The Road to Recovery is filled with Turkey and Rice

The puke monster finally left our house last Tuesday. 10 days of puking and the dreaded "d" word and countless bottles of Pedialyte but by last Tuesday Elle was pretty much back to her normal self (thank you Walgreens for having a sale on pedialyte the exact week that we went through too many bottles to count).

on the mend reading her books

One of the perks of Elle having the feeding tube was that we were able to keep the pedialyte going into her...even if it sometimes came out. We resumed our normal therapy schedule last Wednesday and Elle even had her first session of speech therapy. I'm excited to see how all her therapist work together - each one bringing her expertise into Elle's course of learning. Our goal in speech therapy is to get Elle to verbalize all the words she signs. There are a few words that she exclusively signs and does not voice at all. We've been with her occupational therapist for almost a year now and her physical therapist for a little less than a year so Elle is pretty comfortable with them. She's not too sure about her new speech therapist. It took her 30 minutes to warm up to her but our sessions are only 45 minutes! Hopefully as this becomes a part of our weekly routine, Elle will become more comfortable with her new friend and start to show her verbalizing skills!

Animal Print Friday - her outfit has little fish on it. During lunch, she realized that the fish on her outfit matched the fish on the Goldfish bag. She kept looking back and forth to her outfit to the bag and signing "same" and then looking at me for the confirmation. It was pretty funny to see the light bulb go off in her little head at the recognition of two like pictures.

By Saturday, Elle and I were ready to get out of the house and do something fun so Lee took us for a morning trip to Galveston. I forget that Galveston is only a little more than an hour away from our house. It was so nice to escape and just walk on the Strand for a little bit and go in the cute shops. We were only there for a few hours and then came back home - it was a much needed quick escape.

they have the EXACT same hair

Sunday afternoon my brother stopped by to visit with Elle. What a great uncle to sit and read Elle all of her books...twice...maybe even three times (and the girl has A LOT of books). Around 4pm, Elle started to pull on her button which is a tell tale sign that she is getting hungry. Lee sat her in his lap and started to feed her some baby food. Let me add that in the past Elle has at most eaten 10 tiny bites of baby food in one sitting. We've never even gotten close to finishing a jar of baby food and we've tried every single type of baby food out there. And yes, we've also tried home made. Elle's a smart little girl and associates the tube with filling her up. So needless to say, we were absolutely shocked when Elle sat in Lee's lap and proceeded to eat 3/4 of a jar of baby food in one sitting. We think she was showing off for Uncle Benny. Uncle Benny left around 5:00pm and after he left Lee and I decided to see if Elle would eat anymore baby food. We sat her in her chair and sure enough, the kid finished her first jar of baby food! Whoo hoo!!!! Turkey and rice seems to be a winner for Elle! I sure did stock up on turkey and rice baby food when I went grocery shopping for this week!

yummo! Turkey and Rice

We are praying that Elle will continue with the great eating and improve day by day so that one day in the near future, we won't have to depend on the feeding tube any longer. That will be a truly amazing day!!