Things are moving along for Eli. In the last two weeks Eli has tried pizza rolls, Twizzlers, and an all fruit strawberry Popsicle! Of course we did have some tries that were not successful, we tried an cheese quesadilla that took 17 minutes to get one bite down and no more was tried. He did agree to try it again with some pizza sauce to dip it in which we haven't gotten to, but will try this week.
The pizza rolls were a huge hit. I showed him the bag and explained that they were just like pizza and asked him if he would be willing to try it. He agreed and without too much hesitation he took a bite and fell in love with them. Since then he has eaten them 4 times. It's so great to get another food into his diet. I know it's not a big change from regular pizza, but for Eli it's a huge difference.
Twizzlers! We picked Eli up from Sunday school and he had a Twizzler in his mouth! Talk about being shocked. I asked him about it and he said he was told that it tasted like strawberry so he decided to try it. He held it in his mouth and licked it a lot, but he didn't take a bite. He eventually threw it away. Still it's something new in his mouth and that is a step in the right direction.
All Fruit Strawberry Popsicle, can you believe it? Something with real fruit in it entered his body!!! I'm still in shock. He has eaten Popsicles before, but they were the fake juice Kool-aid type. These were real fruit with bits of strawberry in it. He hesitated a few times with the strawberry but he ate it. He almost finished it, but he gagged on a small piece of strawberry and decided to be done. He did say he would eat it again and I'm praying that he will. This is beyond huge for Eli, he has never had anything even close to a type of fruit or vegetable in his mouth.
We have been home for almost 3 weeks and it has been very nice, but busy. We put on a fund raising garage sale this past weekend and I spent the last two weeks tagging and organizing everything that was donated to us. We were certainly blessed! We were given some wonderful items and we earned enough to pay for one full week of therapy! We still have many items to sell so we will open up the sale again this weekend, after that the remaining items will go to the Home Sweet Home Mission.
This therapy is working. I mentioned a while ago that there is a chance we could get fully funded by a brain research team at the University of Chicago. Well, everything is in place except for one piece, we need a person affiliated with the University to submit the proposal for the research and the grant money. So far we don't have this person however our eating disorder specialist is making calls and knocking on doors as much as she can to get this done for us. Please pray she will find this person soon so we can get the funding we need to help Eli.
We head back to Chicagoland the week of June 9th. Please keep us in your prayers. Thank you!
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