Week 141

Christmas!  It finally arrived and Ryan could not have been happier.  He was so excited for the day that we had to tell him to not come out of his room until 6:00 AM and he had to come get us first.  Santa does not wrap his big gift and we wanted to catch the look of surprise on their faces when they came down the stairs. The big gift this year was a Nintendo DS.  They have been asking for a DS since the summer and Santa brought them one.  They were both thrilled.

However, with the holidays came lots of non-gluten free food.  It is tough to keep Ryan on a schedule and his diet with the long break.  He cheated a lot on his diet and we paid for it.  His behavior was extremely wild.  As a result of his wildness, his play became very rough.  He almost sent Dawn to the emergency room when he crashed into her knee.  He did not mean to hurt Dawn he was just so wild and rough he hyper- extended her knee.  Dawn ended up spending the majority of the morning on the couch icing her knee.  We also had to be on alert every time Ryan was near Jack.  Ryan just wanted to play with him but his play was so rough we had to be watchful and constantly remind Ryan to calm down.

We took the kids to the dentist this week and Ryan has four cavities.  We were shocked.  Ryan is so diligent at brushing his teeth and his diet is normally very good.  What we came to realize is that a great deal of the GF/CF food is high in sugar.  This is added to make the foods taste better and is something that we were not careful of watching with him.  So now we are being mindful of the sugar intake and also flossing is now recommended to help make sure he does not have any further cavities.

We also had an appointment with Dr. Cowan.  Ryan has not been to him in over a year and the doctor was surprised to see how far Ryan has come in that time.  He made good eye contact with the doctor when he shook his hand to say hello.  When the doctor called him over to the table we were at and it required Ryan to walk away from the train table, he did it without complaint.  Ryan even read for Dr. Cowan.  When the doctor stopped him half way through Ryan asked if he could finish reading the book to us.  Ryan sat down at the table with us and read the rest of the story.  Dr. Cowan was very impressed and was happy with his progress.

One area that Dr. Cowan wants us to focus on is labeling Ryan's emotions when he is having that emotion.  For example, when he is bored, he wants us to tell Ryan that this is what bored feels like and move on.  He feels that we need to help Ryan recognize his own emotions before he will be able to recognize those emotions in others. The other area is to start Ryan on a Phonics reading program.  Ryan is too literal in his letters and does not know the sounds that the letters make, especially when they are put together.  For example, sh.  Ryan reads the s sound and then the h sound.  He does not see them as one sound together.  He is doing much better with his reading but he is a little behind and we are afraid that the gap is only going to get bigger as the years progress.   Overall, it was a very good appointment.

We sometimes forget how far Ryan has come and it is nice to see others recognize that progress.  Through all the struggles that we have had with Ryan over the past three years, we sometimes forget to stop and take a look at how far he has come. One of the biggest reasons for Ryan's success is Dawn.  She has put so much time and effort into helping him that I do not know how she has the energy to keep going.  I know of many people that would have accepted the first neurologist's suggestion and brought their 3 year old to a pediatric psychiatrist to have them put them on medication.  I hope someday Ryan will realize just how much his mom has done for him and how much Dawn loves him.    

Pajama Day

Baking cookies for Santa

Christmas Eve with cousins

Christmas Eve with Nonna and Papa

Up at the crack of Dawn on Christmas morning.  So excited to play with his new DS from Santa!

A visit from Santa on Christmas Day.  He brought gifts for all of the kids, and Jack got his two bottom teeth!

Nonna replaced the ornament that Ryan broke a few weeks back.  He was so happy.

A basketball hoop from Uncle T!

Lots of outdoor play in the snow this week!

Wishing all of you a Happy and Healthy New Year.

PC

Week 93

We had Ryan's CSE meeting on January 19th and as expected they qualified Ryan for speech services.  We are still annoyed that we wasted all of this time.  He could have been receiving speech services since September.  We are still not pleased with the progress that we are seeing with the program at Wappingers.  He made such great progress by this time last year we are now wondering if we made a mistake in not sending him to a full day program.  But we did meet with his new speech teacher and she seems really nice and we are hopeful that with the twice a six day cycle sessions we will start seeing some progress with Ryan.  We will keep you updated.
 

Getting ready to play in the snow!

Ryan loved throwing snow at Daddy and Julia!

Ryan with his cousin, Johnny.

GFCF brownies!

Making very elaborate paper airplanes with Nonna and Papa!

Happy Birthday Uncle T!  

PC

Ryan and Julia are both very excited about having a baby brother or sister.  Ryan now says he wants a baby brother and might want to name him "Batman Beyond"; too funny!  Now that the baby bump is evident we are getting tons of questions about the sex of the baby.  We are not planning to find out and want to be surprised.  So usually the next question to follow is which we would prefer.  I know it is somewhat of a cliche, but we truly just want a healthy baby.  Once you actually have your own child this statement really hits home.  I look at my children and am so grateful for who they are and what joy they have brought us.  I know we are very lucky!  As difficult as things may sometimes get, and the sacrifices we need to make, it is nothing compared to what others have to face with a truly sick child.  I would feel an enormous amount of guilt and sadness bringing a child into this world who would suffer from pain; sadly there is way too much suffering in this world already! 

DC

Week 38

I made a GFCF egg free pizza today.  This was my second attempt at doing this from scratch and this time it came out much better than last time.  I think over the months I've certainly improved my GFCF cooking techniques.  I'm usually an impatient baker but you really need to slow down when cooking GFCF items and follow the directions carefully.  There aren't many shortcuts you can take.  If an ingredient works better if it is at room temperature, then you need to be patient, and plan far enough ahead, to make sure it is at room temperature.  Here is the pizza cooking in the oven.  It smelled yummy and Ryan was very excited!

Here's a video of Ryan eating the pizza; he ate two slices!

And here's one of Julia too.  She liked it until she found a piece of basil in the sauce and flipped out!

Ryan's skin continues to get smoother each day.  On most days we give him the oils in the morning and the evening.  I shouldn't really say "we" since Phil is usually the one who takes care of the oils.  Phil has also been the one to give Ryan his injections lately.  We've had a bit of a setback in the injection department.  Ryan now gets himself all worked up like he used to, and the process usually takes about 15-20 minutes because he stalls and makes excuses, and changes seats and positions a dozen times before we firmly tell him this is it or we're holding him down.  I'm not sure why the sudden change back to what it was since he was doing so well.  But now whether it's me giving the injections, or Phil, Ryan tries his best to avoid them.

A funny little story to share... Ryan looking in the mirror says: "Mom, I'm getting big.  Soon I'm gonna go to college."  (For those of you familiar with it, I think he's been watching Toy Story 3 a bit too much!)  Speaking of Toy Story 3, we had a visit from Angela and Michael this weekend and the kids had a ball playing with their Toy Story characters with them.

We had a snow day on Friday.  Here are some pictures of the kids (and Phil) frolicking in the snow on Saturday.

The faster, the better!

Looks like Ryan took a snowball in the face, but this was him trying to throw the snowball at Phil.

Getting ready to surprise Julia with a snowball!

Attempting to make a snowman. 

Poor daddy got his workout today!

And don't worry, I got plenty of action with the kids this week too.  Here's a shot of Ryan and I snuggling on the couch.  He's pretending to be Frosty with a fake pipe in his mouth!

DC