Occupational Therapy is paying off!

Emma's Occupational Therapy is slow going but has reaped many fabulous rewards and important baby steps towards overcoming sensory issues and tactile defensiveness.

These pictures are from a FIRST for us--Emma putting fruit in her mouth--okay it was an organic fruit strip. Again, this a baby steps since she has not had any fruit in a SUPER long time (like over a year- at least). This moment was a big deal for her and I but at the time I tried to play it cool. Having a time of creative food play is an important part of her therapy- during that time there should be ZERO expectations for her to try or eat anything. She should be able to play and create without the stress of thinking I might make her eat something.

We cut the fruit strips and made vampire teeth :)
I couldn't believe that she actually put them in her mouth!

I literally had to fight tears of joy when she asked "can I have a bite? (referring to the fruit strips we had been playing with and I had been eating). She was asking ME if she could eat something healthy, nutritious, and of a different texture? WHAT? She ate it! She ate it! A strawberry fruit strip! The same Emma that has refused to eat a real strawberry and would not get out of the wagon at the strawberry patch when we went to a farm to pick strawberries with a playgroup!

We also make a porcupine and snowman out of food that day too. Good times.

Other exciting moments for us over the past several months (again remember it is baby steps and she has a LONG way to go) were:
-touching and playing with a fresh blue berry in her hand
-touching and playing with an orange like it was a ball
-putting a piece of pizza on her plate (she did not eat it - but she tolerated it being there)
-touching shaving cream with her finger (and painting with it- this took 3 intros to shaving cream at O.T. before she would touch it)
-placed 1 hard banana chip in her mouth once
-ate 1 dried apricot once

**To reward those of you that have read this far about something super exciting to us but maybe dull for you- here are some funny things to go along with all of this**

Emma totally does not have near the issues with non-food textures as she does with food textures, smells, looks... so she has no problem licking Ethan's face a ton of times when she is pretending to be a dog. I have to say "Emma stop licking your brother!" as he becomes bothered by it and cries.

Today she picked up a dead fly off the ground with her fingers... but she won't touch a strawberry or a banana (without the peel). Thank goodness I have help from Missy (her O.T.) to slowly open up doors for her and expand her world so she can enjoy the vast textures, colors, smells, and sights that this earth has to offer.