Hooray for a Crayon in the Mouth!

You may remember that we're having issues with getting Meredith to put food in her mouth. She doesn't put ANYTHING in her mouth. We have been working on this with all kinds of various cookies, crackers, etc. If we break off a piece, she will let us put it in her mouth and she'll chew it up and swallow, but then give her a piece in her hand and she just throws it.

Not long ago, our babysitter Jenee had the great idea of Nilla Wafers. She caught Meredith red-handed giving one a little lick:


This is when the excitement began! I found I could get her to do the same with an animal cracker (the kind with the pink and white icing). But still, she wouldn't suck or bite....just lick a little, or even just touch it to her closed mouth and then later lick the crumbs (silly kid!).

Then yesterday, I gave Meredith some big crayons to play with, and she actually stuck one in her mouth - just for a second - and I of course said "no" and she was fine with that (didn't taste too good anyway). But inside I was saying "yes! yes!" because this meant she was starting to be interested in trying to taste things.

And finally, today, was the big breakthrough. The key: a cheese stick. It is one that looks like string cheese, but it's a more delicious mix of mozzarella and cheddar. First I pulled a piece sort of loose off the top, so that when I put it in her mouth and told her to "bite" she would easily get a piece of cheese. (I tried this for a bit yesterday and it had worked, but she wouldn't transition to doing it herself). I have found that she loves this cheese. Then I stopped breaking it up for her, and just let her suck and gnaw a bit while I held it (don't worry, I had her in my lap the whole time in the unlikely event that she bit off too big of a chunk -- she doesn't seem capable of that right now anyway). And then....

.... I gave her the cheese stick....

... and ....

... she put it in her mouth and bit a tiny bit of cheese off!!! By herself!!!

And she did it again and again until she got sick of it - probably 15-20 bites before she wanted to move on! She has quite an ingenious system - since her jaw is apparently not strong enough (or maybe coordinated enough?) to bite off a real piece of the cheese stick, she instead puts the stick pretty far into her mouth, closes her few teeth around it, and then slowly pulls it out, so that she scrapes some cheese off. The cheese stick sort of looks like it was in a pencil sharpener, but I think it is beautiful :)