Cold Milk

Sometimes when you are with someone day in and day out, the changes aren't as noticeable as they are to someone (such as a grandparent) who hasn't seen the child for a month or more. My parents really noticed how Nadia's soccer skills and Ian's self-feeding skills had improved. In the moment when Ian is gagging on his dinner or taking 90 minutes to eat a small sandwich, it's easy to forget all the progress that he's made. It's helpful to stop and recall the improvements. He now fully expects to feed himself all the time. He still asks for help at dinner with stabbing food with his fork or scooping it up with his spoon, but he knows he has to use the utensil to get the food in his mouth on his own. And we're working on getting him to do more of the scooping and stabbing himself. He now is 100% independent with feeding himself at breakfast and lunch, even if he has a yogurt. Both kids are doing much better with eating vegetables. I am not saying they enjoy many vegetables, but they now realize they are going to be eating them most nights. Progress!

Nadia has also adjusted to drinking water at lunch and skim milk at breakfast and dinner. I thought she was drinking too much juice. Ian drinks skim milk at all three meals, but I recently switched him from warm milk to cold milk. I also have Oliver drinking cold milk in his sippy cup. Warm milk isn't being served in this house any more! This is very helpful because if we buy milk when we're out and about, it's always going to be cold, and it was a challenge at times in the past to warm it up when we weren't at home. Now if we could just get Ian to take less than 90 minutes to eat his dinner. On average, he spends 3.5 hours a day sitting in his booster seat at the kitchen table eating (breakfast + lunch + dinner). It's exhausting, but we are going in the right direction. It would be faster if I fed him, but in the long run, we'll be glad he learned how to feed himself. Oliver is quite the opposite. He is Mr. Independent when it comes to feeding himself, although he hasn't learned how to use any utensils yet.