The-Courier-recoveringnoah

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Sugar.

Who knew that five little letters could wreck such havoc?

As I've mentioned before, Noah has a terrible shirt chewing habit. I can't quite remember when it all started, but we all noticed that it STOPPED completely when we were in Austin. The only thing that was really different was his diet - since we were living out of a hotel for a week. When we got home, we racked our brains to figure out what it was.... what food triggered Noah' s shirt chewing.

We were home about 2 days when Noah started chewing again. Agave Nectar. Sim had put agave nectar on Noah's waffles. We took the agave nectar out of his diet and the next day, the chewing decreased. A few days later, I gave him a peanut butter and jelly rice cake. He started shirt chewing. It had to have been the jelly.. which goes to show that just because it's organic or natural doesn't mean it's good for you. So, we took that out of his diet and then today... well, let's just say I had a weak moment. Noah had his first ever donut today. I have no idea what possessed me to buy a donut, except that they were calling my name from behind the glass case. And I was hungry.. and I completely caved. Guess what Noah's doing right now? (Oh, and he scarfed the donut down in 5 seconds flat). He's chewing up his $15.00 Mardel shirt that I bought the other day.

I'm feel so defeated. I'm glad we've found the culprit, but I hate having to do the sugar-free diet again. Granted, we try to stay away from high fructose corn syrup and things (well, Eli gets lots of the forbidden treats) and we use either sugar substitutes, like agave nectar, or only use organic sugar, but I think we're just going to have to go cold-turkey and completely wipe all forms of sugar out of the house. Hey, maybe I can finally lose those 10 pounds I've been trying 4 years to lose. Glass half-full. Glass half-full. (Christine, I think I'm going to have to read the Feast without Yeast book).

It's also really wild to see how quickly Noah's behavior changed after inhaling the donut. Within 3 minutes he was whiny and weepy. He started banging on the fridge and throwing himself on the kitchen floor and rolling around and whining. I cannot believe I did that to him.

We have friends coming up from Irving today. They'll be here in about an hour and I'm so mad at myself right now. I've been bragging about how much progress Noah has made and they're really anxious to see it. They have a 6 year old son with autism, too, and I really wanted them to see how much Noah has changed since they last saw him. And it only took 5 seconds to completely ruin it all. Aaargh. Lesson learned. Lesson seriously learned.

Noah's Mom