And the WINNER of the ALL CHINESE COOKBOOK is PASTILLA! Please email me at kaybratt70@hotmail.com to give me your address. You have until July 27 to respond! Thank you, ladies, for participating and stay tuned for more Give-A-Way posts!
I love hearing about your kids so here is the latest giveaway! Comment to this post the following:
1. How old was your child when you brought him/her home?
2. Tell us what they wanted to eat, or what they wouldn’t eat, or something interesting about the food issue when your child came home.
I will do a random drawing on July 20 and the winner will win a “Everything Chinese” cookbook.
P.S. Since I am on vacation, I will be monitoring and approving comments at a couple of times during the day. If you don’t see your comment immediately, don’t worry– it will show as soon as I hook up again!
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
My middle daughter, now 7 years old, was adopted at 13 months. We never had food issues. She loved, loved, loved food. Our travel group would bring me their ziploc bags filled with cheerios, she inhaled noodles, but especially loved seafood. Soon after arriving home, we went to a chinese buffett. Before long—all the wait staff was standing around our table. My daughter was gobbling down crab legs faster than I could crack them open and yelling “more, more!”
My first daughter from China had come from a poor, rural and isolated orphanage. Her only issue with food was getting enough of it! I wondered how she would respond to us as her new family, but once we took her to the breakfast buffet, we were hers! She was 23 months at adoption with a cleft lip (repaired) and cleft palate (unrepaired). It certainly didn’t slow down her eating. She continued to have a good appetite once we got home. Where I used to split a can of soup among my three children, Cami needed her own can!
Only a week ago we returned from our trip to China to adopt Dang Nan, age 34 months. She had lived in foster home, and judging from baby photos, food was never in shortage for her. She would just as soon play as eat. She is not worried about where her next meal will come from. But she is a little disappointed, I’m sure, that many of her favorite tastes and tidbits are gone. I would love to have a cookbook that could tell me how to successfully prepare some of the traditional foods from China!
We brought Carmen home just three weeks short of three years old in 2005. I have two older children and my standard statement had always been that a child will eat when they are hungry, so I have never forced food on a child. I don’t offer junky snacks if they choose to not eat their meal, but food was pretty much a nonissue in our home. Then comes Carmen. She had no stop mechanism for food. She would literally eat ANYTHING we gave her. Onions, peppers, squash….things no typical three year old would touch. We also had to tell her when she had enough, because she simply didn’t know. What a victory it was when she finally started being picky! It’s a joy to see her REFUSE something! She loves to help me in the kitchen and now that she is six, being able to start cooking Chinese food with her would be a big joy!
This is a good one! When we went to China to get our 19-month-old we discovered that she had severe brain damage and long story short – we decided to turn down the referral. 5 days later we were given Presley who was 13 months old. We joke that we were given the biggest healthiest baby in China (Lexi was only 12.5 pounds at 19 months)!! Presley ate everything and anything that was given to her. That first morning at breakfast she was soooo happy! She ate more than I did. Her favorite thing was fruit. To this day she loves food. She is on the 90th percentil for weight and 95 for height. The doctor thinks she will be 5′10″ to 6″ tall!!! So yep, I Chinese cookbook would be great for us. I can guarantee that she will definitely eat what I make from it!!
My amazing little girl, Ruby Cate Pei Mu, was first put in my arms at 14 months old. She is now nearly 5 years old come September & I honestly can’t remember where the time went! What I DO KNOW is that during all this time, THIS KID HAS EATEN her share of some FOOD! hehe
Thanks for posting these questions, brings me back to some wonderful memories Kay! THANKS!
While in China Ruby ate noodles, noodles & oh yeah, more noodles! She adored Quaker instant oatmeal (that I had originally brought for me but who knew it would be her breakfast of choice after her first taste of it!) and never once touched a bottle. No sir, not for my girl, she wanted TEA! Still, to this day, we have TEA with breakfast religiously. It’s adorable & the hotter the better… ! We’re Italian so Ruby is very used to eating things that most kids would turn their noses up at: pasta fagiole, veggie lasagna, pepper cheese steak risotto, potato gnocchi’s, ricotta cake, etc… The times we’ve gone out to a Chinese Restaurant, her first choice is noodles & anything fish, ADORES HADDOCK! Since I cook most everything from scratch, her new favorite dish is my Chicken & mushroom noodle soup… every time I make it she will slurp down two bowls with some garlic & butter crutons on the side! hehehe I have found that one of the ONLY things she’s not too crazy about is PB&J, she’ll take just a PB sandwich please, HOLD THE JELLY! She also isn’t a fan of peas, but LOVES LIMA BEANS! My silly little girl is growing up before my eyes & I could not be happier if I, myself, was dipped in jelly!
We picked Ricky (cleft lip/palate) up in Chongqing China (Fuling SWI) in January 2008 at 16 1/2 months old. He was 17 lbs. He didn’t want anything to do with us until we fed him Cheerios as we walked through the SWI. His love affair with food started and hasn’t stopped. He was eating so much in China I placed a call to our dr asking if this was normal – she said just to feed him. He eats more than our bio 8 year old daughter.
He is still tiny – about 30 lbs at 34 months. He eats everything from Lox to asparagus. He loves chinese dumplings and gets real excited to have them.
Our first daughter was 9 months at adoption. She had no problem taking a bottle and eating baby food and then on to table food at the appropriate time. She now has oral sensory issues, such as gagging and not letting food touch her lips. She is six.
Our second daughter was 10 months at adoption. She would not take a bottle right away. She did not eat solid food until 16 months or so. Not even baby food, even though we offered it daily. For a few years, she had issues related to only having liquid for 16 months. Now she will drink more than she eats. If we are not careful, she will drink too much water and be too full for food. We have to be VERY careful about giving her juice, etc. as she will make this her meal. She is four.
Our third daughter was 13 years at adoption and turned 14 years old while we were in China. We are smack-dab in the middle of some moderate to severe food issues with her and we are seeing that it is getting worse. She’s been in our family for almost six months. At first she was picky. Now she eats just about anything I serve. I tried to balance out cooking our normal food and providing her with stuff she liked. (noodles, pork, rice). I find when I serve something that is closer to what she is used to, she clicks into “orphan” mode and scarfs it all down, going back to her old manners (slurping, spitting, burying her face in the bowl). I am having a hard time balancing her physical need for food with her emotional need for food. If we let her go, she out-eats my 200 lb. husband. If I control her portions to what would be normal for her size and age, she gets hungry (even with in-between snacks) and then regresses and has a stomach ache. She has to stuff herself to feel full, but she does not have the switch to tell her when she is full. Just last night, I pulled out all of my adoption books and started to make a plan. I don’t necessarily want her walking around the house with bags of snacks or having food in a bowl in her room, but my books say that this will teach her that she will always have food and we will meet her needs.
On a lighter note, the cook book would great to have so I could whip up some familiar foods for our new teen.
We brought our daughter home from Hunan (Yiyang SWI) at 16 months. She loves to eat but would turn a very cold shoulder to ice cream (and most other cold food) for the first few months home. She loves to eat salsa though and will scoop it up with a spoon right into her mouth!!
When my son came home at 18 months from a very poor orphanage not very experienced in international adoption, and in a malnourished state, he had never had anything but a hot bottle with formula and no rice cereal. When we started him on baby food, it was pure torture. He didn’t know how to eat. We finally made a breakthrough after about a month home by having him eat finger foods. He then learned how to eat baby food off a spoon, and then moved on from there. At almost 3, he is learning how to use his fork. After he learned how to eat, he used to eat everything. Now, at almost 18 months home, he is getting picky and only wanting to eat certain things which is fine with me. I like him to have preferences! He still will eat some fruits and veggies, just not all. And that is fine since that is normal for his age.
Olivia Grace AiMan was 18 months when we were finally united with her. Her favorite food was congee and noodles, which she still loves at almost 6 years old. Her sister, Sophie MeiXu was also 18 months old when we adopted her. Thought tiny she ate (and still eats) like a truck driver! I don’t know where she puts it all! She will eat anything. That being said, both girls still prefer Chinese food (the authentic kind in restaurants where I am one of the only – if not the only – caucasian there!
)
On a side note, I hope you are having fun on your vacation!
Our son Davian Hongchuan was adopted this year in January. We arrived home with him 5 months ago (on his 3rd birthday). Davian refuses to eat any kind of bread! He will ferociously devour the lunchmeats inside his sandwich but leaves the bread on the plate. He slurps his food (soups, noodles, congee etc…) and will try to slurp up anything that can be slurped! A true little Chinese fellow
We’d love a Chinese cookbook to help us with more options when preparing foods for Davian!
We adopted our first daughter in 2006 at 22 mths. We knew nothing and just gave her what we ate. The IA doctor asked us, ” have we tried chinese food.?” We said no. Well gee go figure. We should have known. We adopted our second daughter in 2008 at 21 months. This time around we knew enough to have chinese foods and restauraunt numbers on hand!! We are now waiting for our third daughter and she will be around 15 mths at adoption. Hopefully we will have it down by now….
My daughter was 10.5 months. She had been malnourished to the point that her belly had begun to swell, and had significant protein and calcium deficiencies. She was very fussy about what she would eat and would only accept formula, rice cereal and white bread/crackers for her first two years.
As hungry as she was and as much as she needed nutrition though, she would not accept a bottle if anyone was near. We had to give her a bottle and stand a few feet away before she would start to drink. If we came near her, she would start to cry and would toss it away. Every single time. No matter how hungry or thirsty she was.
Attachment therapist strongly suggest that to bond, holding the bottle for a RAD child is vital, so after a few months when the worst of the malnutrition was over, I tried several times (once from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. one day, just trying to get her to drink with me holding just the corner, not even with her in my lap) — but she would not relent, and screamed so furiously I felt to continue would be to further traumatize her. It was clear it wasn’t worth putting her through the angst or flashbacks a “touched bottle” was causing — I wondered if an orphanage worker had snatched a bottle away from her roughly and injured her somehow in the process, which she remembered.
When I read your book, I realized that my envisioned scenario was probably pretty accurate.
It was really hard —
Daughter #1: Molly Mei-Yin, adopted @ 11 months would eat nothing & we could hardly get her to drink at all while we were in China. She wouldn’t put ANYTHING at all in her mouth. When we got home, we finally got her to drink formula & that’s it. Gradually & I mean very gradually, we got her to eat baby food. She was on formula & baby food for a long, long time & finally started eating finger foods at probably 18 months.
Daughter #2: Annie Xiao Li, adopted @ 11 months, was not used to solid foods, but while in China, we got her interested in yogurt, bananas & unfortunately french fries (still one of her favorites). She drank formula, juice, water & lots of tea.
Daughter #3: Zoey Yong Xi, adopted @ 10 months (with no teeth at all) drank & ate everything while we were in China. She absolutely loved fried rice from Lucy’s by the White Swan.
Daughter #4: Mary Su Yuan, adopted @ 29 months, loved EVERYTHING. She couldn’t get enough food while we were in China with her. She cried if she started to see the bottom of her rice bowl. She demanded it be filled promptly. The memory of the “never ending rice bowl” makes me chuckle.
All four of the girls are now wonderful eaters, their favorite definitely being Chinese cuisine. (ours, too). They all love vegetables (I’m all for that), noodles, rice, Chinese dumplings, homemade soups, homemade eggrolls & all kinds of fruit (my favorite). They all love to help me cook meals: it’s a riot with everyone jockeying for position to “help mom make dinner” & everyone trying to read the recipes to me at the same time.
Kay, you & your family have a great vacation. Our daughter, Mary Su Yuan was from the orphanage depicted in “Silent Tears” – great book, by the way. My almost 12 yr. old is now reading it & loves it.
Hi! Our first adopted child (at 10 months), Katelyn XianYun, would not eat for five days after we met her in China! It was very frustrating. After a couple days I ended up feeding her with a dropper from one of our medicines that we had brought and when she got used to that, moved on to a syringe-type thing. Finally, she was up to bottles by the time we came home. She ended up having some sensory/feeding issues which resolved with therapy. Nowadays, she is a light eater and fairly picky. She loves broccoli, mandarin oranges, cantalope, and calls herself “mommy’s chocolate girl” (because we are the two in our house who love chocolate the most!) Our son Braden Youjun came home at 2 years 7 months and we were told his favorite food was fish stew and we had a picture of him eating a banana. He is a good, but very slow eater and I would say his favorite foods are seafood, especially shrimp and he loves fruit, especially bananas and watermelon (I swear he would a whole one if we let him!) [Kay--was fish stew on the "menu" at the SWI???]
My daughter came home at 9 months from China. She loved rice porridge and the savory egg flan dish in China. She liked spicy food then but doesn’t like it now.
My son came home at 14 months. I was living in Japan and had been spending the morning and lunch with him at his orphanage for about 2 months before my foster care approval came through. His orphanage had fantastic food. All the children were from 1-24 months old but my son’s meal trays always had at least 6 different dishes. Whenever kids didn’t like anything they would put it in the soup and then usually the kids would eat it! My son was known as a picky eater. The day he came home, he ate almost nothing and the next day it became obvious that he had the measles!! He ate almost nothing for the next couple of days. When he got better, he was starving and he ate and ate and has never stopped. He loves all food except really sweet stuff. Also the first summer he was with me, I came home to the US on vacation and he hated American baby food. That’s when I realized that most American baby food is sweet while Japanese baby food is salty. I wish that I had saved some of the jars of baby food. I bought Gerber and it had the same baby picture on it as here – but the flavors were things like “Scallop Gratin” and “Sardine and Burdock”!
Dd was 16 mos old. Refused to eat or drink for several days. Finally ate watermelon in great quantities. As she got older she began refusing to eat anything mushy or white. Avoids rice like the plague.
We are home almost 9 months with Chris (6) and Amy (5) from Taiwan. They are children that LOVE to eat. Unfortunately, they were given so much candy and soda that their teeth rotted and we had to have most of them pulled. Since we are home, I’ve been giving them fruits and vegetables and they love it. It took them a few months until they were willing to try things like cheese and bread. They will try anything and will eat most anything. I’ve been encouraging them to help me cook and they know the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods now. It’s a good thing they are so active because of the amounts of food they can devour.
You already know about Ruthie & Abby, so I’ll give you Joanna’s information.
She was 8-1/2 years old when we adopted her, and she struggled very much with American food at the beginning. She always loved fresh fruit, and that was definitely a lifesaver. Being from Hunan, she is very spicy in her eating habits, and she loves salsa and jalapenos – the hotter the better! Recently she told me that she now likes both Chinese and American food, which has been a sigh of relief to her mom. The Panda Express (Chinese food chain) is her very favorite place to eat. BTW, the Panda is Ruthie & Abby’s favorite eating place too! Abby eats EVERYTHING, and Ruthie is a very good eater – just a little pickier than Abby.
Our youngest Son is four. He has been home from China one week! He is from the Northern most area of China and has Tibetian ancestery according to orphanage, his hair is light brown and face is heart shaped, very beautiful to us! He was in Special Need Hospital SWI since leaving Hospital at ten days old. At four years old he weights just 11kg and is very obviously malnoursihed, he was also diagnosed with rickets complete with the sweats and tremors. He is drinking Good Start 2 Toddler Formula along with a prescribed weight gainer additive and he is holding his body straighter and eyes eyes are more open now. We focused on getting him better hydrated as quickly as possible while still in China. He eats about four bites and then will not swallow the final one for a really long time as if he is saving it, or doesn’t expect more for a long time. He is not self feeding but will eat enthusiastically when Mom feeds him. He won’t swallow rice but enjoys noodles and seems to crave meat. He enjoys corn on the cob. He can eat two bananas at a time but spits cheese out into my hand. Likes yogurt though and surprisingly enjoys fresh squeezed orange juice with the pulp in and can devour a whole order of little ceasar’s mild wings grinning wide. I’ve been making pastas, noodles and beef or chicken for him often, He resists diced or pureed tomatoes and actually shudders at the smell of someone else eating it but wants ketchup with diced boiled chicken just like his older brother by eleven months, who came home from Korea in 2005,
Our first daughter was adopted at 15 months old from Jiangxi Province. She screamed her head off when first handed to us and only stopped when we got back to the hotel and offered her a handful of cheerios. Then, she was quite content to be with us. She also loved very hot bottles and would slurp them down faster than I even thought was possible. She sucked so hard that the entire bottle liner would wind up vacuumed up into the nipple. At the breakfast buffet, she would eat plate after plate of food. And, she grazed all day long. When she came to us, she clearly hadn’t had enough to eat. Her little belly had the distended look of someone malnourished. About two weeks after we got home, we found out why she was so hungry. When I changed a dirty diaper, I was greeted by a 10-inch long white worm, which was still alive and moving! My poor baby was so hungry because the parasites in her tummy were stealing all of her food. After we evicted them, her eating normalized.
Our second daughter was adopted at 13 months old from a very poor, rural orpahange in Gansu Province, where international adoption is (was?) rare. She really only wanted formula, congee, noodles, or french fries (with ketchup). She’s now 3 and would live on strawberries alone, if she could.
Our third child, a son, was adopted from Guangxi Province at 23 months old. He loves spicy food and devoured entire cannisters of shrimp-flavored potato chips while we were in China. Now that he’s been home for almost 10 months, he has become a true American. His favorite foods are french fries and pizza! And, he’s never met a piece of chocolate that he didn’t love. Don’t worry though, he only gets those foods on special occasions.
I’d love to win the cookbook so I could try to add more Chinese recipes to my weekly menus.
Our Li’l Empress was a itty bitty 14 months old when we returned home from China. While with us in China, she anything and everything we put in front of her. She especially loved dumplings, ice cream, broccoli, yogurt, and watermelon. At home, she held on to the love for all those things. And has added tons of new stuff almost weekly. However, she has consistently had a “take it or leave it” attitude about meats, pizza, donuts, and “toddler foods” as marketed by Gerber, Beechnut, etc.
1st adoption was our daughter who came home at 11months and has always LOVED rice more then anything in the world. Only likes apples for fruit and green beans for veggies. She would eat bananas when she first came home but ended that quickly. She came from Fuzhou Jiangxi.
2nd adoption was our son at age 20mos. He hated rice and only wanted noodles and juice. He still loves noodles but will now at least eat rice. He was not picky at all eating fruits and veggies no problem and still eats various fruits and veggies. He is from Jingmen Hubei
3rd adoption is our daughter I just arrived home with about 10 days ago and she turned 14 while in China. She loves LOVES hot spicy food—noodles, veggies. Not a huge meat eater yet. At home I’ve been using a hot spicy chinese sauce in a pan with onions,green peppers and mushrooms and she loves it. She loves oranges and strawberries. She IS trying food here—pizza, spaghetti, she ate a McChicken sandwich at McD’s……. she likes ice cream alot. She has a bottle of spicy hot sauce that she will put on top of sandwiches,pizza etc…..this seems to help. She likes rice, but noodles more. The first few days at home she only ate spicy cup o noodle for bkfst but has since ate scrambled eggs and cereal. She loves pringles and clearly had them at the orphanage somehow because this was what she wanted at the store and she knew exactly what they were!! She is from Luoyang Henan.
If I don’t win the cookbook I think I’ll find a copy to buy—looks like a great one for us to have around!!
Patty
Mom to 5 now, 3 from China!!
My name is Terry and I joined the Mifan Mommy Club this morning. Our little girl is not home yet. I hope this ok?
My husband and I are waiting for LOA. We expect it anyday now. The little girl we are adopting is 4.5 and deaf. I am a sign language interpreter so this is a perfect match for our family.
This is our second attempt at adopting. The first one fell through just before LOA. The orphange director let a local family come in, foster her and adopt her out without telling the CCAA. She was a very sweet calm little girl and I wonder why he let her be adopted out when he knew we were coming for her shortly. I hope a family really did adopt her and that she is being loved and cared for.
We hear our waiting daugher Mia Sun loves noodles, cannot dress herself or feed herself. She has not been taught any communication, and does not attend school. The foster mom does everything for her. Mia Sun will need a lot of OT when she get home so she can learn to do things by herself. We are going to have our hands full when get her home. We can’t wait!
That’s our story,
Terry
My little shoe princess, Anna, was 19 months old when she was handed to me and 20 months old when we came home. In China she would eat anything we placed in front of her, drinking was her issue. It wasn’t until we got back tot he states that she drank anything other than water. And she wanted the water from the drinking glass from the hotel’s bathroom.
She still will eat pretty much anything. But her favorite foods are chicken, noodles, rice, pizza, egg drop soup, pretty much any vegetable and ice cream. At 19 months she was just over 19 lbs, now at almost 4 she tips the scales at 32 lbs. She can eat more than anyone could think possible for such a little girl.
Our daughter was 22 months when we adopted her and she would only eat cheerios . . . even now 7 months later, she doesn’t eat much. It’s been getting much better in the last month and so we are very happy. Our first daughter was adopted at 11 months and ate everything in site – she’s now almost 4 and is a great eater!