The "white stuff"

On June 15th I blogged about how excited we were that Franny had started to drink milk. This was a big deal since it had taken two months for her to drink even an ounce!

Then, in early July she began signing for milk. Since she wasn't signing much at this point, in efforts to encourage her communication, we gave her milk whenever she asked for it. By August, this accomodation had snowballed into milk being her primary source of nourishment. She peaked on August 19th, consuming 56 ounces of milk.

The realization of how much she was drinking was quite alarming to say the least, and we immediately started to limit how much she was drinking by encouraging her to drink water instead. She was responsive to this but was still drinking between 35-40 ounces of day through last week. Over our vacation, I reread some of my books, and determined that we needed to structure her milk consumption/eating if Franny was going to have an appropriate diet and healthy approach to eating. In addition to eating minimally, Franny had become a perpetual grazer, and would eat constantly--a few crackers here, a few raisins there... Again, if she could sign it, I would give it to her, so she ate A LOT of crackers, raisins, cereal, and cheese.

**Sidenote: I so not use books to create magic formulas on how I expect Franny to eat, drink, sleep, behave, etc. But I do use them for appropriate reference and to be responsible in my approach to parenting.**

So, this was our first week of our new eating and drinking: three meals, two snacks, and milk only at breakfast, lunch, and dinner; also, she only gets one shot at each meal--if she's not eating, I don't try to get her to eat something else--but she can eat as much as she wants with the meal prepared. This experiment was an eye opener to how irratic her eating was. I've since amended the plan to include two afternoon snacks, since she was getting so hungry, even with a hearty first snack. Although I've been strong about the whole situation, I have given her small snacks when she was obviously very hungry, since I don't think that it's fair to expect her to immediately adapt and change her way of thinking about food.

I have to give Franny a lot of credit--her response has been great, which is an incredible relief. She still wants milk quite frequently, but lives with drinking water instead. Now, in-between meals, Rick will tell me that "she making strong requests for the 'white stuff'..." We now understand why parents start spelling words in front of their kids! She also has started to eat a lot more, and has seemed to like the different meals I've made her for lunches, snacks, and dinners. Her banana strike seems to be over, as well. It does take a lot more planning on my part, but it's worth it.