More cheese pizza please!

After his surgery Nate would only eat a handful of things...yogurt, baby cereal, Earth's Best Turkey Dinner, pureed fruit (only in jars), Pirate Booty and Goldfish. AND he hardly had an appetite. It was like we had taken a few steps back again with his eating and we were already feeling behind. There seemed to be so many issues to address with his eating - desire, texture, quantity (for calories), and movement towards some self feeding. Ugh. We felt super stuck and rather depressed about it all. Eric and I kept telling ourselves to keep plugging away with the food we offered Nate. That's all we could do - Right? We were reminded that it sometimes takes 10 tries to get a little one to start eating a new food.

As some of you know, Nate and I took a wonderful trip down to B-more to see my family. We're not exactly sure what magic happened while we were there, but it seemed like Nate changed during that trip. Besides just being in the sweetest mood ever, he was more active, more communicative, and more hungry!! By the time we left, he was eating peas again and a lot more snacks. Whew!

When we came back, everyone seemed to notice something different about Nate (besides his new haircut - hehe). The ENT we saw for his post adenoidectomy follow-up remarked that Nate seemed older. At school, his teachers shared that Nate was signing like crazy and moving around on the floor a lot more - -He could sit and pivot around to get something! Also they were able to get him to eat some regular fruit, English muffin, and waffle. Super exciting.

BUT, Nate still wouldn't try anything for us at home.........

....Well until last Friday........

We were shot from the week and neither us felt like cooking, so Eric threw an Amy's cheese pizza into the oven. After Nate had some pureed peas and a jar of turkey dinner, I decided to offer him a little cheese pizza. Now I should tell you that one of Nate's favorite songs is from a Signing Time DVD. It is the famous Silly Pizza Song. I know some of you will know what song I'm talking about. Since watching those the Signing Time DVDs, Nate has been signing many foods he hasn't tried yet, one of them being cheese. He also was familiar with pizza - and for him, the sign for pizza kinda looked like snake too - a new favorite sign (which also kind of looked like Nate giving us the middle finger too! haha).

Here are both signs:
Pizza (Nate does variation 3): http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/p/pizza.htm
Snake: http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/s/snake.htm

Once I offered Nate one bite of pizza, he asked for more and more and more until he ate an entire piece of pizza! I nearly cried.

So without further adieu --- More cheese pizza please - starring Nate!!