Week 2 Day 2 Eating School

So we had an uneventful weekend. We get to go home on the weekends, so we booked it out of there, hit a lot of traffic and got home several hours later, wiped out.

Adam was happy to be home, we did laundry and put it all back in the suitcase. Saturday night, Phil and I got a sitter, we really needed a night out and we laughed at a comedy club for several hours, great fun. Sunday night I headed back down here to Philly. Phil is staying home this week. He has to work and his graduate class starts this week, so he can't come.

I was nervous about doing the drive and all by myself, but it's all good, and the first day, Monday, yesterday was fine. They introduced another food, so it is: cheese, grilled cheese and mac and cheese. I am cracking up because it's all like the same food, but not to him.

Breakfast was ugly: yelling and hitting, clenching his teeth. He will eat the cheese and the grilled cheese, but not the mac and cheese. They brought in the blocker, but he wouldn't eat it. For lunch, they then put all the food on a spoon, to see if it was the spoon. He then ate the cheese  and grilled cheese off the spoon, and took a small tast of the macaroni and cheese, but wasn't real happy about it all. For the third meal, he still fought and some bites of the mac and cheese went in, and others didn't. No problem with the other cheese forms.

Today the stuck with the same number of bites as yesterday and the same 3 foods. 18 bites, 6 bites of each. For breakfast, he ate all his 18 bites, no problems at all. It was his primary feeding therapist and she does most of his meals, he seems to eat best for her and they can't have that, so they needed to see if it was the therapist, or if he's used to those 3 foods now. For lunch he had a new therapist and he ate all his bites again. Which might suggest that he's used to those foods. He also might have an issue with using a spoon, or the texture, so they might try another food on a spoon tomorrow to see what he does.

Last week and this week, it's all data collection and like a big experiment with all these therapists and doctors. They are trying to see what his deal is and what he will do and what he will tolerate and eat.

Today they explained to me some of the things I need to do to prepare for him to go home and to do this at home. Right now the plan for home seems like we will do a small meal like they do here around 6:30-7am, one at 4-4:30 and a larger meal at 7. These "meals" will be one to one at home each day, so I need to think about how to structure things to work around the attention he will need from me to get this done. We probably will need to talk and explain things to Matt so he is non -disruptive during these 3 therapies. Also our dinner meal will still be the family and Adam joining in and having fun with whatever we eat, but no pressure to him to eat during that time, it will be just social and fun with food (same with breakfast and lunch on weekends and hoildays) It seems like I will be in the kitchen from 4 till 8 each weeknight, with Phil taking 2 classes this fall, it will be a balancing act, hopefully 5th grade homework can be done mostly alone.