I love school

I love Hyrum's school in particular. Mrs. Downes and her assistants are miracle workers. For most of you, there is no need to rehash Hyrum's eating habits that have remained almost unchanged for 12 months. Yogurt, peaches, sometimes cheese and cookie dough -- these are the foods my son is made of. Occasional successes have been heralded and then fallen by the wayside: green beans, peas, peanut butter, bananas, applesauce, grapes ... Fad-like they come and just as quickly disappear again from his diet. His reactions to new foods ... but then I said there was no need to rehash.

Hyrum is eating new foods, and we are begging the teachers to tell us how this miracle is performed.

He eats rice at school - rice he has not eaten since he was 6 months old and it was a mush cereal.
Half a cup of noodles. He has never eaten noodles before in his life.
Mashed potatoes - he ate sweet potatoes as an 8 month old, never since.
They feed him food on graham crackers, which he shies away from and cries when we bring out - but he'll use it as a spoon for them.

Joy asked him the other day how many pinches of grated cheese wanted.
"10"
Okay, then you need to eat 5 spoonfuls of rice and green beans (mixed, but not mashed)
Chomp, chomp, chomp went the rice and green beans.
Yum, yum, yum, he got his cheese.

How many more pinches do you want?
"9"
Okay, and he ate another 5 spoonfuls of rice and green beans ...

Twice now he has asked us for a new food so he can eat another cookie half. He ASKED for cooked carrots, and ate cooked squash when we didn't have any. He ate lettuce for me today.

He has enough vocabulary finally to express some food preferences. He doesn't like crunchy. "Soft" is the key word. But he eats chunky peanut butter and hard chunks of chocolate and he doesn't like soft mashed potatoes. He has said "yummy" to some of his new foods. Not that he'll keep eating them, but he will agree 'yeah, yeah, Dad, it tastes great, now gimme my cookie.'

A marvelous work and a wonder. I love Hyrum's school. He likes it too.