Baby steps and cheese

Second feeding therapy appointment tonight, Travis did very well again. Willing to try what she asked, and even ate some pudding with Cheerios that surprised me. I got inspired to try some new things on my own, and managed to get Travis to eat a few bites of chicken nugget with tiny bits of string cheese added. We gave his elephant nugget a cheese hat, and the lion an eye and shoes made of cheese. He did eat them, then I tried to get him to eat a couple bites of cheese alone, but he still gagged and choked as per usual. Baby steps.

Someone made a comment to me that if I only fed him the food I wanted him to eat (more veggies, whatever we're eating for dinner, etc.), that he'd eventually eat it rather than starve. But I kind of equate that to those people who don't teach their deaf children sign language. I don't feel like I'm indulging him just because I'm not forcing food down his throat. He truly has a physical problem that prohibits him from eating normally. Far be it from me to judge anyone else on their preferred parenting methods, but I do feel like I did the right thing by not forcing that on him. I certainly went through phases where I second-guessed myself, sent him to bed without eating since he didn't eat what I put on his plate, etc. I still do, in fact (second guess myself, that is). But I knew from the beginning that I did not want to make the food battle one that consumed our lives, so I've taken it fairly easy and tried not to get too worked up about it. (If Ben's reading this, I guarantee you he's snorting under his breath right now, thinking "this is what you call not getting worked up?!? I can only imagine what our lives would have been like if you had allowed yourself to get worked up about this...") But my point is, my goal has been to get through this as reasonably as possible without unnecessarily stressing myself out and pushing too much on my poor son, who tries so hard to please me but just physically can't force his tongue to comply.

Noah, on the other hand, he's just a stinker. He just decides he doesn't want to eat, just to be a pill. So I feel much better about telling him it's this or nothing, because I know full well he's just trying to test me by refusing. He's cute, but I'm still smarter.

Speaking of cute, here's my babies on the day of the Colts' regular season opener:

Travis and Ben have been sick with pneumonia, its been a very rough week at the Davidson household.

Also, in keeping with the baby steps theme of this post, Sophie's taken to trying to balance. She's not quite furniture cruising yet, but she does pull herself up onto anything and everything. This week, she's been pulling up, then letting go with both hands and trying to balance. Not much longer now, folks.