Breakfast

The first thing D does in the morning besides pooping is demand breakfast. He's hungry all the time so after a night of sleep he must be ravenous! If I wasn't going to make something more elaborate like pancakes then I could at least pour him a quick bowl of cereal or make a pot of oatmeal or cream of wheat for him and his brothers. No more, friends. No more.

Breakfast quickly became the most difficult meal of the day because he wants it as soon as we both wake up, so I have no time to prep anything. But I have found a few great recipes that can be prepped ahead or are easy enough to make in a short amount of time.


1) This non-oatmeal oatmeal from Fresh Planet Flavor here N'Oatmeal Breakfast Bowl.

It has a texture like oatmeal without the oats. It calls for butternut squash puree which is exactly the contents of canned "pumpkin" so you could just use that if you don't have actual butternut squash puree available. The boy ate it!

2) Another take on the N'Oatmeal above is this (about enough for one serving):

Dice half a pear, half an apple, or both together
Just barely cover it with water in a pot and get it boiling until the fruit softens and some of the water steams off.
Add half of a banana
1 tsp cinnamon
Roughly blend it all together with an immersion blender, leaving it a little bit chunky for texture
Add some dessicated coconut and a bit of whatever plant milk you like until it's the consistency you want.


3) One of my and my boys' favorites. I don't remember where we got the recipe but we call them "Mommy's Pancakes".

3 or 4 ripe bananas, mashed well
4 or 5 eggs, whisked (add one more egg than the number of bananas you're using)
a splash of vanilla
a couple dashes of cinnamon
approx. 1/4 cup flax meal to give it some texture (this was my personal touch)

Mix it all together and scoop pancake-size spoonfuls into heated pan with coconut oil.
They're kind of flimsy so take care flipping them over. The kids don't need any help cutting them!
I serve them with real maple syrup, or in D's case, sugar beet syrup because it's high in iron.

4) And finally, eggs are always a quick and easy thing to make. He's so hungry that I pretty much always make him eggs plus one of the recipes above. I usually put in those little cubed bits of ham for more protein and flavor.

Guten Appetit!

A Few On-the-Go Snack Ideas

D is only two and a half which makes dealing with Ulcerative Colitis and eating a Paleo diet a bit more difficult. Toddlers can't always wait to eat between meals and it seems like as soon as we leave the house he asks (yells, really) for something to eat. I used to just pack a container of Cheerios or pretzels, but I can't do that anymore. The harsh truth about this condition and diet is that practically everything has to be made by hand. You can go to a store and find tons of gluten-free stuff. Maybe there's even a gluten-free section. I have yet to see or hear of a Paleo section. So what can you snack on that's Paleo? Plenty of things, like nuts, veggie sticks, fruit, beef jerky. But what about a toddler? Nuts can be dangerous choking hazards at this age, veggie sticks like carrots are too hard for little teeth especially if they don't have all their molars, and beef or turkey jerky are also gagging/choking hazards. In the short time we've been dealing with this diagnosis I have found a few things that are great to keep in my diaper bag...besides tons of diapers, wipes, plastic bags and a few changes of clothes for all those blowouts!

I don't know what parents did before these fruit pouches! I never leave home without at least two. But some do have grains so make sure you get them with fruit and vegetables only. And preferably organic (Bio), if possible.

My kids absolutely LOVE fruit leather. Besides people, Trader Joe's is the one place I really miss from the USA. Thank goodness my parents and in-laws send us care packages full of these fruit leathers.
And of course raisins and cranberries are easy to pack and snack on.

Since we live overseas I can't get to fancy, alternative food stores like Whole Foods which probably has plenty of options for D, so I order a lot of stuff from iherb.com. They ship to our APO address which is something not every online store will do. I really appreciate it! Among other stuff like natural bath and beauty products, they have alternative food products like these bars from KIND. There are other flavors but for now I got these: mango, apple, chia seed. That's all. 

I was just reading that chia is controversial in the Paleo world, so eating them should be kept to a minimum. But with so few options for toddler snacks I'm definitely going to let my boy have these. He already tried one and loved it!

One "solution" that I found for D not being able to eat regular breads was to make mini muffins. They're also the perfect size for snacks. I happened to have the Paleo Slow Cooker by John Chatham even before D's diagnosis, so it's been perfect for finding some good family recipes. I highly recommend it. You guys, this recipe for Zucchini Bread is SO good. It's meant to be made in a slow cooker, so it's really more like spoon bread, but I just half-filled some silicone mini muffin cups from Ikea and baked it that way.

I made my first batch with 1/2 honey, 1/2 maple syrup. Delicious!!

I have muffins ready all the time!

If you have any other great snack ideas for Paleo (or similar) toddlers please let me know!

All the Paleos

The doc's first recommendation after telling us D has Ulcerative Colitis was that he would like us to try the Paleo diet and see if that helps. It's helped his other patients.

I've made lots of Paleo stuff over the years just to (hang on, gotta change another blowout...) make something without regular white flour and sugar. Like, instead of regular muffins I would make Paleo muffins to at least cut out that amount of white stuff from our diet. For those who don't know what it is, a Paleo diet is basically eating only what hunter-gatherers would have eaten before cultivating the land. This includes meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, roots aaaaaaand that's about it. What is not allowed are any dairy products, refined sugar, processed oils, legumes (including peanuts), and any grains including wheat, oats, rice, corn, quinoa and all of the lesser known grains. So that's a lot of no-no's. There are many counter-arguments to Paleo, for example that broccoli didn't exist ages ago, etc., but whatever. This is what the doc is recommending and I think it's good that he wants to work with the diet and not just medication alone.

When I think about it, the Paleo diet is actually more restrictive than Vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free combined. At first I thought, "Well it won't be so hard to switch him to gluten-free pasta and cereals." (Leaning into microphone) WRONG. It's all grains. No pasta or any kind of warm or cold breakfast cereal. This means that literally everything he eats, unless it's a piece of fruit, has to be made from scratch or prepared by >>this gal<<. Obviously I have to cook meat and he's not old enough to chomp on raw vegetables...well, he could but in his case he just sucks the juice out of the carrot and spits out the pulp. I mean, it's a good thing - cooking whole foods from scratch, but, geez, as if I weren't in the kitchen enough already. I can't imagine how this would work if I also had a paying job to manage. It's so time-consuming and something always has to be cooking. My heart goes out to parents who are dual-income earners and have to deal with all this cooking.

We have two other older boys, ages 5 and 8, and so far they have no problems with any foods. So this makes things tricky for D, who is only two and a half. He doesn't understand why he can't eat the stuff he used to eat and why his brothers still can. I don't want to force them into a strict Paleo diet just because their brother has to. Plus we live in Germany! There are bakeries on practically every corner! It's so cruel! I used to be able to go in and buy a loaf of bread and a huge pretzel for the boys to share on the way home. Of course they always ask for something but now I have to ask them how they would feel if everyone got to have something except them. I can't explain to D how eating a pretzel could hurt his tummy (colon). Buuuut, I still buy bread to pack in the big boys' snack boxes for school. Like I said, I can't deprive them of everything. 

I do feel bad, though, because we had three Advent calendars with chocolates inside for each boy, but I had to chuck them. There's no way D would stand for it if his brothers got to open a window everyday and get a chocolate but not him. So, these are some of the little everyday things we're dealing with right now. 

I'd like to share a recipe that I've already made a dozen times because its easy, it's Paleo, and everyone likes it.

It's found here at The Paleo Mom. 

You make the meatballs (easy) and the juices soften and cook the vegetables underneath. The squash is great but I switched to carrots because they're sweeter and easier to peel than a giant squash. Plus my five year old is extremely picky and would sooner eat a carrot than squash.

D loves to dip the meatballs in ketchup, which may not be Paleo because of the sugar, but as our doctor says, "I live in the real world" meaning sometimes you have to make small exceptions, especially when it's a little kid.

It's a great dish to try!

The Diagnosis

It all started back when we were living in Korea (that's a story for another time) when my son, "D", had some blood work done and the docs discovered he was severely anemic. A few weeks later we moved to Germany and once we got settled in we checked in with a new doctor about the anemia and she discovered something else in his blood that set off some red flags. So we gave them a stool sample and there were more red flags. She referred us to a German pediatric gastroenterologist and that's where he got his first colonoscopy (up the booty) and EGD (down the throat) earlier this year. They knew he had some kind of IBD, or Inflammatory Bowel Disease, not to be confused with IBS, which is Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but they didn't know what type for sure. The German doc gave us a medication that was so bitter and horrible that no amount of yogurt or honey could mask the awfulness and he wouldn't take it. Even if he had managed to swallow it I'm sure he would have vomited it right back up. We (meaning me) also had to give him a horse-sized suppository every night which was later shown not to reach the location of the inflammation because it was higher up. So these were not working solutions. A few months later we heard about a new American specialist moving here with the Air Force so we made an appointment with him because 1) second opinion, 2) his office is closer, 3) obviously easier to communicate with, and 4) maybe he had access to other medications that a 2-year old can tolerate. They took more blood and more stool samples and it was enough for this new doctor to want to do his own EGD/colonoscopy to see for himself what was going on inside D's intestines. The day before the procedure, and the same day my parents and grandma flew in to visit, D was on a clear liquid diet and the next morning I took him to the hospital early in the morning. Of course nothing ever happens on schedule in hospitals so the poor boy had to wait two more hours than scheduled. He was crying and miserable and asking for food and water but I couldn't give him any. It was so heartbreaking and honestly made me think of all the refugees traveling for miles with nothing to feed their children. But unlike those poor children at least I had the comfort of knowing his suffering would be over after a few more hours, so it really wasn't so bad.

Anyway...long story long! They did the procedure and determined that D does, in fact, have an IBD. He has Ulcerative Colitis (UC) which is Latin for 'boy makes copious mud". It's a disease that causes inflammation in the rectum and colon and, according to my understanding, is caused by something "off" in the immune system. The only symptom he shows is diarrhea but not like the kind you get when have food poisoning and you're on the toilet thirty times in one day with nothing but poo-water shooting out. Thankfully, D (only) poops anywhere from two to five times a day and it's either runny split-pea soup or like canned dog food. That's as solid as it ever gets. There you have it. Every day for many months earlier this year I had to take his pants outside, sometimes more than once a day, to be hosed off because his diapers could not contain the volume. There were many impromptu baths. There were many pants.

At the follow-up appointment the doctor explained more about what to expect, prescribed a medication that is, hallelujah, flavorless and suggested we order this book to understand more about what's going on.

Your Child with Inflammatory Bowel Disease by North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition

I mean, what a fun Fall read, right? It's probably a good book to get if your child is diagnosed with UC or Crohn Disease.

At our follow-up appointment the doctor said, "Isn't it a great book?!" I was like, "Yeah, if you're a gastroenterologist or something." He also told us that D needs to be on a Paleo diet. Oh.

To be continued...