Esther is getting the hang of eating solids!

Shes done well with larger chunks of mashed foods, but occasionally swallows things and then gags a tiny bit. With her laid back nature , of course, she laughs at this, and asks for more. Steph has asked me recently if she's eating more "real solids" yet. Oops! Should think about that huh? I have been focusing so much on getting her to sit up unassisted (she likes to rock back b/c we catch her and I think she'd really rather be down rolling and scooting around on the floor), and holding her bottle, I just don't focus on the eating. We play,read and watch her scoot around! (She's on the verge of crawling now! She's moving those hands and knees forward, but not quite in the "correct order" for official crawling. I give it a week, tops.)

When I do turn my attention to her eating, I either over analyze, or just feed her what we have and don't think about solids. She's gumming her stars well. She's also making progress getting them into her mouth herself. She's been picking them up with the pincer grasp for a long time now, but she'd rather play with them than put them in her mouth. :) Throwing them, of course, is most fun. Since she's eating them whole now, I thought it might be time to try something else. Our friend Faith has sensory sensitivity, and gets very anxious when she chokes, and regresses with her eating. Praying for her regularly and watching the process they've gone through as a family has made me much more aware of such issues, and more nervous about feeding Esther. I don't want Esther to be afraid to eat because I fed her something and she choked, but I also don't want to delay the learning to where she's much older and really does remember. On top of that, I really don't remember how the other kids transitioned from pureed foods to dry crunchy foods. I asked Gary last night, what did we give the kids after stars???

I was hesitant to go straight to cheerios so last night we tried bites of Ritz type crackers. She ate two! She likes that she can grab the whole thing and take her own bite. She coughed a couple times but immediately figured out what size bites to take, and to swallow what she had before getting more (after struggling awhile to get down a rather large chunk). She just did it! I"m so thankful!

Sometimes kids just figure things out on their own- it's natural. I'm seeing more and more in life how sometimes, knowledge can hold you back. Now that I am aware of how kids should use their tongue to push food to the sides of their mouths and things, I'm watching for those things. When you don't know what kids are "supposed" to do, you just live. I'm trying the "just live" approach in many areas with Esther. With Tyler, I was afraid I was doing it wrong on my own so I was constantly checking the books to see what we were "supposed to be doing". Checking to make sure I wasn't messing things up completely. I also had people asking me a lot of questions. Why isn't Tyler crawling yet? Shouldn't he be crawling? Shouldn't he have teeth? Why can't he eat mashed potatoes with cheese off of my plate? What about this chicken? When is he going to eat candy? Each question made me run to the books to see when I should be doing it and it made me second guess the path I'd already determined we'd take with learning different skills. With Esther, I'm not consulting the books. I have a baby food book I check to see what month it's "safe" to introduce a food, but I"m not checking the other books to see when she should be crawling, or walking, or doing front double handsprings. With the other two, I'm sure I just fed them and if they didn't eat it, I waited a week and tried again. I knew how I wanted to progress from food to food, and I just stuck to it, with lots of book checks after the questions! With Esther I'm fighting my urge to just enjoy her, the urge keep her a baby (she's growing up too fast!) and my urge to analyze every little thing. Different things "win" the battle different days, and it's frustrating! It's frustrating to feel like the road you are on is not quite the best road, and frustrating to feel like you might be holding your own kid back. This is true for all of them in all areas. When it comes down to it though, I love my kids more than I could ever describe here, and am doing the best I can for them. Yes, others are doing it better, but I'm not them.

I'm me.

God choose me and I have to believe, that He felt I'd do a good enough job- with or without the books.

So, yes, Esther can eat crackers. She probably could have eaten them a month ago, but she ate them yesterday. And we're thrilled.

PS- She's crawling beside me! :)