That time he ate a dinosaur

For those that don't know, one of the struggles for kids with autism is their extreme food issues.  It's been a pretty drastic change for Eli and at times it has been really hard to watch.  When Eli was itty bitty, he would literally eat anything I gave him.  The only thing I ever found that he didn't like was plain cheese slices and macaroni and cheese.  But aside from that, he enthusiastically ate everything I offered him.  Just after he turned two, I started noticing that he wasn't eating certain things anymore.  I wasn't overly worried because that is fairly typical for that age group.  So, when he no longer drank milk or ate green beans and occasionally skipped his dinner, I tried not to worry.  But slowly, he dropped more and more foods and even whole food groups.  It's been a struggle to figure out what to feed him and how to keep him healthy.  One of his staple foods was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  He ate them just about every day.  It became increasingly rare for him to not eat a PB&J during the day.  But just like I'd been warned, he dropped them cold turkey.  Every day there was something else "wrong" with it.  I've had a hard time replacing it with other things.

One of the things Eli will eat is plain tortillas.  Cold, plain, no frills.  The thing with cold tortillas is that they tend to break when you try to roll them up.  And in Eli's world, broken equals inedible.  So yesterday he asked for a tortilla, which he rolled up, and then it broke, and then he had a meltdown because it was broken.  I was trying to salvage a messy moment and so I grabbed a t-rex cookie cutter and cut the unbroken portion of the tortilla into the dino shape.

BEST. DAY. EVER.  At least in Eli's world.  :)  He giggled and and happily ate the tortilla.

He was still hungry, though.  So I decided to just try.  I made a PB&J sandwich and cut that into a t-rex shape also.  And he ate it!!!  It was such a great moment!

I'm now taking recommendations for anything else that I can cut into dinosaur shapes.  We also have a stegosaurus shape that's just calling my name.  Here's hoping we can increase this boy's food repertoire.