My New Little Chef

My children have never shown an interest in cooking.  On a rare occasion Bailey would ask for us to make something just to wander off five minutes later leaving me in the kitchen on my own.  She just never had time.  When we learned that she could no longer eat, I thought maybe it was a blessing that she had no interest in the kitchen.  I even remember a conversation we had.  She wondered what she would do when she grew up and got married if she still could not eat.  How would she feed her husband and kids.  I told her if her husband was worthy of her, he could cook for himself and the kids.  That settles that.

But lately the oddest thing has happened.  Now that Bailey can not eat, she constantly wants to cook.  She make quesadillas for her brother and his girlfriend.  She helps cook dinner and she serves the food, actually putting the food on the plates for each member of the family that is home for dinner.  Tomorrow she is baking a cake for her Dad's birthday.  Tonight she made chocolate chip cookies.  And all the while she cannot even try a bite.  Not a lick or a taste.  I just don't get it.

If I could not eat, I would not step foot near the kitchen.  I would probably flee the house to escape the smell of food.  And yet, she sticks herself right in the thick of it.  She so much wants to be a part of what she can no longer have.....  

This is how Bailey eats.  There is an IV pole that sits beside her bed.  A bag of formula hangs from the pole and a pump sends formula through a tube that runs from her abdomen into her stomach.  The formula flows in at 150 ml an hour.  That works out to about 12 oz of formula per hour.  The IV pole travels.  During the day she may drag it to the homeschool area to feed while she works or to the tv room while she watches cartoons.  Two days a week we stuff the formula bag and the pump into a backpack and she wears the pump to her classroom in the local elementary school.  As she sits beside her peers, her feed flows giving her the needed nutrients to help her make it through the day.  It takes two hours to get through a meal.  She tried to drink the formula in the beginning but it hurts her throat so the feeding tube was necessary.  

And yet, she steps into the kitchen and bakes cookies.  She moves room to room in the house delivering the cookies that she longs to taste but cannot.  She cooks perfectly seasoned chicken and cuts it up, placing it in tortillas, then adding cheese and frying so that her brother can savor the flavor of a quesadilla.  She serves bowls of what used to be her favorite soup, taking in the aroma, but not able to take in the rest.  These are the same foods that when eaten would cause her so much pain she would not even be able to stand up straight.  She amazes me in so many ways.