Big Progress on the Feeding Front this Week

When I took my little man to feeding group this past Tuesday, he declared the day "biting day". We had stopped for lunch at Jason's Deli before and they gave him a lollipop. He asked me if he could eat it, and I told him that I'd he bit something during feeding group, I'd let him have the lollipop after. Deal.

When I dropped him off I told the therapist about the crayon incident and our deal with the lollipop. 45 minutes later he came out gnawing on a Twizzler and the therapist told me that sure enough, he had bitten a Pringle.
Yay!!

Wednesday night for dinner, he asked to play with food, played with the pretzels for a while and finally took a little nibble. He got a concerned look on his face, but didn't freak out, just moved the piece to his teeth like I told him to, chewed it a little and swallowed :)

Today, we were going to have lunch before the in home therapist arrived, and he asked for pretzels and apple straws. I gave them to him, and he played with them until she arrived. I told her that he was in the kitchen since we usually start with warmups in the family room, and she agreed we would keep him in the kitchen and let him lead a bit.

We ended up staying in the kitchen the whole time, and he nibbled apple straws, broke pretzel braids with his teeth and scraped crackers on his teeth. Huge progress all in one day, so he earned his chocolate cookie :)

We also dipped some of the things in hummus as she is trying to now get him away from all the sweet flavored and on to other tastes.

Finally on the way home from picking up his sisters he mentioned that he is getting tired of pureed bananas. I told him that was fine as there are tons of other things in the world to eat, he just needs to start trying, and he agreed.

Thank goodness we're getting there. He turns 3 in about a month and at that point Early Intervention no longer covers all this therapy and it'll go through insurance (and therefore out of pocket expenses for us). At least he'd probably have passed out of the feeding group though so we'd be back to once a week. Also the one-on-ones with the therapist would no longer be at our home, but at the clinic. Not sure why, but that's just how it works.