Our Adoption Journey: Eating is Not So Horrible After All

As you may have guessed from the title, we've had some breakthroughs this past week with Kellin's eating. Kellin has suddenly decided that eating is not so bad after all! He is eating yogurt and baby food at each meal, loves to drink juice from a cup, and is CHEWING puffs! As with all of Kellin's eating progress, we have to play little games to keep him happily eating. We give him juice to drink between bites of food, and he has quickly learned that if he wants another drink of juice, he needs to eat what's on the spoon. This has been the best way to get him to eat foods other than yogurt. As far as the puffs - as soon as the puff goes into his mouth, we start singing a song to distract him - but he's not really trying to get them out of his mouth anymore, and sometimes he SMILES. For one meal this weekend, he ate 15 puffs (but who's counting, right?). That's his best record so far. He also set a new record for the most food he's eaten at a meal - he ate a whole container of yogurt AND an entire jar of baby food in one sitting. We were so proud and excited! Maybe we will finally start seeing some good weight gain!

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that Kellin was starting to take steps on his own. We haven't really progressed in that area, because he doesn't really want to walk - he prefers to stay in one place or be carried around. So I have started working on getting him to walk to me. The last couple days he has really hated that game - but today I figured out that if I have him standing just a couple feet away and I put one finger on his back (not giving him any support at all, but just so he has that cue), he will walk to me, and then I immediately give him a hug and start singing a song I know he likes. It works! He is practicing his walking without too much fussing. We also practiced walking outside on the grass today, both with shoes on and bare feet. He can do this as long as I hold one hand, which is totally fine with me because the grass is a little more uneven than the floor inside so he needs that support for balance.

Kellin is making more babbling noises and has imitated A FEW sounds he has heard, but progress toward talking is still moving very slowly. In a way, he doesn't even seem to understand the concept of communication ("I say something, you say something" or "I say something and then something happens"), but he is using his four signs pretty consistently and appropriately (all done, please, more, blankie), so it is coming. We know he understands so much, and maybe one of these days he will surprise us and words will come pouring out!

And a few pictures - but I realized that once again, I have no pictures of Tigger! He just moves too fast to get a good shot, I guess. I will make a point of getting some pictures of him for the next post.