Day: January 10, 2017

Tuesday I finally made the soup that I have been daydreaming about for two days. I saw this SmittenKitchen post and could not get the thought of wonton soup out of my head. Tuesday night I muscled through the tedium of filling wontons while the kids literally tore apart the house around me. At one point Ammon dumped a bag of mini marshmallows on the floor and then sat in the pile and ate fistfuls. I was so fixated on the wontons that I just let him go at it and said a quick prayer that Abe would come home before the kids all spoiled their dinner.

And guess what? Ammon LOVED the wontons! He took over eighteen bites!! We were thrilled out of our minds because feeding him is such a battle. He normally takes one or two bites of anything before rejecting the food as unworthy. I put him in the high chair up to six times a day, and each episode usually ends in despair and junk food (and with me cleaning up a huge mess on the floor).

When Clark and Swathi were here, Clark told Soren that the mole we were eating was “red kaima” (spelling?), which means lamb. He was trying to trick Soren into thinking he was eating a familiar dish. We also watched Clark tempt Soren to eat by telling him he was going to eat cookies or candy, and then he just fed Soren normal food because Soren, who has never had cookies or candy, doesn’t know the difference. (Soren just loves the words, “cookies” and “candy.”)

All that to say that now Abe makes jokes when it comes to feeding Ammon. For example, he’ll call shrimp “pink kaima candy cookies.” We have adopted aural deception as a feeding tactic.

But no such deception was needed last night! I might brave the messes and make this soup again sometime soon. I can’t even say how satisfying it was to watch Ammon actually eat real food.

Monday we stayed inside to avoid the bad air. Abe has been talking about taking a short trip so we can all recover from our illnesses. It’s hard to do when the air is basically toxic. That is the only thing I dislike about where we live. We live in a valley that traps bad air, especially in the winter. It’s terrifying when I contemplate all of the bad things this air could do to the baby inside. I try not to think about it.

But we had a very productive day inside the house. Lydia had a full day of homeschooling, I gave Mary two reading lessons, and I read a TON to Ammon. I felt really great about all of that, even though I feel constant guilt for not exercising more. First world problems, right?

During FHE Abe gave all of the kids more airplane rides. We decided Ammon needed his three turns consecutively and first. Otherwise he would just melt in between turns into a giant puddle of tears and screams. He LOVES airplane rides.

Lydia also invented a surfboard ride. She loved placing Ammon on the surfboard and pushing him around.