iBend Diet

It’s been said that purpose is the natural expression of who you are, utilizing all your gifts and talents. If this is true, then Emi’s purpose in life is to become a competitive eater. She has a natural talent of shoving food into her face, one urgent fist full immediately after the other, like a neurotic chipmunk on cocaine. Usually, as relatively responsible parents, we try to limit her attempts to inhale her meals. But sometimes you just have to sit back and watch the majesty of it all. It’s what I imagine it would be like to go back in time and watch Jordan play basketball as a child.



Being half Japanese, she does have roll models that she can aspire to:

When we bring Emi to restaurants and allow her to eat what a normal child would eat in an abnormal amount of time, the only way we can discontinue her ingestion and avoid a meltdown is to distract her with her favorite show – The Backyardigans.

We download episodes onto my iPhone (reason #305 that I love this phone) and play them while we eat our meal. This tactic has worked beautifully. The only problem was that Emi kept waving my phone around and I was afraid it might break. I tried propping the phone up against a glass, but it would not stay in place. Agh!

Enter the iBend, my good friend Dara’s husband’s genius invention.


It allows my iPhone to be propped up so that Emi can watch her show and I can eat in peace.

I love the fact that it’s slim enough to fit in my wallet, comes with two in a pack, is childproof, and cost less than $5 bucks. In addition, I use it at home to prop up my phone with the nightstand application. In all seriousness, this little gadget has changed our life, and fingers crossed, will also have an impact on Emi's waistline.

-Kacey