The terrible twos are a-brewin'

These days Liam will eat just about anything you put in front of him.  As long as that anything is chicken nuggets.  When we first started Liam on baby foods, life looked promising.  Carrots, garden vegetables, sweet potatoes, spinach and potatoes, etc.  He ate all of it will little to no complaint. One could even say that he ate with gusto.  So I guess I took for granted that when it came time to move to actual solids, that he may not be as...open to new foods.  But ever since he sprouted his first teeth, it has been incredibly difficult to get him to try new foods.  And I am not talking about strange items.  I am taking about mac and cheese, spaghetti, fish sticks.  The things that kids are supposed to love.  It has really only been during the past several months that we can even get him to eat foods like chicken nuggets and pizza after multiple failed attempts.  Lately he has even taken to refusing common staples like Goldfish, bananas and pancakes. 

What is a mom to do?  There are truly days where I wonder how he survives on a handful of Kashi crackers and an apple, and other days where he eats so much that I wonder whether I need to be concerned about childhood obesity! I hear from other moms that this is common, and it may have something to do with the three new teeth that he has sprouted in the past few weeks.  And the teething may also have something to do with why he has been so darn fussy lately.  I am not sure if this is a preview of what we should expect heading into the terrible twos or whether this is related to teething, possible virus, time changes, travel, etc.

Part of Liam's fussiness may stem from his inability to express his frustrations and desires right now.  Because of Liam's past experience with meningitis, he will probably need a few more hearing exams than other children.  Before he had tubes put in his ears in October, his pediatric ENT ran a brief hearing test to have a basis for comparison after the surgery.  Because of the amount of fluid in his ears, they were not able to get a good reading.  Six weeks after the tubes, we went for a follow up and another hearing test was performed. The individual who performed the exam had some concerns about the tones that Liam was responding to, so in December we had to have a sedated ABR exam performed.  The anticipation of the exam made me a nervous wreck, and I often had to be reminded not to get too ahead of myself on the potential results. 

Fortunately, the results came back fine and Liam's hearing was deemed to be normal.  But because some of the concerns about his speech development, we were referred to a speech therapist.  We have been taking him twice a week for a few weeks now, and have started to notice an improvement in the words he is starting to say and even the gibberish that he uses.  But because he doesn't have a large vocabulary, I think that he gets frustrated with his inability to articulate his wants.  One of the words that he has just started using with consistency is "Hello."  It tickles him to grab my cell phone, open it up and start saying, "Hello" followed by gibberish.  He loves this game so much, that he has started to meltdown when he sees me talking on my phone and I won't let him "play along." 

He is usually such a sweet boy, but today alone he had too many meltdown to count.  For example, he would throw a Goldfish across the room and then cry because one of the dogs ate it.  He would laugh one moment and then cry the next.  I am not sure whether this is a fluke or a glimpse into what to expect as we head into his terrible twos. While Eric and I realize that all kids go through this stage, today we definitely earned our "parenting stripes."