Fun and Frustration

Those have been the overarching themes of the last several weeks.  The days in the life of our little family have been filled with both fun and frustration.  Of course, most of the frustration has been felt by Allison and me.  The plight of being the parents, right?  Ayden, on the other hand, usually just blissfully goes about his daily routine of playing, sleeping, "eating," pooping.

The need for the quotation marks probably accounts for 99.9% of our frustration.  Feeding therapy is helping Ayden make progress, but that progress is very slow.  He is doing things now he would not have done even a month ago.  He no longer automatically coughs and gags when he gets crumbs in his mouth.  He is more willing to put various feeding paraphernalia to his mouth, or to let us do so.  What he is not more willing to do, however, is drink anything, especially from the bottle.

In the last week, we have worked with the feeding therapist to reevaluate the focus and goals of the therapy sessions.  Right now, we are less concerned about getting Ayden to do age appropriate things in relation to food.  Instead, we want to get rid of the feeding tube.  It will be a long, long time before Ayden is eating enough solid foods to cover the amount of calories he needs per day.  Until that happens, his intake will need to be supplemented by liquid.  So, unless he's willing to drink liquid, the tube will have to stay in.

Fortunately, his therapist listened to our concerns and will devote more time to working on overcoming his refusal to ingest liquids.  That tube makes our lives so much harder than they otherwise would be.  So many things will be easier if Ayden no longer needs it.

Murphy's Law being what it is, since he's teething quite a bit right now (#7 is almost in), he will put anything in his mouth that's not food, or at least try to...

 

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As I said, there's also fun.  Despite the challenges presented by Ayden's refusal to eat and the necessity of the tube, he remains a pretty well behaved little boy.  His personality continues to develop, and as his physical abilities continue to advance and improve, he is becoming much more interactive.  As we can now actually play with him (rather than at him), we are starting to discover the things he enjoys.  He likes to roll the ball back and forth with Allison.  As you have already seen, he really enjoys his jumper.  He likes the waterfalls created by his bath cups with the holes in the bottom.  Of course, he likes his "cookie" jar.

Because it's his birthday this month, he has been given some new things to test out.  One toy is an automatic bubble blower.  The weather was nice a little while back, so we plopped Ayden outside in his chair and found out how he would react to the bubbles.  I think it's safe to say he enjoyed them.

Another birthday present Ayden received is a little car in which we can push him around.  Allison wasn't sure if he would like it or not.  Her fears were most definitely unfounded.  We stuck him in it and wheeled him around.  He absolutely loved it.  He held onto the steering wheel the whole time, as if it was him that was driving.  Thanks, Mimi, Poppy, and Matthew.

 

I also got this cool waterwheel play table for fun summer days!
Thanks, Great Aunt Suzette and Cousin Jennifer!