To eat or not to eat....

I am starting to feel the stress over Arianna’s eating creeping back up. She has been refusing a lot of foods lately and not taking enough calories in to grow. For the past week she has been retching, but I think she might still have some drainage from the cold a few weeks ago. I know I still have some drainage from time to time which bothers my throat. We have had some throwing up lately when she does the retching so I hope this clears up so we can keep those precious calories down. Yesterday she decided to eat a chicken nugget all by herself. Normally I have to feed her small bites or hold it so she can take a bite of it, but not last night. Check out the pictures of her eating all by herself. That was dinner for her last night 1 and a half chicken nuggets and 1 french fry.

We were in total shock watching her eat this!

Is this too much? (Silly Girl!)

Hey Mom, look at me!

Then today we are back to not eating. She did take 19 ounces of milk which was good. She kept signing ‘eat’ all day but the only thing she will eat is gold fish, cheetos, or crackers. That is good food but its such a small amount and has hardly any good nutritional value. We are back to trying to make 2 different meals at a time because you never know what she likes from day to day. I know a lot of people tell me that kids get picky around this age so maybe its just a normal toddler thing, who knows?

Normally we only see the OT twice a month but since Arianna didn’t have any weight gain last month she has decided to come again tomorrow. This will give her an opportunity to see how Arianna’s feeding is going and help with ideas on what else to feed her at this point. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Besides the eating battle, Arianna has been doing great. She is doing a lot of mimicking me when I talk to her. I have even noticed that she says “mmmmm” when she sees something she wants to eat. I have been saying ‘yummy’ during eating time and I think she is trying to say it but gets only the ‘mmy’ part out. And when we see a cat I say ‘kitty kitty’ and she trys to mimick me, it’s too cute. I have been trying to get a better idea on what syllables she says so I can start working more on her speech. We still haven’t gotten a speech therapist. Apparently there isn’t a lot of them in our area so its taking longer than we expected. Hopefully someone can start coming out soon. I am just so thankful for the sign language, which has really been helping with the communication. She is picking up so much. I have learned more myself and just learned how to sign one of the songs we sing at church. Arianna loves music so I’m thinking I can work on the sign language and speech through music.

We have noticed a huge jump in the way she thinks. She problem solves well and a very determined little girl when it comes to anything. Check her out trying to open the fridge.

She has also started to become quite fond of strangers and even willing to go with them if I let her. One of the ushers from church is a very kind man named, Spud, and Arianna just loves him. He was at the Aglow meeting and she just went right to him. Then at the meeting she kept wanting to go with this lady there that we have never meet. I’m just glad she can't walk yet cause she would be trying to go off with strangers.

She has also been more into daddy lately, which really blesses his heart. I just watch the two of them together and I can not belive how blessed I am. I have a wonderful man who I love dearly and such an amazing daughter that has tought me so much in her short life. I don’t think life could get any better than this. I don’t need a fancy car, a nice house, or a lot of money, I have everything I need right here. I am so looking forward to what 2008 has in store for us!