Flavors and Puffs

Today we had a very successful lunch. Actually I've been having a couple in a row, then a dry spell for a few days, then more breakthrough moments, then a bigger dry spell. At the moment we are on an upswing.

This week I discovered that Cameron is enjoying a very thick and sticky Apples & Oatmeal cereal from BeechNut (what we feed them primarily for the extra calories, assuming that they eat). He's willingly opening his mouth to the sight of the spoon and eating several bites, about four or five in a row without problem. That's the max I can convince him to do. But today was the best eating experience ever. He actually put a Gerber Graduates cherry flavor puff in his mouth, chewed it and swallowed, then picked up a second one, gagged a bit, then chewed and swallowed with some difficulty, then picked up a THIRD puff and tried to chew that one. But the third proved too much for him to deal with and he spit it out and greedily drank some milk. He also eats happily several consecutive teeny tiny bites of Baby Mummum rice cake waffers too. BEST EATING SESSION EVER!

Evan is really enjoying stage one green been puree though he won't eat more than five or six bites. And to eat those bites he will only suck it off through his teeth, and absolutely will not open his mouth for the spoon. Evan has also been licking puffs and Mummum rice cakes and taking teeny tiny bites off which is a big step.



And because many kids with such strong oral aversions have either an under-sensitive or hyper-sensitive sense of taste, we are trying all kinds of things that you might never think of, many are kind of gross. This week we are trying to give them samples of KC Masterpiece Original Flavor BBQ Sauce. And surprisingly, they did not reject it. They didn't really go back for more, but they repeatedly brought it to their noses to smell and Cameron almost put it too his lips to taste, but stopped at the last second. We'll try this for about 10 days or longer depending on their response to this, and I will track each day with their reactions on a scale of 1 to 10 using a model that hospitals use for children to show how they register pain.


Now for a few nap time stories, diaper changes and then we're all going to take hopefully a very loooong nap.