Here is a picture of my darling when I adopted her in 2000. Her squinty eyes (crossed eyes) are easily seen in this photo.





While I was in the orphanage, I asked Natasha's caretaker what she ate during the day. This list was just a little sad; I still remember that dinner was sweet tea with bread and butter. Lunch was typically soup. The amount of food was limited and there was little variety.


The first meal that I fed to Natasha as her mother was a McDonald's Happy Meal.


Quick side note... I have heard that 40% of McDonald's profits come from Happy Meals.


We were running around Kharkiv getting my daughter's paperwork (birth certificate and passport) and stopped to get some food. McDonald's was close and quick. My translator advised me to keep Natasha at the orphanage while we chased this paperwork after I received the adoption decree. I just couldn't do this. I wanted my daughter.


So here I was sitting in McDonald's with my daughter.


I sat the hamburger in front of Natasha and watched. She stared at the hamburger and I am pretty sure she had never seen anything like it before. She started pulling the hamburger apart and ate the pickles. She put the meat and bread off to the side. Then she smelled her french fries.


She started stuffing in so many fries (with both hands) into her mouth that all the food came back out. She was trying to put the food into her mouth then swallowing without chewing. And she didn't seem to know what a full mouth felt like. At 3.5 years of age she couldn't chew. Wow!


At this point, I started thinking about Natasha's diet at the orphanage. And this behavior started making sense. I realized that I would have to become her eating coach literally. "Natasha, Chew, Chew, Chew, Chew, Chew, Swallow."


There were so many different textures in food to explore. Natasha ate a lot of soup her first 6 months home while I started introducing her to other foods. Black bean soup was her favorite. And for about a year, I thought she was going to be a vegetarian. Natasha wanted her soup and salad and apples and pears and carrots and broccoli and oranges.


And later I learned that Natasha did know how to chew crusty bread. It was just everything else that she felt like she needed to inhale. And still later I figured out her Sensory Integration issues included not just physical movement but also her eating behaviors. But that is for another blog.