Amazing!

Today at lunch, when I brought out the bag of pre-peeled, "baby" carrots to give to Lukas and me, Natalie got very excited, so I gave her one too. Now Natalie loves the cooked carrots that I make (Lukas calls them "sweet carrots" because I cook them with a little maple syrup), but I've never expected her to eat a raw carrot. I guess that's because it appears to be so rare that kids with RTS will eat hard food (actually, many won't eat textures that are any more than purees), that I didn't think trying raw carrots was worth the effort.

Natalie chewed on her raw carrot for a couple minutes, then put it down with a few teeth marks in it. I've been giving her thin slices of apple, and I gave her one today, but today she didn't seem as interested in the apple. So I broke a piece of apple off and stuck it on her fork, handed her the fork and she put it in her mouth and ate it. So I gave her another piece of apple on the fork and she ate that. Then I sliced a 1/4" thin slice of raw carrot and put it on the fork and she ate it! I gave her several more pieces of carrot and apple that way, and she ate more apple than she's eaten in a while, and she's never eaten raw carrot! And this is by a kid who didn't eat ANYTHING by mouth for six months!

So for Natalie, the fork is the thing. Today. No guarantees about tomorrow!