A bunch of little stuff

Highlights from the past few days:

-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 :)

I can't come up with a title. But there are videos, so you should read it anyway.

Let's start with an Amsterdam International update.  Since Tuesday night, we've had 2,500 page loads.  Two thousand, five hundred.  That's a friggin' lot.  Also, 182 people have shared the link on Facebook.  Wow.  Keep spreading it around, folks.  I love the idea that it's reaching people who may really connect with it!

I've been spending all of my time working on emailing people and spreading it around, so Maya's been on her own.  Turns out, when left to fend for herself, she gets into trouble.

Example 1:  She chipped her tooth (The upper middle one on to your right.  The very bottom right corner of it is gone.)

How?  I have no idea.  That's the kind of mom that I am . . . my only child breaks a tooth and I don't even know when it happened.  Where's my Mother of the Year plaque?  (In all seriousness, we think it's because she keeps tapping things on her teeth---her OT had to confiscate a set of markers the other day.)

Example 2.  She taught herself how to climb on the coffee table because I wasn't there to help her reach her toys. 

You're probably thinking "Man, that must have been so cute.  I wish there was a video."  Well, wish no more:

(My dad was here for a Maya playdate, that's him cheering her on!)

(As always, if you just see blank white boxes with small "play" arrows under them where the videos should be, just click the arrow and the video will appear.  I'm not tech savvy enough to know why this happens or how to fix it.)

Ok, for real, the Amsterdam International stuff has been fun, but this has just been a crazy week for us.

We had a few appointments.  A few extra appointments basically wipe out all of our free time for the week.  We had 2-4 therapies each day this week . . . add in the appointments, travel time, 3 meals per day, 1 long nap, dog walks, and that's it.   I was basically a prisoner in my own home.

Luckily, Maya thinks therapies are more or less playdates, as evident by her so-happy-she's-nearly-falling-over (0:21) response when she hears that her 3rd therapist of the day is about to arrive:




Oh, and one of our appointments this week was for splint measurements!!!  Hooray!!!  (By the way, I got to pick out a pattern for the splints----rainbows?  Ladybugs?  Hearts?  Not for this girl . . . we went with red barns and farm animals---she's going to be psyched!)

Maya Gump

Maya's splints were finished today. (ignore the fact that she's wearing a giraffe shirt, strawberry pants, and pink socks. She's just such a diva, insisting on her own wardrobe selections already. Or we just don't have many pants that fit right now, since she crawls like an animal at the playground and everything is filthy.) Here they are:

She doesn't seem to mind them at all, although she only wore them for 2 15-min periods today. She crawled down the hall and as they hit the ground with a tap-tap-tap it sounded like she was wearing heels. Ran out tonight to buy her a pair of shoes so that tomorrow we can start working on standing.

1 chicken, 17 meals?!?

So Dave & I have been trying to reduce the amount of meat that we eat, both for economical and health reasons. Once we've used up our frozen meat we're planning on buying directly ffrom a farm, where meat will be twice as expensive (at least) . . . so we're trying to offset that by making it a smaller part of our meals. For example, last night we had steak and made sure to leave enough left over to make another meal of tonight. (Tonight we'll have steak fajitas.) It turns out that one of the easiest things to stretch is a whole chicken----it's so versatile that you can do different things with it every night and it doesn't feel like you're just eating chicken over and over again.

Last Sunday I made a chicken in the crockpot. Here is how that chicken fed us over the week:

Sunday night: Roasted chicken dinner (for 2) (with potatoes & some vegeatbles from the farm)
Monday lunch: 1 chicken sandwich
Monday dinner: Pasta with pesto (which I make and then freeze in cubes) and chicken (for 2)
Tuesday lunch: 1 chicken sandwich (for me), 1 pasta with pesto & chicken (for Dave)
Tuesday dinner: Chicken soup (I made the broth from the bones, etc on Tuesday in the crockpot) for 2. The soup had vegetables, chicken, whole wheat noodles, & matzoh balls.
Wednesday lunch: Chicken soup (for 2)
Wednesday dinner: Chicken pot pie (for 2)
Thursday dinner: Chicken pot pie (for 2)
Friday lunch: The last of the chicken soup (for Dave), and the last of the chicken pot pie (for me)

That's 5 nights of (really delicious) dinner (for 2), and 7 individual lunches from 1 chicken! (For the record, it was a bit over 7lbs to start with. Also for the record, since the leftover dishes all involved re-cooking the chicken, I wasn't worried about getting food poisoning from eating old chicken).
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For those who are looking for Maya news . . .

Maya is doing well, enjoying our daily trips to the park, playground, or pool. On Monday we even had our physical therapist meet us at the playground and I learned some tricks/techniques that we can practice while we're there. If the weather is nice next Monday we may go there again.

Tomorrow we're going to get her splints finished. She's going to have braces that we go from her calves to down and around her feet (I'll take pictures, since it's hard to envision). The goal is to help her have a stable base so that she can start standing and walking. Also, they'll help to straighten out her feet, which tend to curl in. Hopefully they won't be too overwhelming, but I'm anticipating some unhappy days as she adjusts to wearing them.

She's also cutting tooth #6 and I think she's getting a cold . . .both of which have caused some feeding and sleeping issues, but hopefully that will all even out. She's eating baby food like a champ, now we need to start working on progressing to solids.