Eva and Her Food

Many of you know about Eva's obsession with food.  For those who do not, I'll share a bit with you.  When we met Eva on September 12, 2006, she was a tiny girl.  She weighed about 14 pounds at 12 months.  She had no problems putting away the bottles or the food while we were all in Nanchang.  In fact, I was surprised by Eva's excitement at every meal or bottle feeding.  I was quite pleased that she did not grieve to the point of abstaining from food.  

Eva's favorite place to be...the high chair.

 Once we arrived home, her obsession with food became obvious.  At every bottle feeding, she was obviously quite anxious.  Anytime someone was in the kitchen, she wanted to be there in case there was food.  I had to resort putting her in the high chair while I made meals because she could get hurt crawling around in my narrow, galley-like kitchen.  Eva would then sit in the high chair, rocking back and forth, moaning a certain chant until I placed her food in front of her.  She would stress me out while she was stressing out about her food.  If we were out at a soccer game, she'd delightfully stare at anyone eating food.  She could not take her eyes off that food.  Eva was easily out-eating my other children, by speed and amount.  I had to limit her intake for fear that she'd get sick.  She quickly because known as Pudgy Eva.

Eva has gotten so much better over the last 4 years.  She's less anxious about food, but it is still obvious that food means a lot to her.  She occasionally takes someone's candy without asking.  She giggles when she knows she is getting some ridiculously rich chocolate treat.  While I was in China in February, she helped herself to the pantry while Mike was working here at home.  Apparently, she's better at opening up boxes of crackers than Jack?  Then, while going through some of her school (we attend a co-op once a week), I found some of her papers.  The first or second week of co-op they were studying the letter "M".  Of course, the children made a letter "M" our of marshmallows!  What a delight!  What fun!  How delicious!

Eva's paper is on the left, Joy's on the red, of course.

After about 2 weeks, Eva ate the marshmallows off her paper, glue and all.  I guess all it needed was a little saliva to make them soft again, which is kind of scary in itself.  I quickly looked for her letter "P" paper.  Luckily all the popcorn was still glued on.