Julianne Fed Herself with a Spoon

I know that maybe not all moms are terribly excited when their 4 year old feeds themself. All moms are not me though and definitely all little girls are not my Julianne. Julianne has Down Syndrome and didn't come to us until she was 2 1/2 years old. At that time she was fed by gtube with rarely a bite of some baby food beans thrown in. Since then she has learned to LOVE food. She eats just about everything and will make sure that you know exactly what she wants even though she doesn't talk much yet.

Julianne has been feeding herself Cheetos, cereal pieces, M&Ms, and lots of other "finger foods". She has occassionally grabbed the spoon if we aren't feeding her fast enough. She has not however fed herself with the spoon, that is until today!

The kids spent almost the whole day outside today. Julianne has been very active since her stomach got sewed up and was right in there with the rest of them. I had to go to the grocery store for a few things, so I picked them up some of the small lunchable type things. I also saw some new individual packages of yummy looking stuff in the yogurt section of the store. I decided that my kids would like to try them and brought them home to go with lunch.

Evidently those were some really yummy things! All the kids were crazy about them. Dayton however was "too full" (or too anxious to get back to his wiffle ball game) and left his sitting on the deck box. Julianne took me over there and I offered her a drink thinking that it was was she wanted. Well it WASN'T. lol

She decided to take things into her own hands! She grabbed his spoon and his "yummy". She ate and ate and ate. It was slow going, but she was persisitent. She ended up eating most of it before she got sand in it. (yuck) So I went in and got another. She LOVED it. She ate the entire thing and was so proud of herself.

Now I guess this is how you know you are the mommy of special needs kids. I had that camera within moments of her first grasping of that spoon! I didn't care at all that she had it in her hair, and all over her entire body for that matter. I stopped the wiffle ball game to show Brent and the boys the pictures. I forbid any kid to go near her. (She might have had them feed her. lol) I even tried to call some people closest to us to tell them (but of course no one was near the phone, but that didn't matter either bc I was in heaven). I smiled until my face hurt at her cuteness.

I am so blessed!