A Place For Everything

Feeding Moy Moy looks complicated until you get used to it. It's a precise ritual we follow five times a day and, because she eats through a tube, the menu has few variations. Three times a day it's Ensure, the other two it's milk. Her medicines change through the day, though, and we have an array of little cups to measure them out in, along with the other tools we require to accomplish the tube feed.

This is in preparation for Moy's dinner - the second photo is the meal and her evening meds:

The Ensure is what goes in the big cup and the little wire whisk is what we use to mix it smooth. The tiny funnel inserts into her tube and allows the pouring to take place. Her meds are all in the little cups: anti-convulsants are the yellow and white liquids and the cough syrup is red. The little white jug has warm water in case some of the pills haven't dissolved completely and the syringe is for flushing the tube clean at the end.

Each element in the arrangement is crucial and keeping the cups and whisk and jug and syringe in one place has been a challenge. So many different people wash the dishes in our house in the course of a day and everyone has their own idea of what goes where. Sometimes we fish the plastic cups for the medicines out of the cutlery drainer; sometimes we find them tucked inside the big Ensure cup in a pool of water. Sometimes the whisk is discovered in with the ones we use for eggs and whipping cream; sometimes standing up in a water glass.

No systems!

Vikram, who is the original systems man, finally got fed up. Last week he was out in the bazaar with his family shopping for groceries when he discovered the perfect solution. When he brought it home, I first thought he had found a doll's bunk-bed and was giving it to his daughter for her birthday, but when he showed me what he had in mind, I realized it was a stroke of genius:

Now each and every piece of equipment has a home and we feel like calm, methodical scientists with all our tools at hand when we prepare meals for the Princess.

Thanks, Vikram.