July's appointments are done (earlier than expected, thanks to a cancellation that allowed us to get in this week instead of next). We have a few weeks before we're scheduled to hit another waiting room, and it feels pretty good.
I have some work I want to do on the blog, but it's going to have to happen slowly, because summer brings better options than computer time . . . like sprinklers, and puddles.
She loves the drain, and trying to get little leaves and sticks to go through the holes. I may be responsible for that. Hee hee.
If you don't "like" us on Facebook then you stink missed out on two things today:
1. First, Amsterdam International hit a milestone---over 1,000 shares on Facebook. Wow. (1,001 as of this morning.)
2. I received a list of iPad (or iPhone) apps for children with special needs. I didn't make the list (it comes care of Mark Surabian of Cognitech Cafe & the JCC), but I have permission to share it. It's a 14 pg pdf file---if you'd like it, please shoot me an email (uncommonfeedback@gmail.com) and I'll send it your way.
On Monday, Maya had her first ever true tantrum . . . like, the real deal. Over 20 minutes (23, to be exact), mostly filled with absolutely hysterical, high pitched screaming, giant tears . . . the whole 9.
The cause? Mango. Who would have thought that tiny, delicious, yellow pieces of fruit could cause such a breakdown.
The Background
One of my biggest goals right now is to expand Maya's food repertoire. I want her to start school with a diet that's more extensive than yogurt, meatballs, and cereal bars. She has the jaw strength and chewing ability to start trying more stuff, and I need to make it a priority to make her (wo)man up. With fruit season upon us, fruit has been goal #1.
Maya is also a much safer eater now---she's fully mastered how to use her tongue to thrust unwanted food out of her mouth, which is a mixed blessing. It's fantastic in that I don't have to be quite as panicked concerned with her possibly choking, but it's infuriating frustrating because she just spits things back at us over and over again. (And sometimes she thinks it's hilarious, too.)
So, back to the tantruming . . .
On Monday, she got into the high chair for a snack. When I presented the mango (which she had eaten, and enjoyed, earlier in the day) she starting having a fit and signing for milk. I told her "First 2 pieces of mango, then milk." Then she totally lost it.
I had already said "2 pieces, then milk." So now I was stuck. I taught middle school, I'm semi-well versed in children . . . if you say something, you have to mean it. (Sometimes I wish I could tell this to the folks I see at the playground who issue 37 "If you throw that sand again, we're leaving, Johnny!" warnings. I want to tell them "If you say that, you best be ready to hit the road. Otherwise, please don't say it. At this point Johnny, his friends, and half the parents here think you're a joke. And good luck the next time you try to issue an ultimatum, sister.")
So after 23 minutes of tears, she ate 2 pieces of mango and got her milk. She was sweat soaked, I felt terrible, but we all survived. When I tried the process again on Tuesday, there were still tears, but it only took 12 minutes and never reached the scream-like-a-banshee decibel level of Monday's showdown.
And then we took the show on the road
Without a doubt, the better the motivation (like the milk she loves so much) the more likely it is that she'll eat quickly. So this morning (and yesterday) I packed up some blueberries and we walked to the playground. My plan was simple: she needed to eat 2 blueberries before she could get out of the stroller and play at the playground. I was fully prepared to sit there for up to 40 minutes with her in the stroller, calmly saying "Do you want to go play? Ok, then you just have to eat 2 blueberries." every so often, until she either ate them or the clock ran out and we left. (I'm not sure if this seems mean. But she's got a good memory, and after a few not-getting-out trips I knew she would cave.)
After 13 minutes of sitting in boredom this morning, I changed the ultimatum---instead of "If you want to get out, you need to have 2 blueberries" it became "Do you want to leave? If not, you have to have 2 blueberries." She started to cry. I decided to take out my cell phone and start taping:
Some translations, if you're curious: At 0:29, she's saying "bye bye?!". At 0:51 I'm telling her "chew chew" because she's been getting scared of the fruit textures and forgetting to chew & swallow. At 0:54 I'm pulling her hand away because when she starts to get nervous she will take the food out of her mouth and throw it. 1:35 is signing "all done". The hand twisting at 1:38 is signing "play".
She's so smart . . . we've definitely crossed a bridge, past the brute force phase (sometimes we just had to muscle in whatever food we could) and into the logical reasoning phase.
What I've learned so far
This feeding stuff works much better if I have enough time set aside to wait her out. When we have to grab a quick snack between therapies, I need to stick to something that she won't fight. And when she is ready to fight, I have to channel my calm inner teacher and let it roll off my back, instead of getting emotionally involved.
The rest of our time at the playground . . .
. . . was super fun for us, but less so for Parker. I left him sitting outside, where he kept watching for us like a watchdog. Maya visited him a few times to cheer him up:
We're now at a full day with no fever (and 2 days without a high fever) and I'm feeling relieved at finally turning the corner. Getting Maya back on solid food is likely to be a week long battle (as she's happily transitioned to a diet composed solely of milk, water, applesauce, yogurt & chocolate pudding), but at least the fever is gone and she's on the road to normal.
We celebrated with a fabulous feeling-better-and-it's-Mother's-Day-too! weekend . . .
Saturday . . .
We go to Stew Leonard's, which never disappoints. This time they have some sort of kids club thing happeneing outside, complete with snacks, hand painting, and . . . a calf!
A baby cow?!
I'm going to come get you, baby cow.
True love. Note the cow trying to lick Maya---I think the feeling is mutual. (Also, note my death grip---I've seen Maya's "gentle hands" with Parker, and was afraid she might try to love the cow to death.)
I think she was debating a big kiss on the nose.
I'm going to kiss you!
One big snuggle for the road :)
We become the hand painter's favorite client of the day when I request . . . not a princess, not Spongebob, not a tiger, but a white circle. It's the moon. Maya is obsessed with the moon (ever since we took her outside with friends back in March to see the "Super Moon").
And on Saturday night I made a big fancy Mother's Day dinner. It may have been one night early, but I was excited to splurge on nice food and spend some time in the kitchen after spening most of the week sick. So I bought the food I wanted, the flowers I wanted, and the good local beer I wanted and made up a nice meal:
Why not take a picture of dinner? This was steak, potatoes, bok choy, garlic green beans, and tomato/onion salad. I didn't get a picture of the amazing dessert, but it was equally wonderful.
Sunday . . .
I went out shopping alone, and Dave & Maya went to the zoo. While it was nice to have a little break from toddler mom duties, I quickly became a little lonely (and remembered that I hate shopping). So I went home, grabbed Parker, my book, and an iced coffee, and laid out a blanket at the park instead.
That's much more my speed.
The afternoon brought trips to 2 different playgrounds, walking around the neighborhood, and take-out Thai food from my favorite local place.
Maya was delighted to find a stopped up, filled-with-muddy-sand water fountain at the second playground.
Hey, you! Come here! You've got to see this!
Successfully dirtying other playground children.
She may have also had a grown-up partner in crime.
It was a perfect return-to-health/Mother's Day weekend :)
Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there! Especially to my mom (Maureen), sister (Lisa), mother-in-law (Helaine), and sisters-in-law (Anne, Laura, & Lori).
1. Lots of playground time, some dog park time, general happiness and soaking-in-the-sunshine:
I love to climb so high . . . and Daddy's a great spotter.
I made it to the top!
Blowin' kisses to Mommy on the ground
We've taken to sitting anywhere. Right in the middle of the action for a milk break? No problem. It's kind of strangely liberating to just sit right down wherever you please.
2. We went to a birthday party today and Maya got to wear a dress! Of course, this is not her first time ever wearing a dress, but it kind of was the first time that she really got to wear a dress. Before, she wore dresses to events that either a) would have her in our arms/in a highchair the whole time (like out to dinner at a restaurant) or b) would be in a safe enough place that we could tuck the dress into her diaper cover and let her crawl around like that. But now she's walking! And she can wear a dress to a party and walk around in it. Pretty amazing (and pretty adorable, too).
It doesn't get any sweeter than this, does it?
Loser: Parker did not have the best weekend.
A totally accidental dog park incident left him cut up. And now until the skin heals he remains banished from the dog park (since I don't want any dirt to get in the wound). Good news is that it's healing very quickly. Poor dude.
Since the whole Kristi Yamaguchi twitter thing, I've been wondering what the deal is with twitter. Then someone asked me last week if I'm on twitter. Truth be told, I'm not even sure if I should be capitalizing Twitter . . . I'm not twitterliterate (twitterate?). But it got me curious about who reads here and is into Twitter----please take a moment and cast a vote in the new poll (upper left corner). Thanks!
PS. If you didn't see the Helen Keller video that I posted on the blog's Facebook page, you have to go check it out. It's totally amazing and inspiring!
Maya's got a mind of her own. She knows what she wants, and now that she can steer her little stroller (which she's able to maneuver better than the more medical looking baby walker), she's able to go after it, too.
(I could upload 700 pictures like this. I'm so excited that she suddenly is motivated to move vertically that I can't help but giggle and take a million pictures when we're out and she's (almost) walking!)
Sometimes she wants to wander around the basketball courts:
If I sit like that, I can scoot myself along on the stroller . . . I feel like a big kid . I wanted to throw my arms up and go "Whhhheeeee!"
But things got a little dicey when she found a flight of stairs that she really wanted to go down. Really, really wanted to go down.
We tried to explain that stroller + stairs = trouble, but she wasn't interested in listening. Luckily, she's 2 and easily distractable, so the tears didn't last long at all :)
Talking:
We were on our way to Trader Joe's the other day and Maya was babbling up a storm---she loves to chatter in the car (maybe because we're not focusing on her and she's trying to join in with our conversations?). Anyway, most people---even her speech therapists---don't get to hear Maya "talk" often . . . she really seems silent to most people. She's always watching and listening, but she doesn't use her voice much . . . so we're happy to let you all hear her "talk".
I'm not sure what happened with the cell phone video recording thing, but somehow the sound is on a delay---you see her mouth move, but the sound doesn't come for a few seconds. It makes more sense if you click the "play" button and then just listen, instead of watching.
Clearly, her expressive language (able to use her voice to express herself) isn't so great. But her receptive language (her understanding of us) is actually very good. You can see a little taste of that here, as Dave talks to her about her cow.
Speaking of cows, guess what we saw when we got to Trader Joe's:
-Miracles do happen . . . Maya's splints are finally here! They're SureStep splints, and she seems to like them----after I put her socks on today she actually picked one up and tried to put it on her foot :) Instead of the girly patterns, we went for barns and farm animals, because this girl loves her farm animals. She took her "Little People" cow with her to bed tonight.
-Speaking of farms, we took my mom to visit Maya's favorite farm/grocery store, Stew Leonard's. I can't remember whether I've talked about Stew Leonard's here, but Maya loves it. She made her first trip there when she was just 2 weeks old, since it was terribly hot and we were stir crazy in the apartment. They have a little animal farm in the back, complete with Maya's fave, cows:
(that's yogurt on her mouth) Mom! This cow is lickin' my sticker!
-We spent some time in NJ with my folks and my sister's family, and I showed off my hula-hooping prowess.
(the look on Dave's face here is priceless)
-We went to a big dog/cat show, that we thought would make Maya laugh until she threw up again, but she really liked the T-shirts with the doggie pictures better than the dogs. (So of course, we bought the stupid t-shirt. I'm hoping I can make it into a pillow.)
-But I think Maya's favorite part of the weekend may have been just hanging out with her Dad at the playground:
Oh, and we had a big meeting-of-the-therapists, and our first ever playdate, and a bunch of other stuff I'm probably forgetting. It's been a fun few days :)
We got outside today! More than once! And got some great videos, too.
Maya is in motion with the pushable stroller! I especially enjoy the surprise meeting at the end of the video :)
(if you don't see the video, just click the play button and it will appear)
She's moving, but needs help with the steering. So when she stops we point and say, "Maya, do you want to go over there, or that way?". She'll point, and we adjust the stroller so that she can walk in a straight line towards her choice. Then we follow.
Even if she chooses to go somewhere weird:
Also, Amsterdam International is getting around. Here are some links:
1. Operation Clean House is still in full effect here. We just cleaned out the top shelves in the closet, which consisted of: unwearable old clothes, clothes with tags still on them, framed pictures that hung on the wall of our old apartment (yes, about 3.5 years ago). Oh, and three bottles of colognes---different ones. So we sprayed all of them to see if any smelled good (FYI, not the best idea to spray 3 bottles of men's cologne in an unventilated closet).
2. Here's a taste of our morning: Maya, Parker & I hit the playground for a bit. It's getting easier to manage both of them on my own at the playground, now that Parker is older and more obedient. We have to adjust ( or avoid) depending on how crowded it is, but today he just hung out on the side while Maya climbed around. He'll watch birds, and kids running by, without moving at all---but when people approach him or talk directly to him he'll get up to say hi---we're working on that.
3. We finally got some ground beef---for the first time in months. This ground beef is fresh (well, frozen, but whatever) from Lewis Waite Farm, a local farm that raises grass fed, grass finished beef. It's certainly pricier than regular ground beef, but it looks better and smells better (like a LOT better) and is better for us. And supports local (and responsible) agriculture, cuts down on fuel for transporting food cross country, etc. etc. (If you're into food stuff/local stuff, some good reads are Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, or anything by Michael Pollan. Or you could take the easier route and watch Food, Inc. Everyone who buys or eats food should really check out that movie.)
Anyway, the ground beef pictured above was turned into meatloaves, which were cooked & frozen in slices. (And although I find the name "meatloaf" kind of digusting, I swear it's really good.) That's a whole bunch of easy lunches/dinners. And I have a great meatloaf recipe----I think it came from Gourmet magazine . . . but I cheated with a few things (we don't need ground veal, so I just do ground beef for the full meat amount), so it's "Almost Gourmet" Meatloaf:
Ingredients:
2 lbs ground beef (or whatever meat or blend of meats you want)
1/4 cup minced green pepper
3/4 cup minced onion
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
2 tbl horseradish
1 tsp dijon mustard (or whatever mustard you have)
ketchup
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 cups fresh breadcrumbs (or whatever breadcrumbs you have in a can)
2.5 tsp salt
pepper
4 slices bacon (uncooked. I like to chop up a few more slices of bacon and add them into the mixture, too)
Instructions: Combine everything except for the bacon slices. Knead it all together. Put it into a greased loaf pan and lay the bacon slices on top. Then coat the top with a thin layer of ketchup (on top of the bacon and the whole thing). Bake at 400 for 50 minutes, let cool 10 minutes before serving.
Freezing: After it's totally cooled off (like in the refrigerator for a few hours), slice into, well, slices. I freeze the slices flat, then load them into a gallon sized ziploc bag after they're frozen.
Eating: A dinner would be 1 slice of meatloaf, plus potatoes and 2 types of vegetables---so one meatloaf can really last for a lot of meals. It makes an easy lunch too.
Friday, June 18, 2010
We're in a happy place. Can you tell?
Summer is soon to be here (Dave's last day is Tuesday), days are long, the puppy training has been going well, and Maya is a delight (after a few days of teething sadness). Daylight lasts longer and our CSA has started again. Just look at our loot from yesterday:
(snap peas, a head of green leaf lettuce, rainbow chard, spinach, arugula, garlic scapes, turnips and beets)
Maya ate part of a pancake for breakfast, is loving blueberries, and attempts to communicate more and more. She also has resumed her love of hiding things. Luckily, she only has one hiding spot, under her legs. She demonstrated her superior hiding abilities when we played with chalk (thanks Shuffs!) at the playground yesterday:
Mama, do not look at my hidin' spot.
Ok, chalk, are you guys still down there?
No one will ever be able to tell where I've hidden it all:
More stories soon to come. I have so much to share and never enough time or creativity. Things on our plate include: Maya has more advanced hearing testing coming up (again. sigh), Parker gets his training vest and goes out in public (woohoo!), the walk to the CSA was ridiculous (in more ways than one), I'm working on a new communication system with Maya (in addition to signing), and I'm still planning on winning the lottery (I'm up to $0.41!).
So my rhyming-titled post was all like, Maya had a little bug, but she's over it, went to the zoo, diaper explosion, ha ha, whatever. Then we all got sick. Really sick. We spent Friday laying in bed (all three of us, in a row) with a little alarm set to wake up every 15 mins and give Maya littles syringe-fuls of Pedialyte. Then we moved to the living room and layed on the floor:
(that black strip down the right side are my pants)
The next day we went to the park, where Maya met a dog named Polly who magically cured all of her leftover yucky feelings:
And then I bounced her around to shake out any last viruses:
We got better in time for Easter, but still have occasional stomach issues. I'm not feeling up to doing an Easter post tonight, but the pictures are uploaded, so it will be soon! Also, Maya got some big girl sneakers today, so look out for a picture of those soon, too.
(The title is my clever way of breaking the tension after my heavy last post "The not knowing"---see, a play on words? And also it points out that today is a dreadfully miserable rainy--not snowy--day. Oh, and I'm putting up our snowstorm pictures, finally.)
(Don't be insulted that I had to explain my clever title---I'm not underestimating you, it's for my other blog readers. Really.)
Snowstorm pics--Dave & Maya got to play together in the snow for the first time this year (if you remember, the last snowstorm was filled with vomit and the worst waffle ever . . . this one was much better).
I was hopping up and down, whistling, making animals noises, and trying desperately to get a picture of both of them looking in the same frick-fracking direction and smiling:
Alright, off to a slow start. Dave, why don't you get in there with her?
Ok, cute snowman :) But how about we try to smile?
Dave-well done. Maya, step it up! Weee! Come on Maya! (slight hopping)
Maya, yes!!!! Argh, DAVE! HONESTLY?!
Sigh. Yes, Dave, that's much better. MAYAmayamayamaya . . .
Then I gave up and we took her sledding:
Or just plopped her on the hood of the car.
And we tried again for a pic:
So close!
FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The new walker: Our OT brought a walker for Maya this week, and I was excited to get her moving. She wasn't super into it on Monday night at home, and I thought that maybe we'd have more luck with it outside.
On Tuesday I was a total rookie---I honestly felt impressive loading up the walker to go to the park. Good for you! Be bold, take it out! Maybe she'll be more interested in trying it outside. The clunking and clanging as I tried to figure out how to move around with it was ridiculous. I giggled to myself for about a third of the walk to the park, shifting and reshifting until I came up with this:
On Weds I was a pro:
Dave & I looked at this picture and realized that if I painted eyeballs on the bottom of the tennis balls than I might scare the bejeezus out of people as we walk towards them.
And, anyway, the playground idea worked. She can't get far on her own yet, but if I push she'll toddle along to keep up just fine.
And now I'm tired of writing this, and I have no interesting way to tie it together, so we'll end with my favorite pic from this past month:
