Journal Excerpt

My mom cooked some bitter melon the other day, and since E always wants to eat whatever is going into someone else’s mouth at that moment, we gave some to her. She spit it out and said “no spicy” and kept trying to rub the taste off her tongue until we gave her some milk to wash it out.

Now all I have to do if I don’t want her to eat something is use the magic word. When she was whining for a bottle of salad dressing on the table today I told her it was spicy. She paused for a moment and continued eating without another sound.


The other day we were watching a thunderstorm outside and she said she wanted to “hug rain. Hug rain.” She kept holding out her arms towards the window while I told her if she tried to hug it she would get very, very wet. She was quiet for a moment and then turned and said very seriously, “rain shy.”