Two firsts in one day

Today Maya had 2 firsts:

1.  First bus ride.  She loved it, as we knew she would.  When we got off the bus she was whimpering, struggling to get out of Daddy's arms, and signing "More, more, more!"  I wanted her to ride the bus (and the subway, but we haven't done that one yet) with us before school started---that way she has a frame of reference if they come up at school.  Also, I know they take the subway (and maybe busses?) for class trips, and I wanted her first ride to be with us, so I could see her little excited face :)

Her blurry, but excited, face

2.  She fed herself a peach.  Well, half a peach---I had to pry it out of her slippery, gripping fingers when I realized that she was devouring it so aggressively that she would most certainly shatter her teeth on the pit.  I gave the remainder to her in big chunks.  Self-feeding a whole piece of fruit?!  Woo hoo!

I'm still sorting through vacation pics and have a vacation story or two to share as well.  Only 2 weeks and 2 days until little Maya will be starting school, and we're trying to make the most of our time off before then :) 

If you didn't do it already, go enter the Leapfrog DVD giveaway!  Remember, to enter you have to leave comments on the blog post HERE, not on the FB page.  Good luck!

Feeding drama and a magic solution (that you can make, too)

For the past month, meals have been really hit or miss with Maya.  Her feeding issues have gotten more complex as she's gotten older, because the behavior challenges of toddlerhood (asserting herself, being dramatic*, etc) are coming into play.  When she first started feeding therapy, everyone agreed 100%--she wants to eat, she loves food and flavors, she just can't do it. 

But now, sometimes she's difficult because her mouth is tired or disorganized, and sometimes she's difficult because she's 2. 

And 2-year-olds are sometimes just difficult.

The basic background on Maya's eating stuff:  Progressing to purees/baby food was challenging.  Once she had a handle on purees, progressing to real stuff (yogurt, applesauce) was challenging, too.  (That started to really happen around 15 mos old).  Then, progressing to real food was a lot of work, because things just get lost in her mouth---her tongue had to learn to move the food to her teeth, her jaw had to learn to make her teeth chew.  (She still has to work a lot on the chewing, because her jaw muscles are weak.  And her mouth is still disorganized.)  We were on all "real" foods around 27 months.   Now, her diet is pretty limited to things that you don't have to chew too much:  milk, yogurt, applesauce, chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, waffles, pancakes, french fries/potatoes, cheese, meatballs/meatloaf, fish sticks, spinach pancakes, soft fruits, and vegetables that are steamed and mashable, etc. 

She is fully capable of eating everything that I just listed, but suddenly she was refusing to eat for me.  She would sign that she was hungry, get in the highchair, and have a meltdown.  She would clamp her lips, throw herself to the side of the highchair, cry, take food out of her mouth after I had put it in, cover her face with her arms, etc.  Misery.  It is not fun to have to fight through every meal and snack everyday.  More than once I would have to hold her arms down, pry her mouth open, and put food in. 

A few times I thought "She must not be hungry", tossed the food, and took her out of the high chair . . . but no sooner did her feet hit the floor than she would smile and sign "Eat!"

(sigh)

I realized that we weren't tapping into her logic skills at all, so I tried to tell her "One bite, and then ________  (stickers, barn, whatever)."  It worked, but only for one bite.  Doing an entire meal one bite at a time takes a longggg time.

And then came the magic solution (care of our speech therapist).  It's so simple (especially if you have any knowledge of preschool stuff, the land-of-labeling-things-with-pictures) and yet so effective:

Ta-da!!!

That's our new meal chart (chart?  I'm not sure if that's the right word.  But you get the idea).  The little pictures of the guy with the spoon say "eat" at the top.   The star is a "surprise".  

How we use it

Me: Maya, do you want to have some stickers?

Maya: (smiles and nods emphatically)

Me: Ok, then you need to take 3 bites of waffle (pointing to the 'eat' cards) 1-2-3, and then you get stickers! (pointing to the star)

Maya: (nods and opens her mouth to take a bite)

As she bites, I take the 'eat' pictures down and say "Great job!  That bite is done, so you have 2 more, 1-2, and then stickers!"

When the bites are done, she plays with the toy.  I keep feeding her, and sometimes she doesn't notice.  If she starts refusing food, I take that toy away, reload the 'eat' pictures, and start again.  If the toy loses its motivational factor, I get a new one.

No more drama. 

No more fighting.

The chart is 2 sided, so she's looking at the side she's working on, we're looking at the back.

In action-here she's taken 1 bite of waffle and has 2 left before she gets the school bus with the zebra and polar bear.  Obviously, school busses carry zebras and polar bears.

Do It Yourself
There are endless variations to this, but here's how ours is made:

-The standing-up part is the bottom cut off of a manilla file folder (which makes it easy to stand up).  There's a sentence strip glued onto it, and 5 velcro dots stuck on in a row. 

-The squares are color printed and laminated, with Velcro dots stuck on the back. (If you don't have a laminator, it's worth getting.  Like I said, I didn't make this, but I do laminate everything.  Maya's been carrying around a laminated picture of her with Santa since December.)  The icons are from Boardmaker, I think, but you can use any picture you want.  Just do a google image search, copy the picture to a word document, and print it up.

And you're done.   So easy.

Oh, and it's perfect to travel with, too.

At the diner, with one bite left until she gets her Santa picture.

The same idea of simple velcro visuals is often used to create schedules for the day (first you make your bed, then you take off pajamas, then you put on clothes, etc, etc), but I can see it working for other obnoxious challenging behaviors, too. 

For example, is tooth brushing a problem?  (It sometimes is for us)  Maybe one parent could brush while the other parent methodically removes numbers from a countdown, or a row of toothbrush pictures to show that time is almost up.  The possibilities are endless.

I'm sure this is a been-there-done-that post for a lot of folks with older kids, but I hope it helps someone else out there.  I think it's a great model to present ideas/routines to all kids---special needs or no special needs.


*Speaking of drama, did you see my story on FB from earlier this week about having a cry alone in the crib?  Yikes.

Zoo . . . Hair . . . CHEW . . . Where?

If I come up with a nonsensical rhyming title, then it totally makes my jumbled update-about-everything post appear cohesive, right?  Right.

1. Zoo:  We went to the Bronx Zoo the other day and had a fun time.  Well, Dave had a fun time:

Maya was so scared that she re-enacted her DMV pose:

Until Mommy came to save the day:

(Hmm, who's having more fun?  Maya or Mommy?  Or the magical glowing prairie dog?)

Fun at the petting zoo:

Miss Maya is attempting vertical movement more and more!  Here, some teetery walking holding on to only 1 hand!:

It may not be graceful looking, but who cares . . .

2.Hair: My hair continues to fall out at an alarming rate:

Ok, it's not quite that bad :)  Actually, I convinced Dave to cut my hair (with the balding patches, I've been hiding from salon folks----I don't want anyone messing with my hair, and I don't want lots of people coming to stare at it).  So we did a chop at home:

(not the most glamorous pic, but you get the idea)

3. CHEW!!!!!!!!  This is the best update by far (and if you check our Facebook page, you're already in the loop on this one).  Maya has come so far with feeding therapy that today Erica (her feeding therapist) said "No more jars (baby food)----she's an eating girl now!"  So, in theory, Maya could only be eating normal food now (with some exceptions---she can't do very hard things, like apples.  She can't manage something very complicated, like rice.  And she can't really regulate how much she gets in her mouth at a time, so we still have to feed her most pieces by hand.)   She's an eating girl!!!!!!  Real food!!! 

Here, she digs into dinner (yogurt, blueberries, some snacky stuff, and a cereal bar--not pictured).  The sushi belongs to Dave & me:

4. Where?  We're going away on Saturday and Maya has been studying up for the trip.  Here, Dave helps her to plan our week's worth of activities.  See if you can figure out where we're heading :)

Snack Trap

The other day we went out for a walk and I gave Maya some cheerios in a snack trap.  A snack trap!  I wanted to shout to passersby (seriously, did you know that was the plural of passerby?) :  "Hey!  Look at my kid!  She can eat cheerios all by herself!  So shut it!"

 (Why did anyone have to "shut it"?  I have no idea.  But in my head, I was celebrating and needlessly trash talking at the same time.)

I was so excited that I stopped to take a picture:

And then the celebration ended, as she shoved 28 cheerios into her mouth and panicked (which I also captured in a photo):

I knelt next to her (taking deep breaths) and waited as she scraped out a few with her fingers, swallowed a few whole, and managed to chew one or two.

That was the end of our (very short) time with the snack trap.  (In all seriousness, after talking with the OT and the feeding therapist, they think that she doesn't have the fine motor skills to pick up only a few pieces to eat at a time.  Most toddlers either have the motor skills to put a few in their mouth at a time, or the oral motor skills that let them compensate if they shove too much in at once.  She doesn't have either, so we need to help her by giving her a few pieces at a time.)

Tomorrow is Dave's last day of summer school, and Maya can't wait to have him home for a month :)

Maya's got the munchies

Well, ladies & gentlemen, Maya is now nearly 26 months old and we are seeing a lot of feeding progress :)  One of the crazy things about working with her is that she goes from not doing something (for months and months) to suddenly just doing it.  So for month, we work on chewing, work on chewing, and not much happens . . . but within the last month or so she's an eating champ.

Some things she's tried:  blueberries, bananas, peaches, strawberries, cereal bars (loves them!!!), cheerios, scrambled eggs (not a fan), cheese, pancakes (her daily breakfast), lasagna, cheeseburger, toast, crackers, graham cracker, goldfish, bbq beef, crab cakes, mashed potatoes, ice cream. 

And I'm probably forgetting things.

:)

I've been a little down this week, a lot going on in my head, and a lot of hair falling off of it---ba dum ching! (um, that's how google told me to spell a snare-cymbal combo---not so sure about it)   We're kind of not making a lot of progress in a lot of areas (physically, for one.  Come on, Maya, you can stand up---stop being afraid and go for it!) . . . but the feeding stuff is great.  Finally, progress :)

And here's a video clip from the park this morning (if you're a fan on Facebook, you got an early peek at the video this afternoon!  You should all join our FB page for sneak peeks and bonus chats!).  Check out Maya chowing down on Cheerios:

She fed herself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This morning I was feeding Maya lunch.  We were working with blueberries, pancakes, and barbecue beef.  I was giving her little pieces of beef, putting it in her mouth, and she would chew and swallow.  I decided to give her a little piece on the tray to play with (just like we do every other day), and she shocked me by picking it up and eating it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(By the way, if you just see a big white space with a "Play" button at the bottom, click the play button.  The video should start playing.  I don't know why that happens, but whatever!)