Today we went to a little café for lunch bc it's my birthday and he ate happily a few cheecha puffs all on his own and then took all of his pear puree. It was so great I almost cried. Best bday gift I could hope for
Oh that's lovely!
Happy Birthday
With the fork, at 6 months my DS was still quite spastic in his movements, jerking around and not getting things exactly where he wanted. I held on to the fork (just the end of it) but let him lead with it, so that he didn't stab himself in the eye or shove it right to the back of his mouth. Your LO is older so might be much more in control, just thought I'd mention.
Here's a bit of an 'out there' thought - feel free to ignore.
Next time you are ready to start a trial (ie after the week is up with the puffs) cook a regular but plain-ish meal for yourself ie meat/fish with 2 or 3 veg and a carbs, leave out salt and spices when cooking. Then sit him with you at the table. Eat slowly and see if he is interested in anything on your plate. After a little while pop one of each item on his plate and just let him do as he pleases.
I know you need to trial one thing at a time, but what if you gave HIM the option of what to trial next?
So either let him have a try (if he will) of ALL of those items for one meal, then day 2 reduce down to ONE of the foods and continue with that for a week. I realise that a reaction from combining could be delayed and you might need to trial that single food a bit longer than a week to get a true reading. After that trial you can move on to trial anything else he took from that meal.
OR
pop one of each item on his plate, let him play with them and choose, then once he has put something in his mouth remove that plate and replace with a clean plate, add a little more of that single selected item. This way he never gets the combo of foods in his mouth but still gets to choose.
If he only plays and doesn't eat any of the foods I would just keep doing it each day until he chooses a food.
I was thinking what would I do in the situation, and I think this is it. But like I said, feel free to ignore, I am not in your shoes.
You need to do what you feel with the reflux wean. I only reduced DS's meds by 0.2ml I didn't even think his meds could be doing anything any more as they haven't been increased in so long and he only has 2ml twice per day, which is just about nothing!
(posted same time - I see offering food from your plate might not be a winner after all. DS likes to see what I've got and I can see him do a comparison of plates so perhaps it's just personality thing. Sometimes with a new food he won't try it but offers it out to me for me to bite his piece, I call it checking for poison because he will try it as soon as I've tested it and not dropped dead).