James' Adjustment - Eating

I was just telling a friend a few days ago, regarding a photo she took of James when we arrived home at the airport, how different James looks already!

I tried to find recent photo of James from a similar angle and without a smile on his face to see for sure. I couldn't really find one where he was looking the same direction and not smiling, so I tried taking one. It took LOTS of tries, but here's one with similar facial expressions. Look how his cheeks have filled out!

It amazed me when Elijah and Josephine came home, how much they changed and grew in such a short amount of time. It's obviously happening with James as well.

I don't want it to sound like the orphanage where James was living was giving sub-standard care, because they absolutely were not. In fact, I believe that GLA is one of the (if not the) best orphanage in Haiti. However, there's a lot to be said for individual attention, medical care, and proper nutrition. I'm not saying that he was not receiving proper nutrition while at GLA either - just that when a child has parasites in their system, even if they're fed good nutrition, that nutrition is going to feed a parasite instead of his body. I'm very interested to see what James' height and weight will be in another 10 days - a month from his homecoming!

James is also a very good eater, in general. I'm guessing that the orphanage does not fix enough food for the children to all have however many portions they'd choose to have. James eats pretty fast (sometimes without chewing, we've found out). He eats most everything he's served, and then requests more - sometimes multiple times. There have only been a couple times that he hasn't wanted to eat something that's on his plate. Also a few times we've had him take a bite or two then shake his head no at us. We just leave him in his high chair and tell him "manje" (eat), and he eventually finishes it, just not as fast as he does his favorites and doesn't request more.

We've had to change a little bit about how we do meals at our house. We used to just all finish our food and take care of our dishes as soon as each one of us is done. We're now trying to wait until everyone is finished (especially James) before we get up from the table. We also typically have a little something for "dessert", whether it be a piece of candy, a cookie, or ice cream. Having meals provided to us and having a birthday in the family in January made this no different. James got use to us having something sweet - which he LOVES!!! - and would hand me his non-empty plate when we started to get up. So that's why we changed the rule. Since the ice cream cake is now gone and we're mostly fixing our own meals now, dessert isn't a given, so James isn't always happy with that, but not too bad.

When it's just James and I at home, he also wants to just eat and eat and eat! So a few times, when he was on his way to eating more than I do, I'd just put the food away instead of leaving a container out and he knew there was more. He usually leaves his cup of milk to last, so that's something that has helped when he doesn't want to quite - I just ask him to drink his milk. If I ask him, "Ou fini?" (Are you Finished?) and put my arms out to help him out of his high chair, when he doesn't think he is, he'll pull his arms back into himself and give me the saddest pouty face he can. If he wants more he'll point to the food, and he's been saying "more" now for about the last week. He'll put his arms up to be lifted out of his high chair when he's finished.

For those of you not familiar with adopted kids, it's a common thing for kids to not know when to stop eating. Hunger is a prime need, and if they've had that need not met for any period of time, it takes them time to learn that there'll be a next meal, that they don't have to continue eating until they're sick. James is already starting to slow down with his eating, consuming amounts that are more similar to what a 2-year-old might normally eat. That tells me a lot about his comfort level here, and most likely about his past of having his needs being met the last 2 1/2 years.

One thing that surprised us with James, is that he loves meat! Elijah and Josephine had a hard time with meat when they came home. Elijah still does somewhat. I think the texture - no matter what kind of meat it was - bothered them. Also, Josephine had a hard time chewing some things, so we had to cut everything for her in tiny pieces - even pizza or things you'd normally eat with your hands and take bites off of it. If we put meat on James' plate, it's the first thing he'll eat, then ask for more - even if he still has other things on his plate. Although he knows now that he has to eat his other things first before getting seconds.

Elijah and Josephine also were not fans of milk when they came home, but James doesn't seem to have any problem with it. James did have a slight rash the second week he came home, and I wondered if it may have been due to milk, but I didn't stop giving him milk. The rash went away, and I never did figure out what it was from. It was luckily before we started him on any medications, so no allergies to those! James eats veggies fine as well - sometimes saving them for last, but not always. He doesn't usually complain about having to eat anything, which is nice.

James does complain when he's hungry and wants to eat, though! On weekday mornings, we usually don't eat breakfast until after we've taken the older three kids to school. They go to school around 7:30-7:45, so we have breakfast around 8:00. If we're downstairs for very long in the morning before we walk out the door, or if I make a run to the pharmacy while we're out before breakfast, he's not a happy camper! If I'm fiddling around in the kitchen, James generally things it's time to eat, and wants me to hold him and then get out his milk and sit in his high chair. When I'm working on getting supper together for everyone before Jock gets home from work, it's not always a very pretty sight for Jock to come home to. He's getting better about it though. We usually just have to try to get James occupied doing something with the other kids. And like when Elijah and Josephine came home, he's learning what it means to stay on the carpet, i.e. in the living room instead of under my feet in the kitchen while I'm fixing supper. It's starting to work better, although we still have our moments.

We've gone out to restaurants a couple times, and we've found that James is all about instant gratification. I.e., when you sit down in a high chair, it's time to eat! So we've luckily had a small container of something in the diaper bag to give him while we wait for our food!

As for favorites - I'd definitely say anything sweet is his favorite. We took James to Dairy Queen soon after he came home. It's somewhere Jock and I like to go together when the older three are at Awana. He seemed to enjoy it - but was turning his spoon upside down and just licking it like an ice cream cone. However, since then we've learned that he's not a big fan of ice cream, because it's too cold. Maybe it's just the difference between soft serve that you can lick.

He loved the red velvet cupcakes from Kaylen's birthday party. He had a couple of them, because we had some left over. He would lick all the cream-cheese frosting off the top first, and then the cake would pretty much be all over - but so cute! He also likes to eat oreos - pulling them apart, licking the filling, then eating the cookie. :)

When we're not eating sweets... For breakfast, James usually has some milk in his sippy cup, some dry cereal and a banana. Sometimes we do yogurt instead of the banana. For snacks, goldfish, animal crackers with peanut butter, or teddy grahams are favorites. For afternoon snack we usually do crackers on the go, because James doesn't like sitting in the car for 20-30 minutes waiting for the kids to get out of school! For lunch we usually have left-overs from supper, or maybe some lunch-meat/cheese. Suppers vary, and so far we're just finding he'll eat just about anything.