BLT (-L)

Today I was all psyched up for a bacon and tomato sandwich.  I actually found some hothouse tomatoes at the store that taste like tomatoes (I mean, nothing tastes like fresh summer tomatoes, but it’s February and I was jonesing for a BT sandwich, so there you go) and I cooked up an entire package of turkey bacon for the occasion.  My bread was all toasted and I was getting ready to cut my tomatoes when Liam asked for a piece of bacon.  I gave him one.  Apparently he liked the flavor because by the time I turned around again he had stuffed most of it in his mouth.

Anyone who has spent any time around Liam knows that his one major issue in life has always been (and unfortunately continues to be) eating.  He never latched properly when he was a baby.  He had trouble with choking even with the slowest of slow nipples.  We ended up taking him to a specialist and (an enormous amount of money later) found that he has trouble with sensitivity in his mouth, specifically his cheeks.  He gets ahead of himself when eating and he ends up with far too much food in his mouth.  We were basically told to work with him on recognizing that there is a lot of food in there since his cheeks don’t send that message to his brain on their own.  Things have largely been okay, but I don’t really see there being too much improvement until he’s old enough to realize on his own that there’s too much in his mouth.  It’s (part of) the reason he still wears a bib with a little pocket in it: sometimes he just realizes (far too late) that there’s too much food in his cheeks and his natural response is to spit it out and start again with a clean slate/fresh palate.

Lately this has taken a (disgusting) new turn.  I guess I should be grateful that although his cheeks aren’t sensitive in the way they should be, his gag reflex works just fine.  That’s what I keep trying to tell myself as he repeatedly puts too much in his mouth, chokes on whatever’s in there, and then proceeds to vomit up whatever he’s just eaten.  But you know what?  It’s really hard to enjoy a bacon and tomato sandwich when you’ve just finished cleaning up bacon vomit.

I guess it’s back to Lean Cuisines for me…