Ema uses a fork!

We had waffles tonight, as usual in our home on Sundays, so I took the opportunity to see if I could help Ema progress a bit in his eating behavior. So far, Barb has worked a lot to get him to take food on a fork without grabbing it either off the end of the fork or off the plate. Today I started by getting him to grasp the fork (with waffle) along with me and put it into his mouth. To my surprise, by the end of the meal he had progressed to picking up the fork off the plate and putting it into his own mouth! I still do have to hold his other hand to keep it from grabbing, and sometimes he still tries to grab the food at the end of the fork, but overall he made good progress.

 We really wish he was making any progress at all in toilet behavior. Also, tooth-brushing is still a really bad experience for all of us. We hope he will eventually adjust to it.

Ema also seems to be getting a little bit more social. Sometimes he likes to sit on our laps for a long time and hold or play with our hands, good progress though it makes it hard for us to do anything else. A few times he has even had spells of laughing, once when we had some active music on and once when Luke was being silly for him.

He also has long periods when he just wanders around moaning and flapping his hands, apparently disturbed by something—hunger, tiredness, boredom, who knows? He still gets up in the middle of the night and wanders into the living room, where he usually just sits quietly. Last night he was sitting in front of the laptop, which had blinking lights.

Besides being a bit more social, Ema is also becoming a little more curious and active. He still does "nothing" most of the time, but sometimes he touches things, especially when we're not watching. He threw his shoes into the empty bathtub last night, and pulled an empty 7-Up bottle out of a crate, proving that we do have to keep an eye on him 24/7!