Born in Asheville, living now in Carrboro (formerly known as "The Place Where the Train to Chapel Hill Let Off, Back When People Took Trains").
Hop on down to Raleigh/Cary and see us sometime. Do you ever go see MC Frontalot when he comes to Chapel Hill? Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he's touring this year. But if you have been to either of the previous 2 concerts at Local 506 we have probably met.
Out of pure and slightly morbid curiousity, what does he eat? It sounds like your down to oreos, breakfast cereals and the box they come in.
Man, if only he ate cardboard boxes. That would be so much more nutritious than most of his food.
The current, comprehensive list of Food My Toddler Eats: Oreos (ding!); Chips Ahoy Thin Crisps; Mini Keebler Fudge Stripes (but not full-size ones); wheat thins; Sour Cream and Onion Ritz Chips; Goldgiraffe crackers (of any stripe); Sun Chips (any flavor); french fries (regular or waffle, but not curly); Peanut Butter or S'mores Ritz Bits Sandwiches (or the Target brand equivalent); Smores Chewy Granola Bars; Dibs ice cream bites (stra
wberry, vanilla, or peanut butter); Quaker Quakes Cheddar Cheese flavored rice cakes; Gerber mini fruits (freeze-dried) in apple, banana-stra
wberry, or banana-pineapple; Gerber cereal stars; Gerber Wagon Wheels; Straw
berry Yogurt Burst Cheerios (but only the pink ones); fresh apples, peeled; applesauce; chocolate pudding; pizza (thick crust, triangular, plain cheese). He also drinks milk from a baby bottle (with a particular nipple shape and style) and apple juice from an open cup or a juice box. He'll drink water from a water fountain or sometimes from a straw cup if he's really, really thirsty.
That's it -- the whole list. Twenty foods, with a few variations. He won't touch most alternate flavors -- pudding must always be chocolate -- or most off-brands, except where noted. I try to choose the best alternatives where possible -- he eats a lot of crackers that have cheese baked in, as a way to sneak in some protein, and I try to encourage him to eat peanut butter crackers or ice cream bites at least once a day. I also choose whole-wheat options when I can -- did you know they make whole wheat goldgiraffe? Lots of things that we think would be logical next steps to expand his repertoire don't seem to work. We got some bulk freeze-dried pineapple and offered it to him, and he ate it for a while, but has since stopped in favor of the (more expensive) Gerber kind. We've tried other types of crackers, like the kind made with ground-up vegetables, and he won't touch them. He ate toast for a while, but has started rejecting it again. We've tried other kinds of cereals, even other types of cheerios -- no dice. Although yesterday, I got him to put his mouth on one of those cereal straws that Smells was talking about in another thread, and he even almost blew bubbles in a cup of milk with it. (Those things are strangely delicious, BTW. I got the Froot Loops kind.)
I, too, am a picky eater, and most of my pickiness is texture related as well. I pick the carrots out of my soup; I order salads without tomatoes because I can't even stand the sight of them. I don't like junk on my pizza, and ice cream should never, ever crunch. I don't like food to touch on my plate. My fruit intake is limited because I have serious problems with seeds. (Strawberries? Palatable only in pureed form.) I'm better with vegetables than I used to be, but that is largely a function of having learned how to hide them from myself when I cook. But when you have a kid on the autism spectrum, you can avoid looking childish by explaining to dinner companions that you have "sensory processing issues" that make certain textures hard to tolerate, so that works out I guess.
Inev, seriously, you will probably get less picky as you get older and start preparing more of your own food. Part of my improvement in this area is being able to have more control over what I eat, so I need never encounter broccoli, but part of it too is just that handling food in various states of doneness (raw veggies, cooked veggies, chopped veggies, etc) helps your brain process the textures better. This is one of the reasons we do fun projects with food here, like using food coloring to dye spaghetti different colors and then laying the noodles on a plate to make rainbows. It encourages P to touch food without there being any pressure to necessarily eat it. The more he plays with his food, the more likely he is to actually maybe put some of it in his mouth someday.
Also, today I gave a talk to my sister-in-law's third-grade class about autism. It went super-well. I spoke for 20 minutes and took 40 minutes of questions, so I guess I got them thinking about stuff. Good questions, too. I am considering taping myself giving the same talk at home and putting it up on YouTube. Because, you know, I think it's a pretty brilliant speech, and enough time hasn't elapsed to convince me otherwise yet.
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