The drama of pear

Who knew that eating something new could trigger emotions to change so quickly in our house over the weekend? In working with Will's speech therapist (who focuses on feeding), we have learned that we need to thicken Will's food regularly with cereal to help with weight gain and will soon be starting to add small chunks of food to his normal Stage 2 Gerber variety.

For those who don't know, Will has cerebral palsy. He has low muscle tone most of the time, which affects all of the muscles in his body, even the muscles in his face and mouth. So the coordination that it takes to chew and swallow is a big challenge for him, and is one of the two reasons that we started working with a speech therapist (the other is that Will is skinny and really has a hard time putting on weight).

Soooo... I thought it would be a good idea to give Will little teeny tiny pieces of pear. Seriously tiny, like no larger than the letter 'H.' Just to see what he'd do with it. He likes pear when it is pureed. But... the solid pieces were not such a popular idea, Mom. See photographic evidence.

The good thing is that he didn't choke! What he did do was push that teeny tiny piece of pear around in his mouth until it practically disintegrated and then pushed it out of his mouth entirely. But I was right there to push if back in. All in all, Will finished about 8 teeny tiny piece of pear, which we consider a huge SUCCESS!