Can I Have Another Piece of Chocolate Cake?

Amelia wants to say "Happy Birthday, Daddy!" Amelia is super lucky to have such a great dad who plays with her, covers her with hugs and kisses, and participates in her care and well being! She is a daddy's girl for sure. She misses him when he is gone and gets excited when he comes home from work. (note insert from dad -Daddy is the lucky one.)

And with the way Amelia has been eating lately, I am hopeful she will help him eat some of his cake tonight! Over Christmas with our hectic schedule, we were not tube feeding her as frequently as instructed. After a few days she was hungry and she started eating when I would offer her yogurt. Currently, we are down to 2 tube feeds a day. I am feeding her Stage 2 baby food. Mostly meat because it is the most caloric. Then I add cheese, cream cheese and also some Worcestershire sauce to give it some flavor, because those baby foods tend to be a little bland. I plan to get a Magic Bullet so I can start pureeing foods at home, rather than having to buy it all the time. The pureed foods allow me to add more calories by adding other ingredients and she can eat enough volume to boost her calorie count for the day. I have also been offering her whole milk from an open cup and she has been doing great with that. I hold the cup.

She can chew and she adores those Whale cheese crackers. Over New Year's Eve, she was grabbing them off the counter top and opening the box and throwing handfuls of them in her mouth. She would chew them up very well, but then spit them out and then go back for more. Even if I handed her one, she would not swallow them. Fast forward a few weeks and now she is swallowing them. And pretzels, and inhaling cheetos, and eating pieces of dry cereal. This morning she ate an entire piece of buttered toast!

Some of the other pureed foods offered are pudding, yogurt, apple sauce, and mashed potatoes. With the bullet, I will be able to puree a lot more variety. I have been steering away from vegetables mainly because they are low in calories. However, I have ordered a product called Duocal that is being shipped to me in next few days. It is a flavorless food additive that boosts calories, so I think I will try to put that in some peas and see how that goes.

We have had a dietician come out and weigh her to make sure she is doing OK. The first week, she did lose a pound. Her next weigh in she held steady! This is real progress, that seems to be getting some traction. She went back to school and her daily report card has said she has eaten at snack and lunch time two times in a row. Until then she always had the "ate nothing" box checked off. I really hope by the end of the year she will be completely tube free.