I come in a few minutes later and find Alex holding a few of the berries. He often holds fruit. He'll carry a banana around the house for several minutes, though never try to peel it. He will try to peel a white onion. Sometime he likes to walk around with a lemon, and press it against his lips while standing in front of a mirror. But there he is with blueberries. We leave him alone, the way you'd ignore somebody who may just be starting to do something you really want them to do.

Alex squishes the berries against his teeth. He smears the juice across his lips, and giggles. I see the jaw working. He smears more mashed berry on the tiles of the kitchen floor.

"Look who's eating blueberries," Jill says softly.

This thrill marks a milestone in our six-year campaign to get Alex to eat. The latest accomplishments in the campaign included yogurt and ice cream, but those were months ago. At school, they say he's eating hamburger, though we haven't seen much of that. At home he is putting away protein bars for dessert, but he thinks these are chocolate so I'm not sure they really count. Foods have fallen away, too; he no longer eats bacon. Some foods Alex would scarf we blockade from the house, such as the crunchy crap he'd still live on given half a chance. Corn bugles (which he once called "boo-guls) are now probably just a salty memory for him, and Jill forbids saltines ("crack-KERS!") in part because they're empty calories for Alex and in part because their many crumbs aren't empty calories for bugs. After he goes to bed, I eat his Chee-tos ("Cheeze DOOO-DULS!"). (Chee-tos were in fact one of his first foods: a feeding therapist recommended them because their bright orange! made it easier for us to tell how he was chewing and swallowing.)

A few nights later, Jill brings home champagne grapes. These are like regular purple grapes except they're about the size of, luckily, blueberries. We give a few to Alex in a plastic dish. "Alex, grapes! Mmmmm." He prowls with the grapes in front of an "Elmo." Again with the mashing on the lips, again with the jaw. Soon, the skin of one grape dangles off his lip; another is smeared on the shoulder of his T shirt. Later I find several skins of tiny grapes on the floor in front of the TV, like the scene of a tiny grape atrocity.

Alex's hands and fingers shine. "Time to wash your face, Alex." Most people wash their hands before they eat. We'll take what we can get.

A few nights later, Jill makes hot dogs and beans for dinner. Jill fries eight dogs. I put two on her plate and two on mine, and give one to Ned. That leaves seconds for me and Jill with one dog to spare, and I cut it up for Alex. "Wait wait wait!" Jill says. She disappears into the living room and I hear her rummaging in the boys' toy fridge. She comes back with a toy hot dog in a bun, and places it on Alex's plate beside the cut-up real dog.

Meal-time toys are common with Alex. Before his almost nightly dinner of chicken nuggets, he always hauls out his box of plastic farm animals and arranges the chickens around his dish. Which is a bit like inviting plastic pigs to sit down to bacon and eggs.

"Who wouldn't love a hot dog!?" Jill demands. She sits with him over the dog, and he eats it. At first it's like berries - smeared on his lips. But he starts chewing, and chewing, and chewing, then laughing. The dog disappears. I grab one of mine off my plate (there's more in the kitchen, after all) and slice it swiftly. He eats it.

"Hot dog!" he giggles around a mouthful of all-beef and beef by-products. He eats three dogs. I get none, but if he'll eat hot dogs, I'll give him hot dogs. Maybe, at last, he's moving steadily toward normal food.

Not so normal, I guess, is the lemon he sucks on a few nights later. I'm in the kitchen with him, and report this to Jill. "Put some sugar on a slice of lemon for him right now!" he says. I do, and taste it myself before i hand it to him. Delightful! I put the sugared slice of lemon in his bowl and off he goes. I wash a few dishes, careful to leave him alone. He returns in a minute, casts the untouched sugared lemon slice on the counter, grabs the slice of lemon that isn't sugared, and runs off.

Afterward: Two nights ago, Alex ate the beets out of Ned's soup. Last night, he ate two and a half little hamburgers, though not the bun. Watching his carbs.