Monday, April 09, 2012

Ellis' Food Journey: Rounding the Corner

I can't hardly believe I'm writing this, but we have made SO much progress since my last post about Ellis' food journey. When we visited Miss Kathy last week for feeding therapy, we told her that it would be our last visit.

We still have more progress to make with Ellis, but at this point, we are able to do a lot of our work at home. Somewhere along the way, after the grueling hours of sitting at the table watching, waiting, playing, prodding, pushing, begging Ellis to touch/squeeze/lick/bite a new food, he caught on. He got into a rhythm: Every day we sit at the table and play with a new food. Sometimes I taste the food. Often, I like it. He started getting to the point where we would sit down with the carefully chosen food of the day, and he would sometimes say, "Okay, I'm going to do all the 'eats,'" meaning taste, bite, chew, etc. It was like he knew he wanted to try new foods, but he couldn't make himself do it. And then he found this context where he could very carefully and safely try something, and it just worked for him.

I think we reached a real turning point with fruit. He started to realize that fruit has juice in it, and juice is yummy. One day Miss Kathy offered him some of the cantaloupe melon from her lunch. He tried it skeptically, then gobbled it up. After that, he tried a few more fruits and decided that he wanted to try all the fruits. When he started feeling like he had some control over the situation, he started to name foods he would like to try next time for "Steps." So we made this chart, and he got to choose the foods we worked on each day. When he decided, "Now I like bananas," we got to add it to the chart.


So he's definitely not eating everything, but we're at the point where I can even add a slightly new food at dinner (not "Steps"), and he will eat it (with some work/help/coaxing). Tonight we went out for dinner and he ate French fries for the first time. It was significant because he won't normally try something new in a less comfortable setting.


I seriously can hardly believe how far we have come in seven months (since this post when we were exclusively feeding Ellis baby food and muffins). We NEVER, EVER could have made this progress without Miss Kathy. She is very talented at what she does, and Ellis loves her! She has saved our lives and has helped us through a difficult but worthwhile journey. Ellis is so proud of himself and the foods he eats and likes.

This week I got together three bags of baby food to give away to friends with little ones. It has been perfect, because Sam has progressed with feeding at just about the same rate as Ellis! They both finished with baby food at pretty much the same time. On that note, I will mention that I don't think it's a coincidence that Sam is our best eater of the three (at least for now -- we'll see if he changes, but for this age, he's definitely eating much better than the other two did). There are definitely some feeding things that we are doing better the third time around. We made a lot of mistakes with the first two, which I believe have contributed to Henry's picky eating and exacerbated Ellis' sensitivities. And so, I will end this post with:

WHAT I WISH SOMEONE HAD TOLD ME ABOUT FEEDING BABIES/KIDS:

1. IT'S OKAY IF THEY DON'T GET ALL OF THEIR FOOD GROUPS EVERY SINGLE DAY, especially as they are transitioning in foods. When Henry started taking cow's milk in a cup, he hated it. I panicked because I knew he needed to drink milk (since he was no longer nursing), so after trying for a couple of days, I decided to sweeten the milk with Nesquick. Guess what? To this day Henry only drinks milk if it is chocolate. Surprise, surprise. Ellis, on the other hand, didn't take milk at first, and my doctor said it didn't matter. Just keep trying. So we didn't sweeten it, and he kept trying one sip a day (and throwing the cup on the floor) for a long time, and then eventually he drank it, and now he loves milk.
Similarly, when Ellis started to reject his baby food vegetables, I panicked. It would be fine if he was eating regular vegetables, but he wasn't. I was so worried that he wasn't getting ANY veggies, so I found a way to force him to eat the baby food veggies (it started with a song and a dance and morphed into letting him watch videos on the computer while we fed him). I can hardly believe how long we did this for . . . all because I was afraid something terrible would happen if he didn't eat any vegetables.

2. BABY FOOD SHOULD BE A TRANSITION FOOD to help babies get used to solids -- not the main source of nutrition. My pediatrician told me that I should be sure to transition Sam OFF of pureed baby food by one year. I wish someone had told me that with the other two! I felt like I needed to rely solely on pureed baby food to get my babies their daily amount of fruits and veggies. That Gerber packaging ("five a day") is quite deceiving.  Hmmm . . . I wonder why.

3. BABIES CAN EAT MORE THAN JUST THE "EASY" FOODS. With Henry and Ellis, I was very afraid of them choking on foods, and I was hesitant to give them foods that would be hard to chew. I definitely don't think you should give babies any food that they could choke on, but Ellis has helped me to expand my horizons with Sam. With Ellis as a baby, I gave him a lot of foods that were easy to grab and easy for him to eat. He had a lot of crackers and soft breads or muffins, which ended up being the only foods he accepted later on. But he wasn't exposed to as big of a variety as Sam has been. I pretty much always give Sam a taste of whatever I am eating for lunch or dinner (enchiladas, rice, beans, chicken, pasta, etc). I just find a way to cut it and put it on his plate. I have also been giving him a lot of canned fruits (peaches, pears, pineapple, mandarin oranges) because they are easy to grab, and they're really soft and don't have peels). I like this food chart or other similar food charts, because they remind me what babies can handle at each age. It's good to remember that they could be trying more than I would think to give them. I also have been trying to avoid too many sweet or salty foods, because I have read that babies can get a taste for them and then shun everything else. Sam has been really restricted with the yummy stuff (jury is still out on whether or not this will be helpful).

4. IF THEY SPIT IT OUT, KEEP TRYING. One of the most helpful things I learned with Ellis' feeding therapy is that looking/touching/licking/chewing is all part of the learning process for new foods. For many of the foods we tried with Ellis, we would have him chew it up ten times and then spit it out on his plate. It didn't matter if he didn't actually eat the food; touching, licking, and chewing it was getting him closer to actually eating it! It was helping him to feel comfortable with the food and how it felt in his mouth. Some of those sensations are so new and unfamiliar that they can throw kids off. Once they are used to how something feels on their tongue or in between their teeth, they will be a lot less anxious about actually eating it next time. So Sam makes a HUGE mess with his food right now. Sometimes he doesn't eat a single bite of the food I put on his tray. He plays with it, mashes it in his hands, and frequently chews it up and spits it back out. Often he'll chew up a grape, spit it out, and then ask for another one! With my other two boys, I think I would have seen them refusing a food or spitting it out and thought that they just didn't like the food. I would have been hesitant to give them the food again, because I didn't think they would eat it, and because I wouldn't want to clean up a big mess again. I believe that the messes Sam makes now are definitely worth it, because often after mashing or spitting out a food a bunch of times, he will eventually eat some. It's almost like we skipped this training with Ellis when he was a baby. We didn't desensitize him to enough foods, and so we had to do it when he was three. It was much harder at three, when he was much more set in his ways and determined to rule the roost.

I'll admit that we make lots of mistakes, and maybe we are the last ones who should be giving advice on feeding children! Perhaps I'll come back on here in a year and admit that Sam isn't such a good eater after all. But for now, he's really eating a TON of foods, and he's doing much better than the other two did at this age. I do feel confident that we did a few things wrong that we don't want to repeat. I actually think this blog has a really great outlook on feeding kids and raising healthy eaters. It suggests a lot of things that I wish I had tried earlier. Oh, live and learn! Perhaps if we have 20 kids we will figure out how to do it all!

Good Friday, Happy Saturday

After Henry had the day off of school for Good Friday (a novel luxury for us), we decided that if we have Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we had better call the day in between "Happy Saturday!" In our house, it's the day the Easter Bunny comes! The boys were excited about the baskets with candy and a few extra surprises.

Sam loved the punching balloons,

his new cell phone,

and his first sampling of jelly beans (which he was a little confused about. He sucked on them and spit them out -- but he loved them!).

Henry could hardly believe that the Easter Bunny got him something from the Fat Brain catalog: a mind-game called Perplexus.

Ben and Henry were very perplexed by the game. Actually, Henry has really enjoyed it, but Ben has been completely addicted to it!

Ellis was delighted to find an egg full of old men. Artist figurines, to be precise!

Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Vincent Van Gogh

He was pleased as punch to line them up with his scientists

I think we're going to have some exciting "Conferences" with these guys. Today I overheard him sustaining Salvador Dali as a prophet and Pablo Picasso as the "Relief Society Stake Presidency."

Ben died eggs with the boys while I attended a Relief Society meeting, and then when I returned, it just so happened to be the PERFECT kite-flying weather! Ben and I purchased a new kite several weeks ago, and we had been waiting for this exact moment to surprise the boys with it! So, we seized the day.



I actually think that kite-flying is one of the most wholesome and enlivening family activities in the universe. It combines so many good things: being outside, getting exercise, looking up at the sky, working together, laughing, and being far away from any sort of electronics or noise.



Yeah, that was me who landed the kite on the power line. Henry was freaking out. It was the end of the fun for him (but nothing actually happened - no sparks or anything! Just pulled the kite down).


We ended the afternoon by finishing up the sugar cookies Henry had been begging to make.

Fact: 90% of our family holiday traditions have something to do with baked goods.

We had a wonderful day, almost crammed with too many good things, but not quite. We got to babysit for our co-op that night, which turned out to be pretty fun. We played my all-time favorite childhood game: Colored Eggs. The kids LOVED it, and I was taken way back to good times with my Allred cousins playing on Grandma's front porch with the green stairs. And we also taught the kids The Bunny Hop. They were AWESOME at it. Aren't we cool?

It was a pretty happy Happy Saturday.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

And Conference Goes On

At our house, General Conference is never really over. With Ellis, we talk about the General Authorities year round, and he usually begs to watch a session on Sunday afternoons while Ben and I take a nap (how can we refuse such a request?). The General Conference sessions that come every six months are really just a reminder to Ellis about how much fun the "Conference Guys" can be! He loves them all year long, but after getting to watch 8 hours of Conference in a two-day period, the fire is always rekindled. Ellis is definitely on a post-Conference high right now (I am too, I guess!).

Ben let it slip that there are actually six sessions of General Conference, and that we had only watched four of them. On Monday morning, Ellis begged me to let him watch the Young Women session. He watched the whole thing (mostly sitting on the couch, with a bit of pillow fighting with Sam in between) and was thrilled with all of the details: Sister Dalton, conducting?!?! All the sisters speaking! And President Monson as the last speaker! It was almost too much.

The Conference Chart was a hit during the regular sessions! One of our super-cool ward members had the idea to use a pin for a 3-D microphone, so we had to upgrade ours.

I wasn't too surprised to find out that the chart would be even more fun when Conference was over! Ellis has been playing with it all week -- pretending to have Conference. He'll choose someone to conduct and will go through an entire mock session, complete with testimonies, prayers, and silly hymns that he makes up.


[It's not very reverent, so you might find this video to be offensive. If you do, I welcome you to come into my house and try to explain to this child why we don't say pretend prayers in silly voices. I have been hesitant since my attempt to teach him which potty words "we don't really talk about" backfired].

I don't think I'll ever get over how amusing, unique, and hilarious this quirky obsession is! And I'll be the first to say how SHOCKED I am that it is still going on, 18 months after this initial Conference post. It is such a part of Ellis now that I would hate to see him grow out of it. Kind of endearing, you know?

April Fools'

While Ben was at the Priesthood Session on Saturday night, Henry and Ellis cooked up some good pranks to pull on Ben:

Cream cheese on the soap

Cocoa powder on his wash cloth for the shower

Switched his favorite card deck for Uno cards!

They also put spiky toys in his slippers and scratchy Velcro in his underwear!

Ellis was so excited when he woke up in the morning that he crawled into bed with Ben first thing and said, "We made some funny April Fools' jokes for you!" Ben tried to get Ellis to keep the details to himself, but there was really no point . . . because a few minutes later, Henry came in carrying Ben's slippers. "Dad, don't you want to put on your slippers?" Then for the rest of the morning, both boys kept asking, "So, aren't you about ready to take your shower?" "Dad, didn't you want to try any magic tricks with your cards?"

I guess next time I should prep them a little better about how to keep a secret. Still, Ben put on a good show, and they thought their clever little tricks were pretty awesome!