What to add next?

The broccoli, rice and chicken soup I made last night was amazingly flavorful and delicious. I never would have believed a 3-ingredient soup flavored with only salt and pepper would be so good. Everyone loved it; especially Baby E.

I'll be posting the recipe later on my new food blog: Restricted Gourmet.

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I kept thinking about upgrading to Blogger Beta, but I'm just not sure I want to do that with this blog yet. Then I realized that the main reason I really wanted the tags was so that people could easily find all the recipes I've posted. That has an easy solution; I'm just going to copy them all over to my new blog where I can label and tag them to my heart's content.

I'd really like Restricted Gourmet to become a resource for people with food restrictions to get recipes and information on working around the foods they can't eat. It will be a combination of actual recipes and also suggestions about how to work around dietary restrictions and alter recipes, what ingredients to substitute, how to get a desired result with unusual methods, etc.

With this new blog I envision taking requests to find or develop recipes for special dietary needs, and posting them on the blog as I come up with them. If that works, eventually it would be much the way Ask Moxie works, but with food and allergy types of questions instead of parenting questions. I'm already doing some of that one-on-one, so it would be nice to have a place to post ideas and recipes where they'll benefit more than one person.

I'm hoping the readers will make their own contributions and suggestions, help test recipes, and report back on how the recipes worked for them and any changes they made.

For now, though, I'll probably just be going through my archives and posting the recipes I've already posted here on the new blog. I'll also post the new recipes I come up with over there.

I don't want to get in over my head, so I'm not really making any goals or commitments about how often I'll post there. For now, it's mainly just a place to put the food and recipe stuff where it will be easier to navigate and use.

Baby E slept through the night again last night, this time from around 11 to 8:30. Hooray!

She still seems to be doing well with the restriction diet, except for a couple of things:

First, she's still picking at her ears quite a bit. Maybe she's just fascinated with them; maybe she likes to play with them; maybe they're bothering her because she's teething. I don't know.

Secondly, and more concerning, she's not having good potty output. I'm worried that she's not getting enough fluids.

She'll drink only water, and is taking maybe an ounce or two of my milk in a bottle or cup per day. That wouldn't be a concern, except that I think she's not getting enough water even though we're constantly offering it to her and she always has a sippy cup available.

Baby E is not having much urine output at all, and she's only having bowel movements every other day--many of which just look like a solid pile of brown rice.

Not only has she significantly cut down on her fluids, but I was realizing that almost all the foods I'm giving her tend to create more solid bowels. She ate three bananas yesterday, and lots of rice. She's also eating the pears, chicken and broccoli, but the bananas are certainly her favorite.

Today is day 4, and I am planning to add another food. I think it should probably be a vegetable, since we already have two fruits and only one vegetable.

I was going to make it celery, but she doesn't like celery much. To get any real benefit from the new food, she needs to actually eat it. So I'm thinking maybe butternut squash. It is high in fiber and I'm pretty sure she'll eat it in good quantities. But I'm not sure if it will help the current issues or not. Does anyone know what foods are good for that?

I'm also wondering if I should try another grain instead of the brown rice for a few days, and see if that makes a difference.

I think I'll call her pediatrician today and see if I can get some advice. Maybe the allergist too.

Since she's not really drinking any of the milk I'm pumping and showing absolutely no interest in nursing, I'm thinking I may stop pumping if something hasn't changed by the beginning of the week.

Today it's been a week since she started the nursing strike, and on Sunday it will be a week since she last nursed at all. If she was actually drinking the milk I was pumping, I'd probably keep pumping for a while. But at this point I'm not sure she's going to do that, and it's seeming less likely that she'll start nursing again.

Actually, I'm not sure if I'll stop completely or just take it down to 2-3 times a day. I'll probably keep doing it at least a couple of times a day for a while just for my own comfort, if nothing else. It's a big change to go from nursing every 3-4 hours during the day and 1-3 times at night most days, to nothing.

I think I'll still stay on her diet for at least a month or so just in case she changes her mind. I'd hate to have her asking to nurse and have to say no because I've eaten something that might be a problem for her.