Gratituesday: Little Nubbin

At least that's what Daddy calls it.  I thought given my propensity towards the legume family we'd call this one 'Bean'.  But Daddy stubbornly sticks with 'Nubbin' and so maybe the next one will be 'Bean'.  

We both agree I don't actually even show that much yet, so I must be subconsciously doing that pregnant stick out my belly thing. 

We're all super happy!  And super grateful for the little heartbeat we heard today.  :-)

Gratituesday: therapy

I was reminded yesterday at Charlie's Dysphagia therapy, that this coming Thursday will be 2 years exactly since we started therapy for his eating issues.  That was quite a realization to think it's been 2 years.  My initial thought was how ironic that the anniversary of something I've been so un-thankful for is falling on a day of thanksgiving.  Wait, is that irony?  I never know.  And not that this is the only day we should be thankful, people.  

It's been a long two years.  There are plenty of days where I feel like the martyred mother who must do therapy with her child every day, multiple times a day.  The mother who can't eat a meal in peace unless her child is at someone else's house.  Wait, maybe that's all mothers with toddlers.  The mother who's life revolves around her child's meals and food.

And then I get perspective.  Perspective like the Dragon Mom I recently blogged about.  Or this other story I found recently of another Dragon Mom who finally lost their battle and kissed their sweet baby girl one last time. I'm sure I would have cried over both of these stories even when I wasn't a mother, but being a mother now makes these stories so much more real, and I can easily saturate tissues and napkins galore before I get past the first paragraph of stories like that.


And when I finally connected all of this in my brain yesterday, I had this moment, perhaps for the first time, where I was truly. seriously. for real. absolutely grateful. for therapy.  Not just the "oh yea I'm grateful we have this and are trying to fix it, blah blah blah" kind of thankfulness.  Charlie has never been failure to thrive (which some kids with eating disorders can be), it's not a terminal illness, we have money to see a therapist, and most vivid yesterday was the fact that WE ARE SEEING PROGRESS!!!  The progress part is exciting because we have definitely been through long periods where progress has been microscopic to non-existent.  And recently it's been visible!  I have hope!  My son will one day eat soup and bread and raw veggies and nuts and pieces of all kinds of healthy foods, instead of pureed everything.  Did I mention I hate purees?  I do.


Why am I glad for therapy specifically?  Because we are seeing progress.  Wait, back up.  Because the speech/dysphagia therapists caught the problem when he was 6 weeks old, and we started taking measures to make sure that nothing got worse, so he didn't grow up establishing a cycle of incorrect eating patterns, resulting in more problems as he grew, poor digestion from un-chewed food, refusal to eat food due to poor digestion and upset tummy (which can lead to failure to thrive) and scariest of all, lots of potential choking that happens when you don't have correctly established chew/swallow patterns.  I don't care how experienced you are in the matter, that moment when you realize your child is really choking, it's scary.

Am I grateful to have avoided all of that?  You bet.  Did that mean I was thankful for therapy?  Not really and truly.  Not until yesterday.

So on this Gratituesday I am thankful for Charlie's therapists and his therapy sessions.  And while I'd love to think of what else we could have done with the time and money we've poured into therapy, I can truly say that  I am grateful we have been able to do this for our son to save him a whole host of problems as he progresses through life.

And this Thanksgiving day - 2 years from our first therapy session - I will be so grateful to have a happy, healthy, thriving child.

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

Posting in high school note style...sort of

AKA Now you can see my desperation when the internet goes....

Our internet has been going out a lot lately. A LOT.  The TWC guy was here again yesterday, for the 3rd time in the last week.  Sheesh!  I feel like my internet time, blogging especially has been spotty at best.  Just for kicks, here is a post I wrote a week ago last Wednesday, in my first day of internet withdrawal phase.  Ha.  There is actually some useful Charlie tidbits in there too if you can dig deep enough.

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12:53pm Our internet is down.  It has been since early this morning.  At this point I have gone 5 hours without internet.  How am I typing this?  Well I’m doing the good old fashion type-it-up-in-Word-and-publish-later thing.  It reminds me of high school actually.  The very few times that I actually wrote notes in class…

yes I was THAT girl who didn’t pass notes – infact I TOOK notes – didn’t talk during class, and generally paid attention and would have been considered all around a teacher’s pet

…the very few times I wrote notes, it was actually something from the day I wanted to record before I had forgotten it or an email I wanted to write before my thoughts escaped me.  Then I would type up the couple of paragraphs later in an email or journal or whatever and there you have it.  Exactly what I’m doing right now, except that was paper to email, and this is MSWord to blog.  Blogging and saving for later.  The only reason I’m doing this is I have a couple spare, Charlie-free minutes, and I wanted to make note of some of the things he’s been saying lately.

Oh yea, how is life with no internet?  Bizarre.  And uncomfortable.  Not unmanageable, but uncomfortable.  I know I’m addicted to the interwebs, but it’s a little alarming to feel so unsettled when it’s not available.

Anyways, I feel like Charlie’s verbal skills have just taken off recently and I need to record some of it before I forget.  He’s starting to string words together to form phrases, and his vocabulary is just growing by leaps and bounds.

In the car the other day we were talking about all the people we knew and loved – which is essentially me rattling off names and asking Charlie if he loved them and him going “Yessth!”  - and out of the blue he just says “Uncka Sah-meee!!”  That was the first time he had ever paired the “uncle” title with any of his uncles’ names in an understandable-by-a-stranger kind of way.  (So Sam, you should feel mighty fine as the first.)

“Oh-keeee” is his latest go-to word and I hear it all day long.  Do you want to go to the park?  “Ohh-keee!”  Can you go get E-O?  “Ohh-keee!”  Do you want apple sauce?  “Ohhh-KEEEE!!”  Okay has pretty much become synonymous with “yes” which I’m pretty sure is a bad thing, but it’s so cute right now I can’t reform the usage just yet.

"Eeee-meean."  Every time after praying, we hear a resounding “Eeee-meean!” from the high chair.  He has even started saying it in church whenever he hears the pastor say it, which is alternately incredibly adorable and touching, and slightly embarrassing as well when it happens so much.  He has started singing the “Amen chorus” with us at the end of service.  It’s not in tune and the rhythm is pretty out there, but he’ll sing “Eee-meean” over and over again just like we do.  That’s another Mama Moment for me.

Last night after bath time and a clean diaper were on, I told him he could go play for a little while because he was all done now.  He scrambled right up and said “Aaalll dum” which is the first time he’s attempted that phrase, and the first time he’s of his own accord just repeated something I said without me prompting. 

“I sorry” is what he had to say after he had gotten into something he wasn’t supposed to.

“Gah-gee” has morphed into “Gam-my” which I assume will one day finally morph into “Grammy”.  Maybe.  One day.  If we can just get those Rs.

There are a plethora of telephone conversations in our house now and not a half are done by me.  Here’s a sampling of any of the 20 conversations you’ll here in any given day: 

“Oh, hii, Saah-mee, uummm oh-keee, noo noo, umm ohkeee, bye.”

“Hiiiii-eeee Uncka, Ee-um, Sin-nee, Rooorr-eee, byee.”  (Those are all people, btw, not made up words.)

“Hi.  Hi.  Hiii.  Um, yessth.  Umm yessth.  Oh-KEEEE!  Bye.”

Quite frankly I’m a little mortified that that’s what I sound like on the phone and how my son perceives my conversations.

One of my faves is when he points to the little indentation below my nose and above my lip and says "foom-ball" which sounds a lot closer to "foot ball" than it does "philtrum", which is the technical term for that little crevice above your lip and below your nose.  FYI.  In case you didn't know that.  My two year old does.  He also knows where your nostril is, but can't say that worth a flip.

"Fohmbot" is what Charlie keeps asking to watch on TV.  He loves the movie “Robots” and would happily watch it any time I let him.  By the way, do you know what “Fohmbots” say?  Charlie does.  “Beep, beep, beep!”

6:01pm still without internet.  Gone nearly 12 hours without it.  Driving me up the wall.  And feeling even more pathetic because of it. 

On a good note, I still managed to muddle through my workout before Charlie gets home, even though my workouts are all internet based, and I was having a hard time remembering the whole thing.  Maybe I made up a couple of those exercises, but who cares.  My face is still red and sweaty and I still stink, so I think it counts as a workout.

Now it’s time to get some dinner and clean up the kitchen a bit before the Charlie-man gets home.

8:01pm I was able to gank some internet from a neighbor for just a couple minutes before it went away.  But now it’s gone again and I’m left typing in my Word doc and cleaning up the kitchen.

9:22pm.  I feel like I am officially losing my mind.  I want to get on the internet to check a recipe for tomorrow’s breakfast!  Nope.  No can do.  I like the ease of pulling up recipes from the internet and not having to copy them off by hand, but oh today has left me wondering what would happen if I lost my internet for multiple days in a row.  Probably half my recipes are stowed somewhere on the internet.  I am a little lost puppy who keeps trying the same thing over and over hoping that one time it will actually bring my internet back.  Going to bed.

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In case you actually made it this far, now you can see how pathetic I am without internet.  I felt pretty guilty about that.  But at least you got to hear about Charlie's really adorable phone conversations. :)

The Great Green Smoothie Disaster

Oh that title reminds me a little too much of The Great Vaseline Incident.

This one was not quite so bad, but oh man.  Hah, yea.

So a couple mornings ago I was really excited because we'd made a green smoothie for breakfast.  You might be wondering why this is exciting, and that's because I have to admit, our smoothies have been fewer and farther between right now as we are in a budget crunch while hubbs finishes up his PhD and we are on a lower income. Smoothies = incredible, nutrient, power packed breakfasts, but also = more $$$ than oatmeal. :)

So there I said it.  Not too many green smoothies in our house for the time being.

Anyways, so this was a special occasion, and I told Sonny first thing when I got him up out of bed, cause I knew he'd be excited.  And sure enough he was.  His face lit up and he started squealing "Smooosh! Smoooosh!!" as I got him ready to go downstairs.  I went downstairs ahead of him with my hands full, and stopped off in the bathroom really quickly.  He was a good minute behind me - or so I thought.

I was in the bathroom when I heard the fridge door open.  Not a huge deal - he does that a lot these days - although he is not supposed to.  Then I heard this funny, unfamiliar "sploosh" noise.   ...   Then it dawned on me.  I had left his glass and my glass (about 5 cups of smoothie total), sitting on the fridge shelf right out in front - within perfect reach of a little pudgy arm.

I ran out of the bathroom just in time to see Charlie burst out into uncontrollable sobs.  Sure enough, green smoothie was splattered all over the fridge, the floor, the dishwasher, the cabinets, Charlie and....are you ready for this?  E-O.  E-O the little blue elephant was once again a casualty of war? a Charlie made disaster? ....only this time it was green smoothie not vaseline.

Selfishly I looked to see if my smoothie jar was still intact - it was, whew! - then I set about the task of dealing with my son and his spilled smoothie glass.  Poor little Charlie-man was crying buckets.  I immediately felt so bad for him that he was so upset over his delicious smoothie being all over the floor.  My heart went out to him.  Surely he was just as upset as I was over the loss of precious, nutrient packed, yummy tasting smoothie that he was looking forward to eating for breakfast.

But as I tried to comfort my son and clean up the mess, it became apparent that the tears were not over the spilled smoothie, but the covered E-O.  He must have known that E-O was "dirty" again and that he would end up going away for several days to get cleaned up like he did after The Great Vaseline Incident.  He was heart broken and I thought would blow a gasket when I picked up our now-green little elephant and deposited him in the washing machine.  It took a great deal convincing that E-O was just going to take a bath in the washing machine bathtub, like Charlie does upstairs, and that everything would be okay.  Seriously.  I had to play that one up big time.

He finally started to calm down and I put him in his chair for breakfast.  He eagerly gulped up the 3 swallows of smoothie that were still in his cup, cast his eyes at my full glass, put on his sweetest little face, and started saying "Mooah, mooah" while signing "more" with little hands and pointing at my glass.

At that point, my heart just about broke.  I have had those "okay, now I really feel like a parent" moments,  but this time did me in.  Serious Mom Moment.  I have never felt more like a parent.  Here was my son, who had been disobedient (by opening the fridge), spilled his smoothie in his eagerness to drink the beloved drink, and created quite a huge mess for me to clean up while simultaneously trying to console his broken heart - here he was, asking me so politely and sweetly to share my smoothie - mine! that I had so much looked forward to and that I had every right to because I didn't foolishly spill mine.

And what did I do?  I took pity on him shared my beloved smoothie with him.  I wanted him to have green smoothie as much as he wanted it, even though he had been disobedient and created a great deal of work for me.  I showed him mercy, shared my smoothie and we laughed and giggled.  After I reminded him one more time of his folly and what he was NOT supposed to do ever again.


I even got some pictures. :)

There was lots of smoothie love that day. :-D  And lots of Love.



Oh and for those curious, the green elephant is now back to his original blue hue, hardly any worse for the wear.  I tell you, that elephant and music box inside has survived about 5 more laundry washes than I ever expected it to.

How much do you love bums?

In this house we love bums a lot.  Specifically Daddy's bums.  Oh wait, you thought I was actually talking about bums as in heinys!  Heehee.  

I'm talking about Daddy's buns!  Oh wait, I just realized that's not any better.

Buns!  As in what you put your veggie burgers on!  ;-)  

But in this house, we still do have an obsession with Daddy's buns - or actually just any bread that Daddy consumes.  We were at the grocery store  a couple days ago, and as soon as I put the buns in the cart, Charlie starts squealing "Dah-dee, Dah-deeee".  I knew he wouldn't rest until I let him hold the buns, so I ask him if he wants to hold Daddy's buns.

"YESSTH!!!!"  came the reply.

And all throughout the rest of the store he starts chanting "bumms, buumz, ohh Dah-deee BUUMSS...."

Yes all you onlookers, my son is obsessed with his Daddy's buns.

It was definitely one of those mom moments spent in half amusement and half embarrassment.  

See how excited he is to hold the "bums"?

He loves to turn them over and examine them.

Or take them for a spin on his little push cart.

Do you love your bums?  :)

Big Boy Bed Take 3

Ahh, the final installment of the Big Boy Bed saga - at least for now.

But where is the big boy bed you ask?  I see none in sight.  

That would be because the once he figured out how to crawl back and forth over the railing, he has delighted in pulling all of his precious treasures off of his bed, and huddling behind his bedroom door and drifting off to sleep there.  (Can you see the door in those two pictures?  That was me inching it open and peering around with my camera to take these shots before scooping him up and putting him in his bed.)  Oh yea.  He turns the light on too, THEN crawls out of bed and falls asleep behind the door.

I love how he fell asleep with his little feet propped up against his dresser.  Like I said, in spite of disciplining, he will get up out of bed and do this.  And at moments like these, I don't mind terribly.  It's somewhat humorous actually.  The night I found him like this, I saw that his bed room light was on, so I naturally cracked opened the door to reprimand him, only to find that his bed was empty.  Opening the door a little more expecting to see him up prancing around the room - which he wasn't - I opened it a little more, and just when I was getting ready to have a moment of panic -

SOMEONE CAME IN AND STOLE MY KID WHILE I WAS IN THE HOUSE AND I DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE!!!   

I open the door a little further and almost banged him in the head before realizing he was happily tucked behind the door in dreamland.  That was a moment of relief, frustration, and hilarity all rolled into one Mom Moment. 

Then I made a mad, silent dash for the camera.  I'm glad I had the presence of mind to think of that, so I could document that night forever.

Sweet dreams little vagabond sleeper.