Eat, Sleep and BE HAPPY

I am happy to report that Kai is already eating SO MUCH BETTER!  I can't believe how quick he responded.  The first night I gave him squash he only got about 3 or so bites in and most of it was spit back out.  I was gradually able to get him to eat almost half squash and half fruit.  I have now moved on to green beans and his first day with green beans was better than his first day on squash. 
Meal time has become a lot less stressful for me and him.  I think letting him make choices on what he wants to eat really helped and then me offering him a little bit of something new without over doing it.  He oddly enough will shake his head "no" when he is done eating.  I really have no idea where he learned it but it has been very helpful.  I think the respect I have shown to him by giving him what he prefers has reciprocated in him showing respect to me by trying something new.  Now I know some of you think that is probably crazy, how can a 7 month old show respect...well I think it is possible!
My friend who gave me ideas of how to get him to eat better also told me to expose him to different textures like rice, beans, mud, grass, sand and so on.  I tried rice the first day and he seem disgusted; he would touch it then quickly pull his arm back and start to spit.  It was pretty cute.  I think this has helped a ton, as he is now more wiling to try hard finger foods.  Whenever he shows interest in what I am eating I will give him a taste.  For the most part he will like it until he gets a chunk of something.  But gradually he seems to not mind it.  I was able to get him to eat an apple cinnamon puff today for the first time, and he loved it!  I am looking forward to him improving his eating habits and I hope we can continue to move forward.
As far as sleeping goes, it started out really good.  The first time he cried for 25 minutes, the next time only about 10 minutes and then after that he would fall asleep under a minute of me laying him down.  The third day was the worst.  He would cry for 30 minutes, fall asleep and in mid sleep he would wake up and begin crying again.  Since that third day he hasn't been able to get a full nap in...but he has been sleeping all night long again ever since the first night we let him cry it out, which has been great!  Our past few days have been different than normal so his schedule has been thrown off, next week I will be watching 3 other children and the week after that we are going to California...so I don't foresee the sleeping being mastered very soon, but we have our start and I am happy with getting my full nights back.

Eat, Sleep and...

 Kai used to be the best sleeper. I could lay him down and he would wine for maybe 5 minutes at the most then fall asleep; sometimes there wasn't even a peep made.  Well slowly we got out of that habit and bit by bit we started to spoil Kai and now we find ourselves here today with him needing special cuddling, rocking and feeding to get him to go to bed.  He wakes up at least once every night and won't go back to sleep until he gets a bottle.  With many failed attempts at letting him cry it out because Ben and I are softies we gave up on it all together.  I am not getting a very good nights rest and it's starting to take its toll.  So tonight Ben and I are making a commitment to letting Kai cry it out.  For a very sad 25 minutes we listened to Kai cry before he finally fell asleep.  When I would go in to reassure him he would hold my arm as tight as he could as I start to walk away...talk about stab to the heart.  After he fell asleep I gave him 5 minutes and I went to go check on him.  He was laying on top of his tear soaked blankets, perpendicular to how I left him and on the complete opposite end of the crib.  They say it gets better after 3 days, we are crossing our fingers that it does.

Kai has always been a hard baby to feed and the challenge has only gotten worse with solids.  He took about a month before he would eat anything we offered him.  When he finally did try it he pulled funny faces with most foods but really enjoyed sweet potatoes and fruits.  He has slowly digressed and will now only eat fruit and even that can sometimes be a challenge.  He spits whenever he sees a spoon, or anything for that matter, coming towards his mouth.  If I can just get a taste of fruit on his lip he will go for more, but if it is anything else it is game over.  I have been doing a lot of research and read a few articles about Food Aversions.  It seems like he could have this.  They talk about these babies having a difficult time breast feeding and then vomiting and spitting with solids.  From what I have found it is best to offer him what he likes and then offer him something new, but letting him decide if he wants more, if he doesn't like it then you stop giving it to him.  Forcing them to eat will only create more anxiety and can result in not eating all together.  One study used young children around the age of 8-11 who had these food aversions and the children made goals to taste new foods.  They did so at their own pace and on their own time.  Their goal was to get to 50 bites over a period of a week and usually at that point they didn't mind the food anymore.  A lot of these infants end up needing to go to a speech pathologist or occupational therapist due to poor oral development.  So I decided to email my friend who is doing her clinicals right now as she is studying to become a speech pathologist.  She recommended introducing a new food to him for three days while also giving him something he likes and to make sure I don't let him snack throughout the day, but make sure that there are set meal times, and that is the only time he eats.
So today on top of letting him cry it out I began working on introducing a new food...well reintroducing it.  For dinner I gave him pears, one of his faves, and I offered him a few bites of squash throughout the meal.  He hated it and spit it out every time he tasted it, but I don't feel like I overdid it.  I will try this at every meal for the next three days and see if he begins to grow accustom to it.

If you managed to read through my entire post I am proud of you :)  I will give you an update in three days to see if their is any improvements in any of the above areas.

Kai is already not looking forward to the next few days ;)

Books

Kai loves his books.  I can put him in his book corner in his room and he will sit and explore, taste, shake then toss his books one by one.  

 I love it when I read to him and he looks back at me and smiles, then looks back at the picture on the page.  He knows just what to do to melt my heart.