Spinning Tower?

Spinning Tower?? Seems fathomable, if they can make the top floor of a building spin, why not the whole thing, right? However, the part that scares me is, "Fisher acknowledges that he is not well known, has never built a skyscraper before and hasn't practiced architecture regularly in decades." Although to his credit, he has top consultants on board including a very successful structural engineer.

Additionally, his background (his version of it) seems pretty cloudy.... I wonder who is funding all of the planning and renderings??

Terribly Smart

How cool is this?? It is the new Bin-Go from Skip Hop. I have bins all over my house, but most of them are ugly and not easy to drag around. Now we can throw all the toys that are scattered all over the house in here and stow it away as soon as someone calls and says they are on their way over. or, leave it out - it is that lovely.
Nice form. Nice Function. NICE.
There is a smaller version, too, called table top organizer

The beginning

Things i didn't know when Henry ate only 6 things: a thick gooey chocolate sludge that could plaster a wall is left at the bottom of a bowl of Chocolate Rice Crispies by the time a kid finishes eating.

Things i swore i would never let my kids eat: Chocolate Rice Crispies.

Things change when you have a 'non-eater'.

So to begin at the beginning... Nursing was a real trial. Okay, that is putting it mildly. it was F-ing HARD. i cried for about the first 6 months of his life. He nursed just fine in the hospital, I had the lactation consultant in with us every day we were there - all four: c-section - and she gave us her stamp of approval. great latch! great eater!! it never occured to me we could have a problem. Once we got home, it took both my husband and i to feed henry every single time. i would hold his head and one hand, and my husband would hold the other hand to stop him from pushing off of me. i asked the one breastfeeding friend i knew, who in my eyes was the CHAMP of breastfeeding, if this was normal and she said, "oh YES, it is sort of like a love-hate relationship. they LOVE the boob, they HATE the boob." She even said she was worried about how she would feed her daughter once her husband went back to work. so everything was normal, right? WRONG. i sobbed when my husband had to go back to work - no way could i feed this kid by myself. we did sort of get into a groove, though, he would eat what i thought was a normal amount, and then stop and grin at me. he was HAPPY. then the whole arm fiasco happened, we had to start supplementing, and i had to start pumping.

Now i know that the breast pump is an amazing invention that allows fathers to bond with their children over a bottle (like they don't BOND in a million other ways), and it allows working mothers to get back to work and still feed their babies. For me, it allowed me to plug myself into an outlet up to 10 times a day to start, and have the life sucked out of me like a dairy cow. i would nurse henry, then pump, then feed him what i had pumped, then wash every F-ing little peice of plastic, only to start all over again a few minutes later. just the smell of that F-ing machine makes my stomach hurt and makes me want to cry even today. After months of thinking we were going to get this nursing down, i was still pumping - even after henry refused to nurse at all. I pumped until he was about 8 1/2 months old.

Once we started solids, i thought i could leave behind the eating problems, and feed my kid like everyone else!! Henry ate every baby food Gerber or anyone else made, including all of the market finds i pureed myself: Spinach, peas, sweet potatoes, every fruit i could get my hands on .... He would even gulp down avacado i mashed up for him. As soon as those glass jars got a little bigger, and had some chunks in them, though, he spit them out. PTHPTHHTP. PTHPTHP. PPPTHTHTHPTHPTH. When the few friends i knew with kids were giving their kids over-cooked pasta and other finger foods, Henry was refusing all but a few things. little did i know that this was the beginning of what would turn into his "normal foods". he ate green beans from a can, cheddar cheese, fruit, crackers, and dry toast. i made that plate of food every day, twice a day for over FOUR. MORE. YEARS.

There is hope.

My 5 year old son has been a non eater his entire life. I can't tell you how many people have said to me, "oh i KNOOOOW, my daughter is a picky eater, too. she'll only eat chicken, and macaroni and cheese, and steak and potatoes, and sandwiches, AND BLAH BLAH BLAH, but i can't for the life of me get her to eat BROCCOLI!"

um. yeah. that is not what has been going on with Henry.

As an infant he was described as "content to starve". We were never very good at breast feeding, but he ate, and was the happiest little boy i'd ever seen. he cried now and then, but mostly he laughed and smiled and motored all over the place. When he was about three months old he did a very strange thing with one of his arms. he quit using it. he tucked it towards his body and sort of under him. this was, of course, after he had been sucking on his hands and scratching his face like a normal 3 month old. my husband who usually rolled his eyes at my fears said "call the doctor". we never did find out what was going on with his arm (actually came moments away from an MRI and full anesthesia when he just started using it again), but after being in the doc's office over and over, days in a row, we all realized he was losing weight. you know how everyone says "a baby WON'T starve!" and "if they are HUNGRY, they will CRY!" well that never happened. Henry would eat just enough to take the edge off, and be done.
he has stuck to this behavior his entire life.

i can tell you it has been an isolating experience. from being embarrassed to feed him with bottles (even though they were filled with expressed breast milk) - people in this town have a way of making mama's feel inadequate if they aren't breastfeeding, growing their own vegetables in their back yard, collecting rain water for washing dishes and riding their bikes 20 miles each way to attend the all enriching "book babies" at the library - to not being able to be away from home very long because of the necessity of pumping every few hours, to having to prepare the foods he WOULD eat and take them, on ice, every where we went. we ended up staying home a lot. My husband and i didn't eat in a restaurant with Henry more than a few times his first 4 years. there simply wasn't anything he would eat on the menu. we did pack up his foods in his mini cooler i took everywhere, beg him to eat them in the restaurant while he wanted to get down and play, and promptly leave when we'd had a few cold bites, too exhausted to try to beg or cajole for one more minute.

tell him to take it or leave it you say? That was exactly what his doctor's advice was. offer him whatever we were having for a meal, and if he didn't want any, just put it away. eventually he would get hungry enough to eat it. for God's sake, starving children in third world countries aren't "PICKY EATERS". no, children with Henry's issues in third world countries DIE. after 6 meals in a row of Henry not putting anything but water in his mouth, i couldn't take it anymore and gave him his foods. did he eat like a starving child? no. he ate what he wanted and went back to playing. food simply was not an issue for him.

I'm happy to tell you, though, there is HOPE. through years of trying everything i'd ever read, eating therapy, and buckets of tears, he is eating. and he is so proud of himself! i'll have to start at the beginning.....