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Apr 4, 2012

Autism Awareness and Defining the Child

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I knew that Monday was autism awareness day, and I even briefly considered writing something specifically for it. But then life and work got in the way, along with my own stubbornness at feeling obligated to write about a topic just because it’s a designated day and others are doing it. (Yes, I’m rebellious towards the dumbest things.)

The truth is, I didn’t really know what to say. My family has a child with autism. One day of awareness, wrapped in a month of awareness is awesome, but around here it’s an everyday thing.

Way back when I started this blog, I had no idea Cordy would be diagnosed with autism. I knew what it was, vaguely, but had little personal experience. Our autism indoctrination was then intense from ages three to five, a time when we wondered what the future might hold for our daughter, and for us. It was a frightening period as we witnessed just how different our child was from others, and endured several difficult therapies to give her the best shot at a “normal” life.

Now? She’s in first grade, completely mainstreamed. She reads at a third grade level and does well in her other subjects. Her transition was a little rough at the start of the year, but her teacher reports that her behavior is no worse than other kids in the class. To be honest, her behavior is better than some of the other kids – she often comes home with awards for no behavior issues for the week. Yes, she’s quirky and doesn’t understand a lot of social cues, but she can function in a classroom and (mostly) in public.

People still occasionally question if Cordy really has autism. While it does frustrate me to hear it (do they think we’re making it up?) I’m also learning to see their opinions as a positive statement. Cordy has made so much progress that a quick meeting might convince you that she’s a typical kid. Of course, the downside of this is that when her more unpleasant quirks do show themselves, the judgment from strangers and acquaintances doesn’t take into account that she has autism. I guess that’s where autism awareness education comes into play.

I’m rarely considered among “special needs” bloggers, because Cordy’s autism is only one small part of my story. But even if I’m not on the lists, I still consider myself a special needs blogger and draw much of my own strength from reading the heartfelt posts of others. (Indeed, they’re the ones who held me up when I felt like I couldn’t handle it all early on.) Cordy’s autism may not always be in the front of my mind, but it’s a part of who she is and influences all aspects of our lives, even if it isn’t routinely discussed.

Do I want people to know that Cordy has autism? Sure, as long as they don’t define her only by that aspect. She’s an avid reader and can rarely be found without a book in her hand. She loves soccer. When she’s happy, she skips and bounces along like Tigger. She can bring a smile to nearly anyone’s face. Depending on the day, she wants to be a storyteller, a cook, a seamstress, a rock star, a vet, or a journalist when she grows up. But she also insists she wants to be a mommy, too.

So yes, I think we should do our part to educate others about autism, but I believe in looking at it from a whole-person approach. This is Cordy, she has autism, but she also has a lot of really cool interests and thoughts. Her quirky collection of behaviors just happen to have a name, while the rest of us have yet to figure out what to call our quirks. (And oh, we’re a quirky family, have no doubt!) Her challenges might be more than the average person, and we’ll continue to do anything she needs to help her overcome or at least cope with those challenges, but she also has a wealth of talents that some could only hope to have.

In total: she’s just Cordy, autism and all.

This is how she always wants to pose for photos – as a “superstar.”
Filed Under: Autism, Cordy ·


Mar 29, 2012

The Real Nutrition Problem For Our Kids

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Occasionally when the kids are very helpful, we treat them to a meal out. The other day it was Steak N Shake, a favorite for both Cordy and Mira thanks to the paper hats and 50’s cardboard cars they can build. A favorite for me, too, for their amazing Frisco burger.

I know eating out is often not a healthy option – it’s an occasional treat. But even when they order macaroni and cheese or a grilled cheese sandwich, they often choose a side dish of a fruit or veggie. Cordy is obsessed with salads, so she’ll always choose a salad for her side. And Mira often asks for applesauce.

But this time, the restaurant was very busy and they brought Mira’s applesauce out still sealed in it’s cup. I happened to look at the label before she ate it and couldn’t help but stare at what I saw.

Apples, followed by super-sweet high fructose corn syrup and then even more sugar in the form of corn syrup. What the hell? Has this country forgotten that apples are naturally sweet? They don’t need to be laced with added sweeteners to convince kids to eat them.

If you want to fix the problem with nutrition for our kids, start by returning to real food. Meat that you can recognize as meat – without meat byproducts as filler. Fruit without added sugar. Foods without artificial dyes added to brighten them up. Real whole grains. Real cheese without added fillers. Ketchup made from tomatoes, spices and vinegar with almost nothing else. Fruit snacks that are actually made from fruit and not “fruit-flavored” snacks.

I’m a child of the 80’s. (Well, born in the 70’s but most of what I remember was from the 80’s.) I grew up with some of the most artificial food out there. Popsicles that were nothing more than sugar water and a whole lot of artificial coloring. Doritos with bright orange cheese powder that stained everything. Snack cakes filled with enough saturated fat for an adult’s daily intake. Sugar-filled drinks that matched the bright neon clothing we wore.

Sure, I survived it all, but I can guarantee you it didn’t make me any healthier. If anything, it was a big contributor to my later obesity. I also can’t be sure my diet of artificially created food didn’t shave years off the end of my life, or plant the seeds for later cancers. I guess we’ll have to wait and see the outcome.

We, as a society, know better now. Nutritional science has shown that natural is almost always better than man-made and we’re thankfully seeing the pendulum swing towards a return to real foods.

However, the one area that is lagging behind is food geared towards our youngest and most vulnerable population, especially in the markets of restaurant foods and school lunches. Food marketed towards and produced for kids still contains higher amounts of added sugar (especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup), added fat, processed and artificial ingredients, and gallons of artificial food dyes.

Back to my original question: why does applesauce need added sugar? The answer is it doesn’t, and food manufacturers should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to pump additional calories and ingredients into foods that don’t need it. It’s no wonder some kids would refuse to eat an apple – when your taste buds have been taught to seek out unnaturally sweeter, brighter colored foods, a naturally sweet apple probably doesn’t have as much appeal.

We’re letting our kids down. They deserve better than this. And not just the kids who have parents that can afford the “better” stuff – this needs to change from the top brands all the way down to the bulk products sold to schools and institutions. Walking down the aisles of your grocery store, you shouldn’t have to look hard for the “natural, no added sugar” applesauce – that should be the norm.

Change is already happening. Schools are being allowed to opt out of pink slime for their government lunch programs and many parents, now being made aware of the issue, are putting pressure on their local districts to no longer use this processed meat filler. McDonald’s recently changed their Happy Meals to reduce the portion of fries and automatically include apple slices. (And yes, fast food nutrition still has a long way to go, but that’s a great stride forward.)

Companies aren’t going to alter the way they do things without a demand for change, though, and that’s where we come in. It’s our responsibility not to settle for what is being served to our kids. We need to send the message to food manufacturers that we expect better and if they can’t deliver we will take our money to a competitor who will put the health of our children above cheap materials. We need to keep pressuring the government to demand the highest standards for school lunches, which for many poor children are the only chance they have at a complete meal each day.

Our children are a barometer of the health of the nation. What are we seeing? An increase in allergies, obesity, asthma, ADHD, autism, behavioral issues, etc. Of course it’s not all because of food, but I’d guarantee that if kids were raised on a healthier, more natural diet that the severity and incidence of these issues would be far less. My best example of this is Cordy – when kept away from artificial food coloring, she has fewer outbursts and meltdowns and is more “present” in her daily tasks. Add the dyes back in, and it’s like I have a different child.

Look, I’m not trying to take away ice cream, cookies and candy. My own kids would probably stage a revolt against me if I did. I’m just asking that we consider the quality of the ingredients in our food – even the treats – and demand that our food go back to the basics. Ice cream should be milk, cream, eggs, sugar and natural flavoring. Bread should be made with whole grains and not processed, bleached flour.

I don’t want to completely ban artificial ingredients and added sweeteners, but in an ideal world they would be harder to find on menus and grocery shelves than foods without them. There is a place for them, but that place isn’t in nearly every food product we push towards kids.

Read the ingredient labels on your foods. If there’s something on the label that you don’t believe should be in that food, or even if you aren’t sure why it’s there, take five minutes to contact the company and tell them how you feel. Ask them to take high fructose corn syrup out of their applesauce. Ask Kraft to make their mac and cheese without FD&C Yellow #5 and Yellow #6 when the same product they make in Britain is just as brightly colored with paprika and beta carotene.

As for Mira’s applesauce at Steak N Shake? I explained to her what was in it and offered to let her have a container of her natural applesauce back at home instead. She happily chose to wait until we got home for the natural applesauce.

Filed Under: big issues, daily life, healthy living, pop culture, rant ·


Mar 27, 2012

Apple Dumplings a la Me

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When my old job was eliminated, one of the things I vowed to do was become more domestic. (It’s back there on that giant to-do list.) In our house, my husband is the cook. Yes, I have two hands and a brain to put together food, but somewhere between gathering the ingredients and removing it from heat, I generally screw something up to make a meal inedible.

Yes, I’ve actually burned water, if you count leaving water to boil on the stove too long so that it all boiled off and then the pot somehow caught fire.

The one exception is baking, where I tend to be a little better with results, but it can still be hit or miss.

Last week, Ree Drummond, better known as The Pioneer Woman, was in town for a book signing for her new book, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier. A group of us gathered for dinner the night before, where I shared with Ree that I planned to use her cookbook to help me in my goal of learning to cook.

(Amy, Ree, Momo, Wenderly, and me)

When I told Cordy and Mira who I was going to see at the bookstore the next day, they insisted on coming along. Cordy has recently decided she wants to be “a sewer, a cooker, and a mom” when she grows up, and Mira echoed that she wants to be the same, but also a vet. I had planned to go alone, but since they were so excited I agreed.

Ree planned for that same small group of us to meet in private before the big signing. We got to the bookstore 45 minutes before the signing started, and already there was practically no parking and the store was jammed full of women holding Ree’s book and lining up to meet her. With Cordy in tow, I was very thankful we could meet in private – she can’t handle waiting in lines and crowds make her extremely anxious and flappy.

Of course, when finally given the opportunity to meet Ree and tell her how much they want to be “cookers” when they grow up, my girls clammed up. Well, Cordy was too distracted to say much more than hi, and Mira focused on Ree’s necklace while placing her hand directly on Ree’s boobs. Mira has a bad habit of trying to get someone’s attention by reaching up and putting her hand on someone’s belly, which as she’s grown has now extended her reach to boobs. Insert my horror in any public situation with her here.

But they did pose nicely for a photo.

Once home, the kids begged to start making food from the book. I put it off until the weekend, and for our first experiment, I picked something to bake: apple dumplings. Baking is my stronger skill, so I wanted to ease into it.

One thing I love about Ree’s book (and her blog) is the number of clear photos she has showing each step of the process. When you’re domestically challenged like me, this is very, very helpful.

The first step was peeling the apples. Um, wait, how do I do that? I grabbed a knife and muddled through it, ending with most of the apple still on the core and no sliced fingers. I’ll call that a success.

Aaron was better at it than me.

But when it came to coring the apples and slicing them into 8 equal slices, I turned to modern convenience:

Hey look, that’s easy!

Rolling the slices into the crescent roll dough wasn’t hard. Mira asked if she could help, picking it up faster than me.

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’…

We poured the sauce/syrup/whatever you want to call it mixture over the rolled up apples and then put it in the oven. The result?

Clearly, this will never be a food blog & I will never be a food photographer.

I gotta admit, it smelled amazing. And tasted pretty good, too.

OK, so it took the whole family to make apple dumplings (minus Cordy, who decided she really wasn’t that interested in it, but was still willing to taste test), but it was a good first start.

(Full disclosure: this isn’t really a review. I bought the book myself, and while I told Ree I planned to use the book to help me cook, she wasn’t expecting any kind of review. But if you ever meet her in person, you should ask her to show you what she can do with the Juicy Fruit app on her phone.)

Filed Under: Cordy, domestic zero, family time, me me me, Mira ·


Mar 22, 2012

No Answers, More Questions

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After all of the drama of last week’s visit to the doctor and the following blood draw to test for allergies, I had hoped to report one satisfying resolution to that arc of Mira’s story.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t seem to resolve mysteries as in novels or neatly storyboarded television shows, with all loose ends tied up and answers revealed.

Waiting for the results, I was focused more on what kind of lifestyle changes we might have to make to accommodate Mira’s allergies than anything else. What if she really was allergic to dairy and we had to go dairy-free? Or what if she had inherited the seasonal allergies of Aaron or I, but even worse, and would need to start allergy shots to bring some relief?

I didn’t hear anything by Friday afternoon, so I called the office and asked about the results. The doctor we spoke with last week wasn’t in the office, so one of the nurse practitioners called me back a little later with the full report.

Of the enormous list of food allergens and environmental allergens that Mira was tested for, she was allergic to…

None of them.

Wait, what?

The blood test showed no measurable allergy to anything in the test. This included about every kind of pollen, mold, and animal that she might encounter in Ohio, as well as all of the common food allergies and cinnamon. However, the nurse practitioner said the test results did show an elevated IgE level, which indicates she’s having a reaction to something, we just don’t know what.

The next step? Not sure yet. I have to get back in touch with the doctor to determine where to go from here. We may be seeing an allergist, or she may want further tests first. Either way, I need to make sure her symptoms aren’t forgotten. Mira’s flare-ups are random and she hasn’t had a vomiting episode/cramping in nearly a month, but we know it’ll happen again. And the eczema on her head is only slowly responding to the steroid treatment.

I’m glad this kid has such an easy-going personality. She was telling her preschool class last week about the blood draw and described it as, “It really hurt, but they weren’t being mean. They were just doing what they needed to help me feel better. They weren’t trying to hurt me.” Mira knows there may be more testing involved, too, and while I’m sure she won’t be as brave in the moment, she still says she’ll be brave and knows we only want to make her feel better.

That’s Mira – the kid rolls with anything life sends her way. Although she’ll make sure to remind you of the story of her bravery at least once a day for the next month, usually with some parts exaggerated for dramatic flair to make her the star/hero of the story. Maybe she needs her own blog – once she learns how to write.

You’d have thought the St. Patrick’s Day parade was in her honor the way she tells the story.
Filed Under: daily life, Mira · Tagged:


Mar 21, 2012

Slim-Fast Plan Day (& Giveaway!)

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I started couch-to-5K again a little over a week ago, starting with week two but then jumping to week three on Wednesday. I’m proud to say I’ve kept going with it, and if this raging sore throat I have today doesn’t stop me, I’ll start week four today.

Exercise goes hand-in-hand with good nutrition, and I credit a lot of that to starting the Slim-Fast plan. The shakes and meal bars are full of vitamins and minerals and have the right balance of nutrients to keep me going, which is more than I can say for my previous breakfast of toast. Or nothing, which is a breakfast I don’t recommend at all.

Today just happens to be 3/21, which Slim-Fast has declared the Slim-Fast Plan Day. (Get it? 3/21 = the Slim-Fast 3-2-1 plan. It’s like Pi day, but with a guilt-free chocolate shake instead of pie.) To celebrate, I’ve got a few goodies to pass along to some of you!

First, I’ve got two coupons for free Slim-Fast products. You can either use the coupon on a free four pack of shakes or a box of meal bars – your choice! Two winners will receive one coupon each.

And the grand prize: a gorgeous scarf to accessorize for Spring! While I was at Studio Wow! in New York, I met with Jacqui Stafford for some fashion tips. I told her accessories were one thing I didn’t feel comfortable with, so Jacqui turned to a wall of Bindya NY scarves and plucked one off the wall to drape around my neck.

The wall of scarves – beautiful!

She showed me how easy it was to dress up an outfit with a scarf as well as several ways to wear it. After her instruction, I tried out this look at Blissdom and I think I did a good job at making it work!

It’s a fuzzy pic, but you get the idea.

One winner will be selected to win a scarf from Jacqui’s collection to help you look fantastic for your moment of Wow! (Pattern of scarf will vary but I guarantee it’ll look great.)

So that’s three winners total for Slim-Fast Plan Day: two getting a coupon for free Slim-Fast products, one getting a fantastic Bindya scarf. (And yes, it’s possible to win both the scarf and a coupon if Random.org declares you to be very lucky!)

To enter: leave a comment below telling me your favorite accessory. (This entry method is mandatory.) Be sure to leave your email address so I can contact you if you’re the winner.

For additional entries – optional, of course (1 per method – leave a separate comment for each):

– Follow Slim-Fast on Twitter and leave a separate comment with your Twitter username.
– Like Slim-Fast on Facebook
– Leave a comment on one of my Women of Wow posts on the Slim-Fast Facebook page (leave a comment here with your FB name)
– Write on the Slim-Fast Facebook Wall that you entered the Slim-Fast Plan Day Giveaway at Losing My Hind with a link back to this post.

Entries will be accepted until Wednesday, March 28 at 11:59pm EDT. One entry per method, for up to five entries total, US residents only. After that date, three winners will be selected at random to receive each of the prizes. Winners will be contacted by email and each will have 48 hours to respond or an alternate winner will be selected.

Full disclosure: This post was created in connection with my appointment as an Ambassador in the Slim-Fast Women of WOW! Program. Visit www.facebook.com/slimfast to join the conversation.

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Filed Under: c25k, sponsored, success · Tagged: , , ,