Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Absent Comments, Crazy Plans, Buttons and an Empty Tummy :(

I have spent most of the evening reading all my rss feeds from all the blogs that I follow - so I think that amounted to over 30 posts!! I haven't left comments on many, but consider yourselves thought of!

Today has been OK - pretty run of the mill really. Lots of EC happening today actually. Tomorrow might prove to be a little crazy but hopefully a lot of fun! The plan goes something like this;
AM - Astronomy - including finishing of a radar experiment from last term
Lunch and a playgroup pick up.
PM - make beeswax candles (activity left over from last weeks squarcle board that got postponed due to Roman day/shopping trip).
- scale drawings of whole family (measuring needed first) to enhance geography lesson this week.
  - watching BBC documentary on the Pompeii - The Last Day (courtesy of YouTube) which is about 50 minutes or so.
- doing volcano experiment again (just because it was fun!)
- watching Abbie's presentation on Australia (for English)
- Letting three of them act out a section of Melusine from Jacob's english. (He thinks that it looks like a good book so might try to track that one down for him).
- do a Spanish vocab test with Jake. 
- and anything else we can cram into the day - or maybe not!!

The good thing about a lot of this is that the littler ones can get involved a bit too :) I let you all know how it goes!

FOR THE RECORD
Caleb has mastered doing up buttons and peeing standing up through the 'slotted fly' on his PJ's!! I got down some old PJ's of Joel's from the loft the other day (green combat winciette material) which C fell in love with, but also decided had to be fully utilised! Hence the developmental leap forward. In the day he sits on the loo still, but in these - he stands!! And the buttons...it's so cute to watch him painstakingly trying to do up these buttons. I am amazed at his persistence and patience - he keeps going until he succeeds and does not loose the plot. There are four on the top, so just enough to make it bearable for both of us I think. And for those of you thinking it came from me you'd be wrong - the decision to do them himself was entirely his :) I think he realised if he looses patience with them he will either have to ask for help (which he so does not want to do), or end up trying over and over again!! I guess it bodes well for the future that he can concentrate that hard on something if he is really motivated to do so - and I reckon that leaves the ball in my court to find the motivators! So he can now fully cloth himself with every item except those with laces. He can do buckles, Velcro and buttons, and he can do pull-on and pull-up. 

Now we need to tackle motivating him to eat!! He is such a poor eater it breaks my heart, but I really struggle to know how to deal with it. I wasn't going to blog this, but I just think I might...

Today all he has eaten is about a quarter of a slice of toast and Marmite for breakfast, three nibbles of a ham tortilla wrap for lunch, don't know what snack at playgroup (if any) and no tea because he refused it! No crisps or chocolate because he has to eat his savoury to get them. How does a three and a half year old sustain his existence on that? This is not unusual for him either :(
Paul started a motivation chart tonight with a line from his favourite nursery rhyme: "nineteen, twenty, my plate's empty!" and the reward of a new toy car for an empty plate. Now to set him up for success he had only two tiny mouthfuls of chicken nugget (something he will sometimes eat about 6 whole ones of), a miniscule amount of potato (like half a teaspoon) and three baked beans - literally. He took one look and screamed and screamed and screamed - "I hate tea, I hate chicken!" Even though he knew he would not get the car (or pudding or sweets (we have a few sweeties at the end of our evening meal as reward for good eating/behaviour at the table) ) he persisted and went to bed on nothing in the end :( We figure tonight was a power control battle, but all the same... The scary thing is nothing motivates him more than toy cars, so this is a really tough ball game! I genuinely think he does not get very hungry and really cannot be bothered with food (not dissimilar to me in fact) but without the knowledge or rational thought that food is actually essential to our well being and therefore has to be eaten anyway! Strangely he is most often well and he seems to have a normal amount of energy, but he is very light and he is very petite for a coming up 4 in May child, so I do think his poor diet is having some effect on his growth, in that it is VERY slow (N is almost catching him up in clothes now - one size behind!). 

Here is the list of foods C will usually eat & drink; 
  • ham, 
  • 'clean' chicken (or any other meat so long as we tell him it's chicken!) - that's white breast meat with no brown cooking marks or sauces, 
  • beef occasionally, 
  • SOME chicken nuggets (depending on coating), 
  • cheese, 
  • Pepperami (if we have them), 
  • cheese strings; 
  • VERY occasionally a bit of boiled 'dippy' egg, or ham omelette
  • Marmite and Nutella in tiny amounts on a tiny bit of bread, 
  • milkshake & Ribena
  • chocolate (just straight milk chocolate, no frills) 
  • & Hula Hoops. 
Yup - that's about it!!
He won't eat any other carbohydrates, fruit or vegetables - and believe me we have tried almost everything in many forms with him - he just won't eat it!! He won't even eat those things listed if any of the 'forbidden' foods has touched them! We still put on his plate whatever we are having (this tactic has always worked with all my others who are mostly excellent eaters of most things), but often at the cost of a boy who eats nothing from it :( I have had fussy eaters before at age 2-4, but this is different and so much more extreme...

...And now N is getting all fussy on me too (but he is a hungry boy, so I'm hoping it's just an age phase with him).



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I tracked down Melusine in the Oxfam bookshop - it's a very strange book - Melusine turns into a snake to escape sexual abuse by her father.I didn't really enjoy reading it although I've loved reading other books by this author.

BW
Sarah

Frogmum said...

Thanks for that pointer - maybe not then. I guess it's an adult book then ?