Eating ... and Signing!

I think we have only found two things Nika does not like so far ... egg yolk (but she likes egg whites) and tortellini ... I'm not sure if it was the tortellini or the spaghetti sauce that she didn't like. Anyway ... I videotaped her eating chicken noodle soup. LOL. Sounds crazy, but whatever ... she is my only kid that will eat chicken noodle soup, so I was proud. Plus, I think she has pretty good oral motor skills for a kid with Down syndrome that has never had OT or ST in her life. :) And ... not only that ... she is signing "more" already! Such a smart cookie, she is!

Self-feeding

In the baby home, they give the kids adult size silverware to use. It is quite comical to see these tiny kids using large soup spoons that are larger than their head. When we had a chance to watch Nika eat a meal in the baby home, she whipped that spoon around and somehow managed to get it in her mouth.

We have come to realization she has an obsession for silverware ... not only for silverware, but for holding her own silverware. She especially loves forks and she must always have a fork in hand when eating ... and she doesn't much like to eat her food without it being served to her on a fork. We have to help her stab her food most of the time and if we give her a second fork with food on it, then she immediately drops the other fork from her hand ... it is like clockwork. One of us has to be ready to catch fork #1 as she grabs fork #2.

Here she is maneuvering her fork at dinner tonight ... I'm impressed at how well she does with it ...

A smile and an appetite

Addison cracks me up! When I pull out the camera, I usually have about two seconds to capture a shot of her smiling with her eyes open ... like this one ...
... but then as soon as she sees the flash of the camera, her smile turns into this ... ... which is actually quite similar to Payton's cheesy monkey grin that she brings out when she sees the camera ... we should have some interesting family pictures, that is for sure!

We are also loving the fact that Addison is pretty much like a garbage disposal ... the girl will eat anything, which we are NOT used to. Trying to get Mason and Payton to eat vegetables (except corn for Mason) and most fruits is like pulling teeth. Addison, on the other hand, will eat pretty much all of them. Here she is at lunch today snacking on some fruits and veggies (imagine that ... she had her cheesy grin out before I snapped a shot ... LOL ... stinker!) ...