An Unbearable Likeness to Eating

 

Hey friends who are still following this blog!

We're still here!  Woohoo!  Mabel and I have been chilling in Omaha the past few weeks.

At this point I feel like writing on this blog is simply a validation of my existence since my days have become akin to a record skipping on a groove here in Omaha.

Here's what's on the record:

Wake. 

Run with Mabel. 

Go to food camp.  

First session feeding bites to Mabel. "Take a bite.  Good job taking your bite.  Show me ‘Ahhhh’,  Good job swallowing your bite”.  Literally....I say this exact same thing over and over verbatim each session.

Playground slides. 

2^nd session. 

Walk to get coffee in the hospital cafeteria.  

3^rd session. 

Nap

4^th session. 

Playground swings. 

5^th session

….and repeat.

The good/great news is that the track we are on is working.  Our goal here was to reduce her belly tube feeds by 50% by the end of the summer, and we already reached that goal!  Yippee!  Seriously.... yippee!  All was not for naught.   She is no longer having to have a tube feed during nap and she is getting a lot less at night.  Yay!

We are currently having 3 sessions where she is eating pureed food herself every 30 seconds and the drinking sessions have been upped so she takes a drink every 15 seconds (sniff, sniff…..she’s turning into her parents at Ninkasi….OK…mostly me)  I am in with her now for every session so my small dreams of learning more Spanish or maybe reading more books while she worked with therapists are now squished.  

But she's eating....so yay!

Our only nemesis right now... Squash.  Fuck squash.  Seriously.  Every time it comes up on the menu Mabel goes bananas (or goes squash....wait...goes off her gourd....hahahahahaha...oh squash jokes) and spits it out, smears it all over her tray, hair and me.  She then proceeds to try to break the straps of her high chair like a 3 year old with roid rage.  I then scoop up what she spit out and try to re-feed it to her as she is bellowing her hatred of this food.   They won’t take any of the 16 foods off the menu because they say if a kid learns they can get out of eating something by losing their shit, puking, etc they might try it with other foods.  So everyday the squash comes.  And everyday Mabel lets that butternut feel her wrath.   

But it’s only one session each day so I just bring a change of shirt and wait out the storm. 

Mabel and I have been breaking the monotony here in Omaha by sneaking in to Omaha’s oldest country club on pretty much a daily basis and hitting up the Children’s museum on “late night” Thursdays.  The pool at the country club is old, cracked, and a little bit dirty; but people will approach my chair every 20 minutes and ask if I want anything which is always met with a request for beer and fries.  More pools should be like this, peeling paint and all.  I have been eating a lot of fries.  My own version of food camp.  I am successfully taking all of my bites and drinks.

 

 Strangely enough, Mabel's favorite hangouts at the Children's Museum all involve food and cooking.  Maybe because eating has just been a game for her up to this point?  Dunno.  But she is way into making me take bites of pizza, cake and Omaha steaks.

 

I also got to raid all my old toys when I visited my parents.  The ViewMaster is the "it" toy right now in addition to my Gremlin record books.

We also had a great weekend where the kids met up in Lake Okoboji, Iowa.  I think it is the only lake in the entire state of Iowa.  No offense to anyone from Iowa or currently residing but....shit.....wow.....corn.  Zzzzzzzzzz.

The reunion was adorable and both kids spent 24 hours hugging….most of the time.  We miss being a family.  There is also an amusement park there where the scariest rides are just frightening because they are old and give every indication that they are going to collapse on small children.    Which is scary....for real.  Well done amusement park.  Well done.

 

Midwestern cooking update!  Spaghetti salad.  What’s Spaghetti salad?  Well…boil a pound of spaghetti, cut up one tomato, one green pepper, a can of black olives and add the secret ingredient:  ½ a jumbo bottle of Italian salad dressing and  ½ a jumbo bottle of Catalina.  It’s like spaghetti without that disgusting healthy sauce.  You are welcome, foodies!

 In addition, here is some other Wisconsin awesomeness?  Nothing says "fun" when you're playing Spoons with your cousins like playing with a deck of Wisconsin "Cold Cases"!  Each card features an unsolved murder or abduction.  Huh......

Oh.....we also got to visit my brother in Wisconsin.  He let Nico slide down the fire pole (but not me...I don't know if injuries like that ever really heal.....sniff, sniff.....someday....someday)

 Anywho....We are missing Eugene even more now but can see the end of the month at least from the page on our calendar.  Hope everyone is having a summer swan song coming up before the year begins anew.  Bye for now.