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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Outerbanks- The details

So in the weeks leading up to our adventure to the Outerbanks, we consulted with Brayden's occupational therapist on how to get protein in his body since that is the main food item he was lacking.  During this time we also faced the daunting task of removing dairy from Brayden.  This was his main source of food so it was very scary to implement.  True to his food jagging (fixating on one food), Brayden switched from daily yogurt drinks to Trader Joe's veggie chips.  That was just about all he would eat.  At this point, our OT came up with a plan.  In the past, rewards have failed with Brayden. He would just become upset that he couldn't eat the foods he had to eat to earn his reward. He loves rewards so we knew this was just a matter of not being capable of meeting our demands.  His OT started even slower.  She made a small booklet showing what happens to our body if we don't eat protein.  She then showed what happened to our bodies when we do.  She then asked Brayden what reward he would most like.  He replied "Ninjago legos", his favorite.  They went through and made pictures of what would constitute a "meal" for purposes of this chart.  Each meal had to include a protein.  Bacon is the only protein Brayden would agree to so every meal had bacon and that was either paired with pancakes or applesauce pouches.  If he ate two meals per day, he received a check mark.  After one week he would get his lego set.  This was incredibly hard for Brayden.  He also had a picture page that showed what to do when he felt like he couldn't eat.  That showed that he had to eat 8 bites to get his check mark.  Well, I'm happy to say he made it.

So guess what we packed a ton of on our trip?  Bacon!  He has another reward chart to do while we are there which includes trying ham (the other meat he was able to eat last year).  So that is our plan for feeding him.  He will have high protein pancakes in the morning with bacon.  Bacon for lunch and dinner, along with his veggie chips, fruit strips, and applesauce pouches.  We are hoping he will try more of the healthy foods we are bringing.

Now as many of you already know, me and my husband primarily eat primal foods on a daily basis and we wanted to maintain this diet on our trip.  Packing enough meat for 5 days seemed like a daunting task.  We went to our local butcher the week before, chose our meats, deep froze them and stored them in brand new coolers we had purchased.  These were five day coolers that weren't meant to stay cold for at least five days.  We then froze a bunch of water bottles and layered them in between the meat.  We added ice up until our ferry departure.  We then had a separate cooler to hold dairy products and the days meat.  The meat cooler was only to be opened once per day.

In addition, we bought an awesome screen house from Lightspeed tents.  I already owned a half dome sun shelter from them and just love the quality of their products.  So the finally detail was well, a bit personal here.  The potty!  With a three year old, squatting can be a bit difficult to teach.  I insisted that she needed to be able to sit to go.  So this is what we rigged.

It's simply a 5 gallon bucket with the bottom cut out.  The top is a toilet lid especially made for these buckets.  After you go, you scoop sand over it.  Just like a litter box!  So how did it work?

Let's see...

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