I was on a course yesterday so managed to get home a mite early. Nora was still having her supper. The new strategy when she's having problems eating is to be very blase about the whole thing, do other stuff at the same time and try to make feeding a fun time. Sometimes it works.
So it's about 5.20 and I go downstairs to the kitchen - Nora predictably erupts in to huge smiles and yelps of pleasure and oh it's such joy to bathe in that lovely welcome for a few moments. Who cares if you get covered in food, if it makes her happy and secure *and* you both get lovely snugs?
So anyway after a brief hiatus we get back down to the serious business of having pudding (with a bit of cauliflower cheese sneaked in there from the stuff she didn't want to eat with her tea). I broke up a gluten-free-lower-sugar rusk to give her something to munch on while she ate. After a few minutes of messing about, eating... stuff, you know... she looked at the lump of rusk in her hand and held it out to me to see if I wanted some.
!!!
Awesome. Big smiles and huge laughs as I nibbled some of it while she still held it. We laughed and laughed doing it over and over.... it was fantastic. I got some pudding/tea on her spoon, got her to hold it and guided it in to my mouth - unutterably hilarious, she then put it in to her mouth, the right way up, and sucked all the rest of the spludge off it. It was such an astounding leap, and rationalisation - Mummy eats sometimes, would she like some? This is how she ate, I'll do that.
The stress of trying to get her to eat the second half of her meal had suddenly become an incredibly joyous event together.
Happy is not the word.
