Expanding Palate

The speech therapist said that Justin can only have disolvable solids (ie puffs, the veggie sticks he has been eating). She hesitantly agreed to teething biscuits as well. That doesn't leave a whole lot of choices, so I have been trying to come up with some alternatives.

It started a couple of weeks ago when I made Travis some mac and cheese with peas. ( I just have to add something to mac and cheese to give it a bit of redeeming value.) So I thought I would let Justin try it. I put it in my little food processor and gave it a whirl. And Justin did fine and finished faster than Travis! (Okay, that's not really saying a whole lot, Travis has been known to take well over an hour to finish a meal.) But it was a small victory for me. Justin really doesn't chew very well, sometimes he chews and sometimes he just swallows, so I needed to make sure there weren't any pieces that would cause a problem if they went straight down.

When my mom was here, she chopped a strawberry into about 25 pieces and gave it to Justin. They were soft enough that he did very well! And so last night I made stir fry, and given that Justin has had all of the veggies before, plus chicken, I decided I would try giving it to him. This was our version:

And this was Justin's:

He ate every bit of it! I couldn't believe it! Some of the pieces were larger than I wanted, so I just ate them out myself, and Justin gobbled the rest. I am so glad that I enjoy cooking and the challenge of finding things to keep Justin's interest. We are still struggling with constipation issues. He can go to the bathroom, but he screams when he does. My mom bought a papaya and we fixed that for him to eat. That should help some of our problems. Of course, it does help our diaper budget a bit too!