What Does Hui-Hui Eat?

Hui-Hui's nursery is decorated in a "Classic Pooh" theme. Actually "nursery" isn't the right word really. The room that was to be, and still may be Kai's room in the future is really more of a playroom. His crib is next to our bed in our room. The crib is decked out in all the "Classic Pooh" swag you can imagine: bumpers, blankets, ruffles, and a good number of the inhabitants of The Hundred Acre Woods.

I love Winnie-The-Pooh. And by that, I mean A.A. Milne's original books. Disney did an OK job of the first Pooh films, but like everything else Disney touches it becomes a corporate money machine, so I'll stick to my little hardbacks of the original text. I read these books countless times to my older sons, and can't wait to start reading them to Hui-Hui.

I think everybody possesses characteristics of all the inhabitants of The Hundred Acre Woods. Hui-Hui is a lot like Winnie-The-Pooh, in that he is basically happy most of the time. But like Piglet he is A Very Small Animal and can be easily intimidated. And he has a number of qualities of Tigger too. Hui-Hui has come along a little later in our family's history; Tigger didn't show up until chapter two of the second book:
In Which
Tigger Comes To The Forest And Has Breakfast

Pooh is quite concerned that Tigger might eat all his honey, but as it turns out Tiggers like everything except honey.

That is until Tigger tries a bunch of other things that the other characters eat. He's certain that he likes haycorns best, what Piglet eats, until he tries them. Then thistles, what Eeyore eats, but Tiggers don't like those either.

This has been a bit like finding out what a Hui-Hui eats is like. Talk about fussy! And now we are trying to sneak a variety of medicines and vitamins into him. We thought he was picky about food before! Don't try hiding a little bit of medicine in his bowl!

Hui-Hui has giardia (click here to see the CDC page) so we are concerned about dehydration, etc. I tried giving him some diluted instant GatorAid in a sippy cup. You should have seen the face! Not good. Handed me back the cup, shook his head and waved me off with his hand. Tina brought home some unflavored Pedialyte. He's not drinking that either. I tasted it, tastes like very slightly salty water. He just looks at us suspiciously. He won't take a bottle or sippy cup with milk or formula. He was drinking formula from a bottle in China, but has refused it since we've returned. Because we're concerned about his size and nutrition we also gave PediaSure a try - "Talk To The Hand".

In the food department we've tried a few variations on pasta: spaghetti, mac&cheese, crab fettucini. He'll eat the skinny noodles and the sauce, but any lumpy stuff that would require chewing comes back out with a disgusted look. The mac&cheese was the fancy little "Annie's" brand shells. He made a valiant attempt at these but didn't really get very far.

So far we've got a few things we know he'll eat: oatmeal with applesauce in it, Top Ramen with egg and yams, mashed potatoes with yams and shredded chicken, and Tina's chicken-rice soup. He will also eat a number of different jarred baby foods, but those are such nasty (not to mention expensive) things to feed a kid.

Tina tried giving him oatmeal today with his iron supplement in it. Wasted. Dinner was yams with some milk and formula and his giardia medicine. Wasted.

Since he has been having more frequent loose BM's, (more like diarrhea) a symptom of giardia, we are concerned about dehydration. So we tried whipping up a modification of the BRAT diet (BRAT is an old pediatric acronym we remember from when the Big Boys were little, it stands for Bananas, Rice, Apples, Toast and is used for diarrhea), we made rice cereal using Pedialyte for the liquid, and added applesauce and mashed bananas. Hui-Hui definitely does not like that! At least we didn't waste another shot of expensive meds in it!

So Tina cranked out a plain bowl of oatmeal with applesauce (actually she did smuggle a bit of vanilla PediaSure into this) and he ate it. Of course it was going on 8:00 PM by this time so he was probably getting pretty hungry.

I did get quite a bit of water into him at bath time too. NOT bath water either! Which has been an ongoing battle. Now I keep a sippy cup with clean water with us during the bath and poke it in his mouth while he works on all of his pouring experiments. After his bath we let him have a Dixie cup and unlimited access to a running tap, so I think he went to bed pretty well hydrated.

We finally decided to just force the giardia meds down his throat. We figured this was going to be the only way we could make sure he got it. So I held him and Tina shot it into his mouth with a syringe. I hate making babies cry. And this guy just seems like he's gone through enough already. But he got over it quickly and we moved on. Now it's just three times a day for the next week. I'm guessing he's going to get better at fighting us off.

So do you remember what Tiggers do eat?



Roo's "Strengthening Medicine": Extract Of Malt! Which Roo hates!

Okay, and so you'll know we aren't too freaked out about all this, here's a picture of Hui-Hui eating Top Ramen:

When it's something he likes, he packs it away.

And some advice: don't turn your back on an eager toddler when you're filling a bath! I distracted Tina for a split second and Hui-Hui climbed over the side of the tub as it was filling and slid in fully dressed! We were both in the bathroom with him!


He actually thought this was pretty funny!