Life is about to get very messy!

Kaiden has discovered he can pick up big fistfuls of food.  Oh YAY!!  Most of me is thrilled that he is on his way to self-feeding . . . but the other tiny part of me will miss the somewhat less messy option of me spoon feeding him instead.  I may have to temporarily move some of his feedings into the kitchen rather than the dining room - much easier to clean up after him.  I'd like to keep him at the dining room table so he can watch us eat, maybe I'll just have to get a floor mat to go over the big rug under the table.

He hasn't caught on yet that the handful of food should go into his mouth, but he'll get there.  I've been re-directing his hand, but right now he drops the food just before it gets to his mouth.  I swear he will learn to eat with a spoon before he learns to eat with his hands!  Not that that's a bad thing . . .  He is also consistently reaching for the sippy cup when he wants a drink and doing much better at holding it up to his mouth while drinking rather than trying to drink but pulling it away at the same time, like his hands just didn't know what they were doing yet.

Oh my . . . what a time-saver self feeding will be when he masters it!  I can pump while he eats instead afterward.

He has also discovered wooden blocks and is enamored with them. He picks them up, rolls them around, and flings them.


Kaiden is not crawling yet.  He is still going crazy rocking on all 4's . . . now more so up on hands and knees rather than elbows and knees so it shouldn't be too much longer.  He's getting much better at scooting backward and can go forward a little. 
 
All this, in less than 2 months of being seizure free . . . while I am thrilled the University of MN was so interested in Kaiden's story, I wonder how far it will go there - if they will actually share the info with their colleagues, or even with their patients - or if it will just get scoffed at and disregarded.  I am thinking I need to make a list of all the states & their universities, and start making more phone calls.  Somebody with authority needs to do a study with variables.  We've done so much with Kaiden's diet but who knows how much of a role being grain free, dairy free, and having Down Syndrome plays into the whole nightshade foods-seizure connection.