Strawberry Milk

Today I went to Target, and I swear I saw Brayden (Julia's friend at daycare). But I had never seen his mom before (for some reason, no other parent drops their toddler off at the same time as I do), and I didn't have Julia. I'm not sure Brayden's mom would have appreciated me coming up to her and asking if it was Brayden. I didn't have a cute kid with me, so I'm sure I would have just appeared freaky. So I kept quiet.

Julia's appetite isn't that good again. From June 1 - 25 she did awesome! She was eating 16-20 oz of formula a day, 3-4 ounces of juice and 2-3 meals. Now it's turned off again.

Let me do my daycare rant of the week. Most daycare workers are just fine, and I really liked the two in the infant room. But I must say that the toddler teacher isn't the sharpest person in the world. Today's nap log said that Julia slept for 1/2 an hour, from 12:00 - 1:30. My lovely husband asked how long she slept, as he was confused. She asked how long it said. He said 1/2 an hour. She said that was how long. So he brought up that it said 12:00 - 1:30. She said then it was an hour and a half. In other words, she has no clue either. Well, to her credit, she wasn't the one who wrote down the nap times. The actual toddler teacher is the one who I think may not be the best. Julia still hasn't warmed up to her, and it's been almost a month. I may spend some time in the latter half of the week looking for other daycares. For what it's worth, I think she actually napped for half an hour because she had a complete meltdown at 7pm, an hour earlier than bedtime.

Speaking of daycare, I'm sending good luck vibes to Mischa on her first day of daycare on July 1st!

For a few weeks, Julia has been doing well with drinking juice out of a sippy cup. She was consistently doing at least 3 ounces a day with meals. Last Monday was the allergist appointment, and her allergy test was negative for milk. I'm assuming her blood test was as well since we haven't gotten a call. So I think that means we can start whole milk. On Saturday we did a concoction of poor man's Pediasure (Instant Breakfast + whole milk). I started out with the strawberry flavor because people say kids are most amenable to that flavor. I detest milk, but I must say that the concoction tastes pretty good.

While she's doing okay on the juice out of a sippy cup, the goal is to get her to take milk out of a cup. Right now she'll only take apple juice, and it's only 15 calories an ounce and with little vitamins except for vitamin C. Whole milk + Instant Breakfast is calorie dense with vitamins.

So we've gone cold turkey with poor man's Pediasure out of the sippy cup at lunch and dinner since Saturday. Welllllll.... it's not going well. She won't take it. She'll do a sip or two, make a face and throw the cup. And then commence screaming. Then if she see S's drink, she will point to it and scream even more. She wants S's drink. This happens at every meal. We know she's got to be thirsty. She's refusing to drink at meals. She's on a semi-formula strike. Her constant thirst is not doing anything to help her mood.

So far we're holding firm on not giving her juice. I honestly never thought a 1-year old (particularly a newly minted 1 year old) could be this stubborn. A 2-year old? Yes. S says it takes 3 days to extinguish the behavior. Well, dear husband, Saturday-Sunday-Monday - it's 3 days. And she's still not taking the milk out of a sippy cup. She's still peeing, so I'm not terribly worried that she's dehydrated. She'll drink the bare minimum - I just worry she'll stall in the weight department.

I'm looking forward to feeding therapy tomorrow. She's got to have some ideas for us. I'm at a loss at Julia's refusal of any milk-y drink. This will make life very difficult if it continues. Fortunately there is a nutritional drink that's juice based. It's horrendously expensive though - $5 for an 8 oz serving. Yes, you read that right. I'm going to see if the GI specialist or even the feeding therapist has a sample of it. The Neocate people only sell it by the case.