Week Summary

So we have had a crazy week and it's not even over yet! First, LJ pulled some heavy, dining room furniture down onto his head. I know this is typical toddler, exploratory behavior but nonetheless alarming when we couldn't get him to sleep at all that night. Of course, it had to happen when Nate and I were out on a playdate, and I got that lovely call from the caregiver (The whole car-ride home Nate kept forgetting what that word 'lump' was...there's nothing like having an almost 5 year old around to lighten the air a bit) .  He wound up with a large hematoma in the temporal region of his head. Even though we waited several days closely observing him, I was sick with worry, administering acetaminophen, lots of cuddles and finally ended up taking him in for some x-rays to rule out fracture or any other serious brain injury. We are relieved to report they came out all clean.

We've been busy with our CSA farm share too. We canned a bunch of bread + butter pickles as well as some cornichon pickles.  I also baked this Peach-Raspberry Crisp from the Barefoot Contessa. The tomatoes have been abundant and we've eaten them every which way!

Nate has even enjoyed some of the creations- surprisingly, one of which was Quinoa with Sauteed Summer Veggies. Nate also had art camp where he whipped up some of these diddies:)

The other really big news? We broke down and bought Noodles the iPad with Proloquo2go (P2Go).

Here's what a screen looks like versus what our big, clunky talker looks like.

We haven't set everything up yet but I am so excited for the possibilities. It is light years ahead of what the 4-way communication device was capable of doing.  The touch screen is a lot easier for Noodles to engage and I don't have to re-record all the vocabulary words anymore. Our speech therapists have both been learning about P2Go and they have both said how awesome this is going to be for kids in their school environment as well as their overall independence.

We haven't succeeded too much on the feeding front.  We are still only consuming 1 ounce at a meal and the obstinate side of LJ comes out each and every time its mealtime.  He tries to game the system by holding the food in his mouth until the positive reward is given, and then he immediately spits the food out.  One of the new techniques we have adapted is counting to ten slowly after he has received a spoonful. If he still hasn't swallowed he has to wait for the reward while we hold his jaw shut.  It's not pleasant but I think we are slowly getting there.

Hungry Hippos has been going well though.  LJ pretended to stir a drink with a pretzel rod and then he brought it up to his mouth on his own initiative.  He also imitated us playing with straws and he tried putting them in his mouth too.  We played with a pizza box and made pretend toppings. Then LJ did something that shocked us even more.  He pulled boxes of food out of some drawers and he did the baby sign for "help me". He wanted us to help him get the bag of ginger snap cookies out of the box! I think he enjoyed hearing the crinkling sound of the cellophane bag more than he was interested in the actual cookies. Nonetheless, he did try to feed me the cookies which I would never turn down!

Noodles rocked his Aqua Therapy this week. It was so nice to see him enjoying the therapy again.  He successfully made some baskets at the water hoop.  He also loosened up a lot throughout the session- his muscles were extremely tight at the beginning of the session and progressively got looser as we warmed up. The other thing our PT worked on was getting him to tilt his hips. She used a game of water splashing to entice him to bring his legs up and in, then kick straight out. So this week was the most interested he has ever been in food play and happiest he has been in the pool in a long time, hematoma and all. Go figure.