Floating Upstream: Sunday Slivers, 4/24/11: Empty, full, empty, full

It's fascinating how this blog ritual is becoming an indispensable part of my Sunday nights. Looking at the week's photos and condensing the week's feelings and thoughts into readable slivers brings a whole bunch of blurry impressions into sharp focus. When I couldn't write last night, because Rado and I finally got ill with whatever has been ailing our kids the last two weeks, I went to bed thinking about what I wished I had had a chance to write.

Tonight I still don't know what I wish I had written last night. I feel by turns sad and hopeful, despondent and optimistic.

On Thursday we had our first ever joint pediatric GI appointment with our kids. We love Dr.Wong, who's known Sava since he was very little and Raya since she was a newborn. He knows all about our reflux, our feeding issues, our poops, burps, allergies, intolerances....He speaks as if he understands the challenge of raising children for whom food is a major "issue," though he knows, as we do, that no one fully understands that unless they've walked the path.

How do we manage without grandma? Like this...

We complained about our continuing battles to make Sava eat appropriately, the breakfasts that last over an hour, the lunches that stretch into naptime, the dinners that end only when it's time to go to bed. We told him about Raya's reaction to yogurt, what with continuous day-long hiccups starting exactly forty-eight hours after exposure, broken naps, feeding refusal, general crankiness, etc. We begged him to please tell us that there was something else we could test for that we had not looked into which would explain why our children react to a range of foods (green peas, anyone??) and why feeding them those foods makes them turn into pathological non-eaters for days on end.

As always, he gave us no answers, but counseled us patiently and made us feel heard and understood. He begged us to stop forcing Sava to eat, but to avoid all exposure to foods that we knew bother him, and to see whether, when steered clear from these foods, he would reclaim a healthy appetite. He told us to keep doing what we are doing with Raya--feeding hypoallergenic formula with a spoon to a bottle/cup-averse toddler three times a day, anyone?--and to avoid exposure to "allergens" if it interfered with our quality of life. He submitted requests for blood tests to look into the possibility of "eosinophilic esophagitis" (EE) for both children.

And like this...

We left relieved and disappointed. Relieved that he agrees there is a problem and for the most part agrees with how we handle it. Disappointed that, as always, he could not offer us any further answers that would make us feel less like the nutty parents who do not allow their kid to eat pizza at his best friend's birthday party just because we know he can't handle it, and more like people who have a scientifically verifiable reason for withholding a wanted food from their child because they know it makes him sick. .

We went home and, while looking up information about EE, I came across a slew of articles from mid-2009 reporting new findings about high levels of arsenic in rice milk, recommending that rice milk not be given to children under 4.5 years of age. Sava just turned 5, and he has been drinking rice milk since he was weaned from breastmilk at 18 months of age. To say that we were appalled to read about arsenic in rice milk would do little justice to the nauseating sensation of guilt with which we went to bed that night; it wouldn't even begin to describe the terror we have to embrace as part of our lives now that, should Sava ever fall seriously ill, we will not be able to answer--but will keep asking--the question of whether 3.5 years of rice milk are to blame. Dang. Dang. Dang.

And like this...

So, what to do but replace rice milk immediately with something else?...Off we went to purchase a new box of Hemp Milk, which is the new darling of health food stores, and a miracle drink for all vegan eaters. We had already researched it thoroughly, and had tried it once before, but stopped when Sava got sick for reasons that, as always, were not one-hundred percent clear--was it a cold or was it the hemp milk?...We gave him hemp milk at lunch and bedtime on Saturday, and the same on Sunday, and he woke up at 5 am Monday morning, the usual 24-48 hours after exposure, coughing the familiar high-pitched cough and vomiting in bed. He threw up once more today, and went to bed tonight barely having eaten anything all day.

We feel sad, tired, and disappointed. We feel like, because we can't figure this out, we must be failing Sava, and possibly Raya. We feel that, because we are the parents, we should know what is going on. We feel that, having been given these wonderful kids, we should know, instinctively, how to nurture their bodies.

Visiting Sava's school for Family Day...

We've long given up on instinct, and reason and logic seem to elude us, too. We gave Sava Oat Milk tonight, and tomorrow we may try Hemp again. We'll discuss the possibility of doing another endoscopy with Dr.Wong. We'll keep asking until someone offers at least a partial answer.

In the meantime, we try hard not to forget that, beyond all these frustrations with feeding, we have children who love to laugh and play, whose energy fuels our own determination to make the most of every day, and who wake up every morning, albeit a tad reluctant to eat, eager to learn and to engage. And for all that we are thankful. Immensely thankful.

*****

So, how has it been on our first week without grandma, besides sickness for everyone and coffee, once again, for mommy?....We've done well. The kids are discovering their own new dynamic, which includes a lot of silly play, and spring weather allowed us to spend time outdoors, even when one or both children were thoroughly congested. You can't tell, because she is such a trooper, but on most of these pictures Raya is feeling pretty sick. Playdates with dear friends rock--

--and sometimes wonderful play comes our way thanks to spontaneous fleeting encounters with strangers who just happen to have decided to brave the outdoors on a windy, overcast afternoon--

Billowy clouds: not a typical Northern California sight

It takes forever to take Raya from the parking lot to the playground,

so big brother just charges ahead.

Favorite new shovel: the Croc

"Mommy, I want to throw this at you..."

Finally figuring out how the shovel works...

No, they're not always looking at me adorably and adoringly...

Chance playmates

*****

Raya and Phoebe are coming into their own; one of their favorite activities when together is to swap clothes, as they did on the picture below, Raya wearing Phoebe's pink jumper, while Phoebe is decked n Raya's vest--

--and then again, though Raya would not let Phoebe wear her brother's jacket, but insisted on handing Phoebe her own jacket instead--

*****

We weren't going to do the whole plastic-Easter-egg thing, and then we did it, and Sava loved it, though we added ten beautiful homemade felt eggs courtesy of dig this chick, whose blog's hump day nuggets are, to spare all of you academic researchers the labor of looking into sources, the chief inspiration for these here humble slivers. Raya just wandered about aimlessly, and despite Rado's enthusiastic attempts to get her into the spirit of the hunt, she mostly wanted to check out random grasses in our weed-populated yard. Fine by me.

*****

Sava's been having some issues with holding pee and poop until it is, ahem, too late, so we've had to resort to draconian measures, such as taking his saxophone away until he's had five days of dry pants in a row. He did something brilliant the other day, which made me exclaim about how smart he was, and then I said something this effect:"...so so amazingly smart, and if you could figure out the whole peeing and eating thing, you'd be unbelievable." He looked at me seriously, and then said: So, Mommy, if I peed with one hand and ate with the other...but wait, then if I have a fork in one hand and I am peeing with the other, there would be no hand left for the plate and it would fall to the ground!

My little logician.

I forgave him a pair of wet pants right there on the spot.

Then he wrote this note, and handed it to me:

"Poop pee in my udrwer...sitig...kidig"

Translated by him, while giggling hysterically: "Poop pee in my underwear!...Kidding!...Spitting!"

*****

One thing I discovered this week on my mornings alone with Raya is that time passes very very slowly with a toddler; it might take us half an hour to walk from the door of the library to our car--

And it might take us much longer to check out three books from the library, as we pause to hug all oversized stuffed animals, and we argue about their clothes. Mommy: "Look, Raya, the monkey has a new yellow shirt on!" Raya: "No, jacket! jacket!" Repeat six times.

At home while I check email or prepare lunch, she can be found stuffing dirty socks from the laundry basket down her shirt--

or sitting contentedly in a basket at my feet--

We're finding our own rhythm. It's magical, at some level, to have no one else a part of our life. Just the four of us, and whatever we can cobble up together of each day.

*****

We are sad to report that, on the first day of grandma being gone, Raya and I managed to lose Emma, the favorite doll, on a walk around the 'hood. Pleas for her return have gone unanswered, so we are looking into getting a replacement; Raya's been told that Emma decided to take a trip; previously, Emma had started to accompany Raya wherever she went, which is why her loss was a tad heavy--