Making Progress!

I haven't posted much about Hayden's food allergies recently since we were at a plateau for a long time.  He was doing great on no dairy, whey or casein and we didn't expose him for about 6 months.  The other day, there were some very yummy Toy Story cookies at a friend's house and the other children were having them before I could get Hayden out of the room.  I decided to go ahead and just see what happens and allow him to have one.  They were very small anyway so I figured his reaction would be no worse than an extra trip to the bathroom if it did bother him.  He ate the cookie and said, "this has dairy in it" (without me saying anything about it.  I don't know how he knows that, but he just really knows his body) and then sat for a second and said, "it doesn't hurt my tummy!"  I was so happy for him to have the same treat as his friends but I decided that will be the only dairy exposure for 2 weeks, then we will attempt a piece of bread with dairy and see what happens. We are a long time away (if ever) from him having any significant amount of dairy but I am happy to just follow his lead and take it very slowly.  If we can't re-introduce the allergens successfully, oh well, we wait until he's 5 and try again.

Hayden is also making HUGE progress on his picky eating.  He was never a picky child until all of the food allergy issues and that just spun him into a huge cycle of eating only about ten foods, most of them carbs and grains.  Since I have last updated this, he now loves watermelon, cantellope, beef, chicken, corn tortillas and a few other things he would NEVER eat before.  We are very careful to never force Hayden to try new foods, as I don't believe in force feeding or creating eating disorders so I just offer, offer, offer and see what happens.

Tonight, I had tears in my eyes after dinner because I watched the pickiest child ever completely finish his plate of ground taco meat, refried beans, and tortillas.  The beef and beans were only about 2 tablespoons each but I think that's a lot for a kid who never eats anything.  I was SO unbelievably proud of my little boy tonight for trying his dinner and he was just beaming when he realized he liked the new food.  I think he's not naturally as picky as he lets on, he's just smarter than we are and knows we give in.  Gotta love him.

Lastly, I have a short cute story from last night.  When Matt and I went on our date (which was wonderful!), we left Hayden tucked into bed asleep around 7:30.  When we returned at 10:30, he was up on the couch chillin with MeeMaw like he wasn't tired at all.  His response..."I wanted to play with my MeeMaw so I slept until you left and then woke up to play."   See?  Smarter than us all!