So What's New?

Apparently not much, since I haven't written in awhile.

Let's see, we actually had a great weekend last week. On Saturday Ian and I went to a playdate at one of our friend's houses. It started off looking like it was going to be a huge group, but ended up being small due to illness and other obligations. We had a great time though. We hadn't seen these friends in months and it was good to see how much the kids had grown and changed.

Then on Sunday we had a birthday party. It was at the bowling alley where the birthday girl's dad is the head chef. The kids had an awesome time bowling. Ian loved it and got really mad when we had to stop. We then moved into the banquet hall and the kids had a blast running and chasing each other in the wide open spaces. It was really great to see kids of all ages playing together and having so much fun. (Ian was the youngest and the oldest kids where 12-ish).

Monday mom and dad took Alison to the Imax theater in Grand Rapids. We weren't sure how she'd react to 3D Imax, but she did really good and liked it. She's actually begging to go back. Yay for her!

Tuesday I took Alison to see her play therapist. We were trying to brainstorm how to get Alison to eat more variety of foods. There are so many ideas that just don't work for her. Her therapist was suggesting rewarding her with a desired food, but I see too much potential for that to backfire on us. Later that night I came up with an idea to get Alison to try more foods (I hope). We made up a sticker chart (she loves sticker charts). It's got steps from licking something new (she won't take a bite, but she will lick it), to taking a small bite, a regular size bite, 2 bites, and 5+ bites. Then at the end a column for liking the new food. She will get a sticker for each thing she licks and each thing she likes. We'll use a stamp for the intermediate steps. When she gets 20 lick it stickers I'll take her to the candy store, McDonalds or the $1 store for a small treat. If she gets 5 like it stickers we'll do the same. When she gets up to 10 new like it foods, she'll get a slightly bigger reward.

Now normally I don't like or recommend reward charts for everyday things. But, this is something that needs to be fixed. Her list of acceptable foods has shrunk to foods that either aren't very healthy or don't have enough calories to keep her going and it has to change. If I have to resort to bribery to do it, I'll do what I have to do.

The good news is that she did try a new food this week. Nana made peanut butter fudge (with "seeds" = tiny bits of peanut from the peanut butter). Normally "seeds" aka nuts is an automatic no go with Alison, but when I picked one out to show her how small they were she decided to try it. She liked it so much that she had me call nana to get the recipe so we could make some ourselves. So one more small step in the right direction.

On Thursday we had a new speech therapist come to work with Ian. Our other speech therapist is off on a medical leave for at least 2 months. While we are sad that K is so sick, we like our new therapist a lot. She has a daughter that was born the same day as Ian! So she knows all about parenting toddlers. We're excited to see what new ideas she has and what progress he might make with her.

Oh and on top of it all, Ian came down with a cold this week and has been a whiney, clingy, tantrummy mess. I try to be understanding, but it wears me down none-the-less. I was so thankful that yesterday Dan took Ian with him when he went to fix his parents' computer. I even got my etsy shop set up. (Etsy is like ebay but for handmade items.) Unfortunately I didn't get any items listed yesterday and today is so cloudy that I can't get decent pics of my items. As soon as I get items listed, I'll post a link to my shop, so stay tuned for more shop news.

Wow, I guess a lot really did happen this week. I've just been too wrapped up in what was going on to take a minute to write it out.