’ve kind of sworn off fishsticks, but I’m not sure if I’m overreacting (wouldn’t be the first time!)

I mean, fish sticks DO come from fish which DO have bones, but they are also heavily marketed as a kid friendly food. Shouldn’t they be bone free? I wonder if they have any sort of safety regulations for this sort of thing.

Has anyone else found a bone in their fish sticks?

I would mush them up before giving them to him, but he doesn’t like them once they are all torn apart..

French fries and hamburgers for every meal? Pizza for Breakfast? How could these people NOT realize they were killing their kids slowly (or quickly in some cases) with those questionable choices? MY child would never be subject to eating such crap because the school he will attend from k-12 has no cafeteria, I’ll be packing all of his lunches.

Then I realized two things:

1) His tastes run strongly towards processed foods and 2) He regularly eats crap at daycare.

My strategy for the first problem is to give him the healthiest processed food possible,  so for hotdogs he gets Applegate farm’s grass fed beef hotdogs, and for chicken nuggets he gets their organic hormone free all white meat chicken nuggets.  French fries are Cascadian farms organic french fries (Yikes, I’m starting to sound like Kate Gosselin!)

The second problem is more tricky..One the one hand, I am extremely grateful to the daycare food program for exposing Jasper to many different food choices that I didn’t have the patience for at the height of Jasper’s picky eating behavior.  I was just NOT going to make chicken for the 300th time and have him reject it again so at some point I gave up and only cooked him the two things I knew he liked.  It was the repeat exposure to new foods at daycare and some sort of developmental change right before 18 months that really turned his eating habits around.   Daycare also finally got him drinking milk, which he now guzzles at the rate of 1 gallon every 4 days or so.  For those things I’m really thankful.

That said, I just received the monthly menu by email and couldn’t help but be upset at some of the choices.   I understand that they aren’t going to serve grass fed beef  or organic vegetables or chicken (though they do use hormone free chicken and milk) but particularly the snack choices leave a LOT to be desired.  They give the kids a morning and afternoon snack, and aside from cheese sticks and organic fruit yogurt (which sadly is loaded with sugar) they are ALL processed foods.  Ritz crackers with Jelly, goldfish, pretzels, vanilla wafers,  Rice Chex Cereal, Teddy Grahams etc.

These are foods that I give Jasper at home on RARE occasion.  But at daycare he gets them twice a day and I just don’t feel they should be serving foods with no nutritive value other than empty carb calories to toddlers.

Luckily I have a fantastic daycare director who is always open to talking about ways to improve the center and when I questioned some of the choices she asked for suggestions for snacks!  Uh oh  – now I’m on the hook for coming up with something better!

I suggested hummus and bread or whole wheat crackers, cottage cheese, and veggies like red or yellow peppers with dip (just NOT ranch dip because all ranch dip has MSG).   I mentioned they are already doing cheese sticks which is great, and they do serve fruit but mostly with lunch but not at snacks.  Then I drew a blank..

Snacks ARE hard!!

So as usual I’m coming to you all for suggestions. What healthy/easy snacks do your toddlers love??

I’m also interested in hearing about your baby’s daycare food program if there is one..does it concern you or are you happy with it?

He’s actually downright obsessed with guacamole.. there have been several times when I’ve gone to get him in the morning or picked him up from daycare and his first words to me were “guacamole!”

It’s like the hunger switch finally flipped on in his little body and I’d guess he’s gained a good two pounds over the last few weeks.  It’s wonderful and a little strange to watch him go from food averse to ravenous  – I’m not used to having to plan tons of snacks and meals for him! It’s really a huge relief.

But the most shocking development of all, was that yesterday at daycare he actually drank milk for the first time! I had all but given up on him with the milk.. but they mixed half water half milk in a cup for him and he actually drank the whole thing and then asked for more.  They were as stunned as I was and even took a picture as proof.

Now the bad news: he’s developed ezcema :(

It started with some redness on his cheeks, and then progressed to an agressive and constant scratching of the back of his neck. Inspection of the back of his neck showed patchy redness, which has since developed into raised red bumps covering the whole back of his neck and traveling down between his shoulders. He also scratches his whole head, though I’ve looked at his scalp and don’t see the bumps, but I know it’s still bothering him – I see him scratching at night on the video monitor.

I’ve been wracking my brains trying to determine what food could be causing this, or even if it’s food at all (could it be detergent?) but the timing of it, coinciding with him eating so much more makes me think that possibly he has a sensitivity to something he’s eating and now that his food intake has gone up, so has his exposure to the allergen.  The one that makes the most sense is wheat because there was a while where he was eating tons of muffins and crackers with his guacamole, but I’m just not sure.  There is soy in the crackers that he eats, so I’m wondering if that could be it. But again, I just don’t know.. and I’m reluctant to put him on some sort of gluten free diet when he’s JUST finally eating so well!

He has his 18 month well visit on Friday, so hopefully the pediatrician will have some ideas, but I’m not too optimistic.. allergies are just so mysterious. In the meantime, I haven’t even been sure what to put on the rash. On his face I use Weleda Calendula face Lotion which seems to actually be helping. It didn’t help on the back of his neck though.  I recently tried Weleda diaper care too but the rash is still there.

If anyone has any eczema experiences or treatments to share please do!

Please feel free to leave questions for Dr. C in the comments, and as always I want to hear if you have other issues that you think either she can speak to or any other issues you’ve been struggling with so we can do a Mommy SOS or invite another Expert to address.

Without further ado, I give you Kathleen Cuneo, Ph.D. !

How do you know if your picky eater is just exhibiting normal picky behavior or if you need professional assistance?

The toddler period presents huge changes in development in many areas.  Feeding in particular presents several challenges for parents.  The once eager eater who opened his mouth for everything you presented on the spoon is now much more likely to reject foods and have a hard time sitting still for meals. Toddlers do not grow at the same rapid pace as infants and their food intake drops off significantly. Toddlers by definition are often on the move.  They are busy exploring their world and testing limits with their parents.  They frequently become skeptical of new foods and reject foods that they formerly seemed to enjoy. They may love something one day and reject it the next. And I’m describing typical toddlers! If your toddler has underlying sensory issues, food allergies, or oral-motor difficulties, the challenges will be much more complex.

Signs you may need intervention

While feeding the typical toddler can be tricky, feeding some children can be greatly overwhelming.  For most toddlers, employing the strategies described below will address many common feeding challenges. For others, however, more intensive intervention may be required.  You may want to consider exploring evaluation and treatment options if your child exhibits the following:

1. has growth or weight issues, i.e., is not gaining weight, is losing weight, is gaining weight rapidly, or is not holding steady on their own growth curve
2. shows signs of sensory issues, including intolerance of certain textures, sensitivity to sounds, light, or other stimuli
3. oral-motor problems involving the jaw, tongue, cheeks and/or swallow mechanisms
4. history of severe food allergies
5. history of gastrointestinal problems
6. history of feeding tube use

Strategies for dealing with the “typical” picky eater

While “typical” picky eaters may not require direct treatment or intervention, often their parents need some guidance and/or coaching to help them develop effective feeding strategies.  One of the most important strategies for dealing with typical picky eaters is to apply Ellyn Satter’s division of responsibility. In short, Satter states that parents are responsible for the what, when, and where of feeding toddlers, while toddlers are responsible for whether or not they will eat and how much they will eat from what they are offered from their parents. Her book, Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense, discusses this model in detail.

Children’s meal and snack times should be structured and occur at predictable times.  While the temptation is to offer your children food that you know (or at least hope!) they will like, it is important to keep offering a variety of foods.  Build on and expand from what they do usually eat and like, but keep adding to your offerings. It’s also important for parents to sit and eat with their children rather than to just serve them separately. Value family meals and implement family-style service, including at least one item that your child usually likes.

Children usually need multiple exposures to a food before they will eat it.  It’s important to understand that there is a progression of food acceptance, ranging from just seeing it on the table all the way up to eventually putting it in their mouths and swallowing.  It’s also important to look at your child’s nutritional intake over the course of a week or so and not just one meal.  Have patience and respect your child’s individual pace as they grow to become a successful eater.

Common mistakes to avoid

1. Avoid “food handouts” in between scheduled meals and snacks. This will undermine your efforts to have your children come to the table hungry and ready to eat.
2. Avoid being a short order cook and catering to your child’s limited menu.  While your motivation may be to help ensure that your child will eat something, what often happens is that your child will accept fewer and fewer foods.
3. Avoid nagging or pressuring your child about eating.  This can create an unnecessary power struggle over food and eating and lead to poor eating behaviors.

Kathleen Cuneo, Ph.D. is a psychologist, parent coach, and mom. Her mission is to empower parents to find their own parenting voice and develop strong connections with their children. Her free report, “30 Things You Can Do To Raise Self-Confident, Compassionate Children,” is available at www.drcuneo.com.  Dr. Cuneo is also the director of Dinner Together, LLC which offers consultation to families seeking to have more frequent, successful family meals and deal with the challenges of picky eaters. Sign up for her free e-newsletter at www.dinnertogether.com.

For more information about Kathleen’s Events, please visit:

http://www.drcuneo.com/Kathleen_M._Cuneo,_Ph.D./Kathleen_M._Cuneo,_Ph.D.___Events.html

1) Jasper wearing a HAT to play outside with the toddlers! (Big furry Russian style hat from H&M baby – poor kid’s head was super sweaty after!)

2) Jasper eating BROCCOLI! Yes, a vegetable! He’s been offered broccoli a million times at daycare, but yesterday he actually ate it:

TWO helpings worth!

I’m hoping this is a the first of many more breakthroughs – hey, a girl can dream!

In other news, in response to my own mommy SOS from yesterday about winter boots, we are going to give these a try:

BEARPAW Toddler Dream Short Boot

The smallest size they come in is a size 5 (Jasper is a 4) but the only bad review I saw of them said they run on the small side, so I don’t think this should be a problem. Plus, they need to last us through march the way the winter’s go here in the Northeast, so I would have wanted to order a size up anyway. The soles look pretty thick, I’ll let you know how he does walking in them.

I always forget to mention at the end of my Mommy SOS posts to please email me at ariana@becoming-mom dot net if you have a mommy SOS idea!

Jasper is slightly obsessed with bubbles since starting Gymboree.  Now, we walks by the counter where I keep them and points up and says “bubble” several times a day. At gymboree (which is were we got these bubbles – theirs are the best!) he walks around after the bubble segment searching for any left over bubbles on the floor or way up in the air that no one else even notices.

I keep the bubbles handy for those times when I need a major redirection – which seems to be all too often these days!

In other Jasper news, he seems to be starting to actually want food again (figures it would be literally the same day that I had his prevacid Rx refilled.)

Last night I stuck his dinner in the toaster oven to warm up and we started playing in his baby jail and he looked at me and did the baby sign for eat! I was SOOOOOOO excited. Not because of the sign (he’s known that one for ever) but because he hasn’t actually USED it in I don’t know how long – the kid isn’t normally ever hungry! I literally RAN over to the toaster oven blowing furiously until everything cooled off before he could lose interest.

He has also started trying a few new things – and I’m extremely happy to say that he’s eating the Preager’s little broccoli bites.. You wouldn’t know it by the taste which is all potato, but the first ingredient is BROCCOLI!   Yes, he is now getting at least one vegetable in his diet on a regular basis. I couldn’t be more happy with this development. Unfortunately the widening of his limited palate didn’t extend to the spinach bites that I tried last night, but now at least I have hope that his diet won’t be limited to fish sticks and hot dogs for ever.

Thank you God.

In the complete OPPOSITE scenario to when you take your car to the mechanic and it operates perfectly, Jasper picked yesterday – the day we visit the pediatrician – to get his first ever stomach bug.  Poor little guy must have pooped 12 times!   Not being a veteran of this PARTICULAR scenario, I was worried he’d poop all night waking us both up numerous times.. thankfully he managed to save one big one for this morning when I got him out of bed.  But I digress..

Jasper weighed 22.4 lbs, which is up from 21.9 at his last visit at 12 months and keeps him firmly in 25th% according to our pedi’s chart (which is a bit higher than those I’ve seen online which place him closer to 20th%). So as the pedi put it, whatever nutrients he IS getting from my milk (mostly) and a bit of food here and there is satisfying his caloric requirements if not nutritional diversity.

His take on it was that eventually, my milk will dry up and/or Jasper will wean himself and naturally start to make up for the caloric deficit by eating more foods.

When I brought up the red esophagus and my discussion with the ENT, he said that the fact that Jasper WILL eat goldfish and cheerios would seem to indicate that it’s not an anatomical issue.  I told him I’d thought of that, but my theory was that some foods Jasper deems exciting enough to be a bit uncomfortable for, but the other not so exciting things just aren’t worth it to him.  Luckily our pediatrician is so collaborative and we basically brainstormed together and came up with the plan that we would try him back on prevacid for up to a month to see if the situation improves any.

I think it’s a good plan, but I still have lingering doubts weather prevacid is an effective drug for Jasper given that he was scoped by the ENT once while on prevacid and still had mild redness.  I’m not sure what to do about that one since it seems that both my pediatrician and his GI doc are reluctant to try different medication.

My other question to him was weather or not I should let Jasper snack to his heart’s content vs. holding out in hopes that his hunger would build toward an actual meal and he thought he shouldn’t be snacking on filler foods. Not sure how I feel about that either because it doesn’t seem to be working!

In other medical(ish) news, I forgot to mention that we ran into my lactation consultant at the pumpkin patch of all places (told you it was crowded, the whole county seemed to be there!)

She asked me how things were going and I told her not great. I haven’t blogged about it too much (but I want to mention it now because there is a HUGE lack of information about this problem on the internet) but my let down has become elusive again, but this time it’s been going on for a month or so. Usually when I’ve gone through periods of disappearing or delayed let down it’s come back to normal after a few days.  I hadn’t called her because this is an issue that there doesn’t seem to be much help for, my normal method of taking domperidone to “top off” my supply wasn’t working.

She told me that she has been using oxytocin nasal spray for this issue with another client with success, so I’m really excited to try it.  For example I haven’t been able to let down for Jasper’s before bed nursing session in 3 weeks now, which means that I’ve had to put him to bed with no milk and then go pump for a few minutes (which strangely enough I CAN let down more easily for) and then go back and get him out of bed to nurse him.

I should probably just cut out the evening nursing session, I think my supply is really low then, but for some reason it just SEEMS like before bed is such a natural time for nursing (plus I’m reluctant to cut out ANY sessions until he starts eating better!) Most people drop that session or morning sessions last right?  I suppose I could cut out the 4pm feeding, but then he’s going from 12 – 7 with no milk because he’s still not taking it in the sippy.. any tips on how to get him to do that? He gets SOOOOO mad when he realizes there is anything but water in there – even juice or something sweet makes him angry!

Goldfish - one of the 5 things I currently eat!

Sometimes, mommy intuition knocks so hard on the brick wall I call a brain and STILL I manage to overlook the obvious.

My mother was talking with an old childhood friend of hers whose daughter Ali has a son with a lot of eating issues. Her son is now almost four and his problems started around the same time that Jasper’s did so she is a wealth of knowledge. She even gave me a name for what could possibly be part of Jasper’s problem – a Selective Eating Disorder. Sometimes all you need is the right term to google!

After sending her an SOS email, she replied with a whole slew of useful information but there was one paragraph that was the lightbulb moment for me:

I have some questions- does he have reflux?  I have done so much
reading about feeding aversions in children and many of them boil down to
reflux.

Ding ding ding!!!!

I don’t know if you all remember (or did I even blog about it?) that I brought Jasper to the ENT at around 11 months for his fourth follow up for his laryngomalacia (a floppy larynx). I wasn’t really worried about the larygo so much as I wanted to know if when he scoped him he would see redness around his esophagus – I suspected back then that his eating abnormalities (fussiness, pickiness) could be a result of him still suffering from reflux. Not the baby spitting up everywhere kind of reflux which has thankfully long since ceased, but a more adult-like burning type.

But the ENT said his laryngomalacia was vastly improved, almost normal and he wouldn’t need to see us back. I asked about the redness and he said there was some, the same amount as the last time we’d seen him which was back when Jasper was still on prevacid.

Somehow I took this to mean that if the redness was the same on as off the prevacid, that there was no need to take the prevacid. But I failed to make the connection that ANY redness means reflux which in the presence of symptoms should not be ingored!

So after receiving Ali’s email I put in a call to the ENT. I explained that Jasper’s reluctance to eat had not improved, and infact had gotten worse and if in his opinion the amount of redness he saw could be consistent with someone who would be uncomfortable enough to have eating difficulties. He said ABSOLUTELY, that any amount of redness is NOT normal and that we should go back to the pediatric GI and get him on a medication. I really don’t know why we didn’t discuss this before.. at least in terms of “if his eating behavior does not improve we should treat the reflux again” type thing.  I honestly don’t even know if there is another possible explanation for the redness than reflux. I do know that he said that you can have reflux WITHOUT the redness, but I’m not sure if you can have the redness WITHOUT reflux. I should have asked.

So we have an appointment to see the pediatric GI next week.  I don’t have high hopes I’ll leave there with anything but another prevacid Rx but at least I feel like I’m doing SOMETHING. Unfortunately, even with medication it may be a bit of a long road ahead.. apparantly it can be quite difficult to break the child’s association between eating and pain once it has been established. And if Jasper’s reflux never really went away his has been very long established.

How could I have missed this? :(

Don't let the cuteness fool you..

I Have the Perfect Baby — at Daycare.

Jasper is at daycare M-W,  I work from home one day and he goes to my mom’s the other day and obviously is at home over the weekend. Four days a week he takes 1 crappy 1-1.5 hour nap and doesn’t eat anything except breast milk from the tap. The other three days (at daycare) he eats a giant breakfast, a giant lunch, takes a large bottle and a snack and takes two 1.5 hour naps.

The one day he’s with my mom he doesn’t eat anything (bottle or solids) the entire day except for his absolute favorite things like cheerios or cheese puffs.

This situation has been getting progressively worse…

Certainly eating has been a struggle for a while now, but he USED to take a bottle outside of daycare just fine. He USED to eat purees and finger foods at home. Then he started getting finicky about dinners and lunches at home and still ate a big breakfast. That was the point at which we saw our pediatrician at his 12 month appointment and he told me as long as he was getting one good meal a day.. but things have deteriorated to the point where he won’t eat anything but breastmilk for 3 -4 days straight. And when I say he won’t eat, I mean he won’t let the spoon come near his face and he picks up his finger foods and throws them over the highchair.

Until he gets back to daycare of course, where he acts like a perfectly normal toddler, appetite, sleeping and all.

What is this? What causes this bizarre behavior? Am I alone in this? Do I call the pediatrician?

I’m torn on the last question – clearly there is no medical reason that he’s not eating or he wouldn’t be eating at daycare either.  The daycare teachers joke that he’s pulling one over on us. And I’m sure it’s true that he knows he can get away with things at home that he doesn’t at daycare but short of force feeding him (which I know is the one thing you are NOT supposed to do) I don’t know what to do differently.

I try offering him a variety of foods, I try walking away so he doesn’t feel pressured, I try purees and finger foods, I try warm and cold foods, I tried moving his highchair. I try eating the foods in front of him NOT in the highchair to see if he’ll try new things. This last one works on ocassion – but he’s still completely uninterested save for a few random bites here or there. And it’s not a matter of finding things he likes better because he actually is at the point now where he won’t try anything new at all and is even rejecting previous favorites like avocado and blueberries.

I even dropped his mid-morning nursing session hoping that less milk would leave room for more solids but it hasn’t made a bit of difference so now he’s just getting less calories overall.

How long can this go on? Can a 13 month old live on breastmilk and a few snacks alone?

Help!