Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Ice Cream!

One gift that Colin has given me is appreciating the little things. I think so many people (myself included) are so guilty of rushing through things and not noticing all of the small little things that make everything so great!

I haven't spoken about it in a long time, but we have made some very small gains in the feeding department with Colin. Although we are not where I would like to see us at this point, we are ever so slowly working ourselves there, with a lot of practice. I think I mentioned in one of my last posts about feeding that we stopped going to the feeding clinic because we really felt that we were not making any progress with it. Ever since then, we have been working on some little things with two goals in mind; independent eating and varied food items. We have been very unsuccessful in introducing new foods (we are still sticking with scrambled eggs, yogurt, pudding, cottage cheese with berries, applesauce, pancakes and ice cream...that's IT) but we do notice some small gains in the independent feeding arena. We have been encouraging Colin to use the spoon or fork independently as much as possible. We are now at the point where we only have to hand Colin the spoon (instead of feeding it into his mouth) and he will put it in his mouth, but we can not put the plate or bowl on his tray and expect that he will do it himself. Occasionally he has done this with his yogurt, but it has to be the things he doesn't want to waste a drop of.

Tonight, I decided to give it a whirl since ice cream is very precious to him and he would never want to waste one tiny little bit. If he isn't interested in doing it himself, he will push the item away and refuse to do it himself. However, he fed himself the ENTIRE bowl of ice cream tonight! I am so proud and certainly appreciate that one small gain! Although this won't be consistent just yet, at least I know there is ONE food item he will feed himself!







Ugh, and Kailey? She is a gagger and it seems to be getting worse. Tonight I tried a small amount of applesauce and she gagged and wretched so hard that she threw up her peas that she had just eaten for dinner.


In this video, you can see Colin feeding himself and say ice cream! I was so excited (another appreciating the small things moment) because as I was scooping the ice cream, I could hear Colin talking so I looked over and he tried really hard and slowly pronounced ice cream! I got a glimpse of it on this video. So proud of my little boy!

5 comments:

JC said...

Yes, ice cream looks to be very precious to him! He even tried to pick up the piece he dropped with his spoon!! Loved hearing him say ice cream too :)
Yaay for progress!

Nana said...

Looks like you really enjoyed that ice cream! What a big boy!! Love, Nana

Mommy to those Special Ks said...

I say, give the boy ice cream every day! ;) I still get all giddy and excited about it too! haha The pictures are adorable!

Becca said...

Nothing like ice cream as a motivator! Works for me, too. LOL Loved hearing him say ice cream!!! Awesome!

Sweet Pea's Mommy said...

Great photos and video! I don't know if you notice it because you see him every day, but Colin's face has really changed recently! He doesn't look like a baby boy anymore. He looks like a big boy! I love when I see that happen, but it also makes me sad because they grow up so fast.

Congrats on the self feeding for the ice cream! We have had issues with self feeding here...and still do...but one thing that worked when we actually did it was we created a simple token board and set it up so that Sweet Pea had to take 5 bites and then we would feed her 2. I don't know why we used those numbers, you can use anything you want. We used poker chips to fill in the spaces as she took each bite. It was something to keep her motivated and visually see how many more she had to do.

Keep up the great work. Both your kids are doing great!