Aaaaaah!!! Real Food!!!

Jon got the green light for real food yesterday. His first meal was beef stew, diced pears and a garden salad which looked a little sad to me but he loves salad, especially drowned in ranch dressing, and ate every bite. Didn't really have to count bites after the first few bites of stew. He even went back to eating stew after he was through with his salad. Tonight he passed up a fish sandwich for a hot dog, french fries and cole slaw. I thought I'd try the fish sandwich since we didn't have to work a trade for the hot dog and frankly he made a good choice...fish was cold and while it looked like it had been in the fryer plenty long it didn't taste good.

He was up in a chair for a while yesterday. We'll try to work those times in a chair with mealtimes since he's supposed to be sitting up as straight as possible when eating. I had a chance to talk with speech therapy today to try to coordinate with physical therapy since they're the ones who are supposed to be in charge off putting on the turtle shell he has to wear when sitting up straight. We're theorizing that may be part of the problem Jon has with choking since I'm not that sure he's been at a high enough angle when eating in the past.

We're exercising Jon's arms quite a bit and he's been good about asking them to be stretched throughout the day if we haven't done it often enough. We almost have them to the point where's his arms are at shoulder height.

Jon had a nice surprise when his Uncle Bob and Diane from Baltimore stopped in to visit on their way to Dearborn to spend some time with my Mother. We had a good visit with them. Diane brought homemade chocolate Easter eggs which we'll be more than glad to help him eat!

Hope your Easter is meaningful and your company good. Most of us will be in Defiance this holiday. We spent all of Christmas with Jon--took all the Christmas presents and even the special silver angel napkin holders to dress up the table but just can't quite do the same this holiday. Carol has to work at 3 and Sunday evening will be Joe's first night back to work at Campbells.

Night,