Evie the Extraordinary and Her Mommy: The Journey As We Go

It's funny how Evie turning 5 just crept up on me, without too much fanfare.  Turning 3 was a big deal because she graduated from Early Intervention support, and turning 4 was heralded with a big birthday party.  This year, I wanted to give Evie a good mix of fun and celebration, but with consideration for her fear of large groups.  We ended up picking one of Evie's favorite indoor playgrounds and inviting close "framily."  It was overall a huge hit, except for when we all attempted to sing Jingle Bells instead of Happy Birthday (she hates happy birthday), and she freaked out.  Turns out she just doesn't want attention all on her.  Mama gets it now, Evie. This past year was full of firsts: 1.  Walking independently (goodbye, walker!) 2.  Putting solid foods in her mouth without gagging or crying 3. Licking an ice cream cone voluntarily and repeatedly 4. Saying more words verbally 5. Graduating to bigger ankle braces 6. Playing dress up ...

We got the go-ahead from our GI doc to cut down the amount of formula by g-tube to try to make Evie a little hungrier.  There is a whole world out there about different philosophies of weaning kids off g-tubes, and I won't go into it here, but it's truly making my head spin.  I am just going to give this plan a chance (of reducing 20%*) and give Evie a few weeks to figure out that food is even more fun than she thought.  We expect she will lose a few ounces here and there, and our goal is to use some food strategies to keep her from losing too much weight while she expands her food horizons. The most important lesson for the summer is: FOOD IS FUN, EVIE! So you need your kid to gain weight. She doesn't even eat food with too much texture yet. She can eat purees and yogurt, and that's about it.  How do you expand her palette and avoid food aversions at the same time? I haven't come across a comprehensive list of food tips, so I'm going to write down what...

The greatest guessing game of all is...how to motivate Evie to eat.  Someone was surprised that we actually count the number of BITES (and not ounces) that Evie takes. Well, that's because that's all she'll eat by mouth.  We are averaging 5-8 bites a day, although every once in awhile she'll eat more than 20 bites for our nanny, who is definitely our MVP. The end goal is to cut down on her g-tube feeds so that she'll be hungrier. When we get clearance for having gained back all the weight she lost this winter, we will start the adventure! In the meantime, we definitely have learned some helpful tips for those for which eating is not second nature. Here are some of the finer points of eating we have learned: 1.  A child with oral aversions or sensitivities can be very sensitive to where the food falls on her tongue.  When we feed her with a spoon, she does fine with food on the tip of her tongue.  But any food towards the middle of her tongue makes her gag. ...