Meet The Fosters : bi-racial

Food Freak

TheFosters — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:15:00 GMT

Um, yes, those would be the remants of carrots and apples on the tray

Okay, so I have been a bit of a freak when it comes to our son and eating. But it's really not my fault. You see Ty came to us underweight and with few instructions, but for the charge that he was to ingest an exorbitant amount of calories everyday. Imagine it--two first-time daddies having a baby dropped at their doorstep; "And you expect us to get him to eat how much everyday--are you crazy?" From the first night we were plotting how to get as many bottles and containers of baby food into him as possible.

I remember being home with him for the first four weeks. I felt like I was in the I Love Lucy episode in the chocolate factory trying to box the candy as it flew by on the conveyor belt. Mix the formula, pour the bottles, warm the bottles, feed the baby. Play with him; put him down for his nap; not too long though 'cause he needs to eat; okay, get him up, then start all over again. No, no don't give him carrots and peas--not enough calories. Give him the bananas with mixed fruit--there is more than 26 calories in each ounce!

Every time he ate we recorded it in his book: what did he eat, how much, how many calories. Though he always seemed to have quite an appetite, there were days when it seemed like he just didn't want his daddy stuffing his face all day long. Each night we would total up the days gorging. It always worried me when I/he fell short of his daily caloric goal. It became my own little neurosis.

Well, we have come a long way from those days of autumn. After he climbed his way into the weight percentiles and his pediatrician was comfortable with his growth, we stopped logging his calories. I felt like we could finally begin to relax. I don't miss those days of angst about his eating.

So with that background you have the pretext for the little bit of angst about his current eating issues. As our baby has become a toddler it turns out he is mostly a meat and potatoes kind of guy. (And by the way waffles falls into that meat and potatoes category.) He's shown little interest in vegetables and almost no interest in fruit. We've had to "slip" him everything: veggies minced and cooked into meatballs; fruit blended into milk; sandwiches--well, you can always stuff something unexpected in between two slices of bread. Since he continues to grow, I am less concerned about this than his other Daddy. It seems that Darrow has now taken ownership of the eating neurosis.

It isn't like we haven't read up on all this kind of stuff. We've heard the rules: try a type of food at least fifteen times, or is it eighteen times, or just keep trying ad nauseam. I had long since given up on apples since Ty chews them up into small pieces and spits them back out all over himself. Then he takes his hand and scrapes the remaining bits off of his tongue and onto his lap. After the 32^nd time of trying to get him to eat bananas, I started shaking my head at Darrow. Maybe it doesn't make any sense that a kid would not like bananas, but you've gotta give it up man!

So how was it that last night while Ty was waiting for dinner in his highchair that Daddy Darrow was able to start feeding him some orange slices? Oranges slices--really? But that's a fruit! As the orange quickly disappeared, I decided to give him a slice of watermelon. Four or five slices later, I moved to blueberries and then apples. As we put dinner on the table he started motioning and grunting towards our plates. Darrow gave him a carrot slice, then another. He ate a few more, then after being given his own little pile of steamed carrots, he started two fisting them. Then it was on to the couscous, some chicken and more carrots. It was a startling moment. After all of the attempts to get him to eat his vegetables, and fruit for that matter, here he was eating everything and anything we put in front of him. I could feel the vitamins and minerals already beginning to course through his little body. It seemed like he would have eaten an artichoke had we given it to him. I wondered if it was an aberration--he was toying with us and would be back to meat and potatoes again tomorrow. If it is true, that after these last several months of eating regular food he has finally broadened his palate, then I guess the experts were right. There is hope for the picky eating children of the world and the desperate parents who will try anything to get junior to eat something other than rice and meat.

--J

When My Son Speaks

TheFosters — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:32:00 GMT

I am not really worried about our son's speech development, even if I am reminded by physicians that statistically speaking, he's behind. I live with the little guy everyday. If his vocalizations were not growing more frequent and more complex over time, then I might be concerned, but it just isn't the case. The latest demand of him is to acquire at least a ten word vocabulary by June. What if he only has eight, or five or.....two.

"My son, the world is collapsing all around you without these ten words. You will never amount to anything if you don't pipe up. And no, I'm sorry but ‘gukum blik grlikm' does not count as three words." Now that it is May, I am beginning to feel his pressure--just 30 more days and counting. Ohmygawd, maybe I can bribe him with candy or massage his brain; practice verbal calisthenics; tell him that daddy will spank if he doesn't start spouting off a few choice phrases!

Really, I am just excited to hear his first little words. After being sick for several weeks with a variety of ailments, Ty has finally reached a state of wellness. He has been a chatterbox in the last few days. His vocal range continues to widen. I know he is saying things to us (and probably about us) but he has not yet crossed that great divide where he can be clear about his wants and needs so that we can stop being dumb daddies.

While he may be a little behind, he has a wide range of sounds that are more complex and varied everyday. Lately he's been on this low range, baritone kick--sort of a cross between Louis Armstrong and Fat Albert. Sometimes he is commanding us to give him more food and other times he's just yelling at a passing car on the ride home from day care. Then he started doing this wonderful little aria thing, but rather than it being like Maria Callas belting out something from Carmen, it is all screeches--only they are happy screeches. So rather than correcting him, we just screech back. Talk about enabling children with bad habits! Sometimes the little urchin explores the upper reaches of his vocal chords, and climbs one octave too high just outside of his little boy range. His mouth opens but nothing comes out, as if only dogs could hear his falsetto.

I am so excited to be able to actually communicate with my son. I mean what an amazing moment to witness--the very first time he thinks about something, then in his mind he formulates, then with his mouth he articulates. What a beautiful sound that will be. We know he knows how to call out to us, but I am looking for something a little more definitive than Da-da. On our personal blog after covering a different aspect of this same subject I received a couple of really great comments that got me to thinking.

The first:

Language develops at such a variable rate. One moment a parent is concerned about delayed speech and the next he/she is lamenting about the child's non-stop chatter! The wonderful thing is that since he is in a loving home with parents that create a language-rich environment, he will undoubtedly make astounding progress. Enjoy it Dada(s) the language milestones are truly the most astounding and fun...and I am not just saying that because I am an SLP.

Marissa

A rich language environment--I never thought of our home in those terms. Reading to him has always been more about it being fun and him being a little book worm rather than a concerted effort on our part. I know this sounds sort of brain dead, but it didn't occur to me that we could contribute towards his language acquisition in that way. So the more books we read, the more stimulated he is, the more articulate he will become. And the best part is that everyone really enjoys it--well, as long as we don't have to read "How Big is Baby Elmo" more than twice in one sitting.

And the second:

It's a miracle they learn to talk at all, I think. Your son probably knows dozens of words already and he just has to work out how to make his tongue and mouth get them out.

Psychmum

There are times when we both just sit there and listen to the things our son says. It is fascinating sometimes. You have to wonder if babbling is really the right word for what is happening. In addition to just exploring his vocal range, out of him comes strange, complicated, multiple-syllabic runs that are on the one hand incomprehensible but on the other totally unique. Sometimes it almost sounds like some other language. When he turns to the set of car keys that he's playing with and says "gukum blik grlikm", does it have some meaning to him? As alert and aware about so many things as our son is, do we wrongly assume because he is young and because we can't interpret what he is saying, that he is babbling? What if it all had meaning and there is lots of stuff swimming around in his head. What if Pyschmum is right and he already has dozens of words, even hundreds of words but just doesn't have the means to make us understand. I suppose a child psychologist might think I was being silly, but what a great thought--that there is more to the inner life of my child than I or anyone else will ever know.

--J

Who are we?

TheFosters — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:12:00 GMT

We are Darrow, Juan and T. We are two Dads and a pre-toddler. We are an interracial couple with a bi-racial baby and three hodge-podge breed big dogs. We are as close to married as the law allows. We are diaper changing, baby food flinging, bottle juggling newbie dads who sometimes trip up one another in our effort to care for our son. We are a family like every family, but just a little different. And yes, we are foster parents, sort of unwittingly, but fosters nonetheless.

We are fun and games dads of the silliest kind. We have no problem making strange faces and odds noises in public in an effort to entertain our son. We revel in his beautiful smile and his hearty, infectious laugh. We cannot imagine our life without this amazing little boy. That is why we also periodically turn to one another in tears, because as fosters we find ourselves from time-to-time in a fragile state, knowing that his future with us is uncertain. So we live in the yin and the yang, the one side making the other side that much sweeter and poignant. And if we write about happy, silliness one day and sound like we are drowning in our fears the next, we hope that if you choose to read our posts, you will forgive us for sounding a little crazy. Sometimes that is the reality of the Fosters--welcome to our world.

--D, J & T