Week 103 - Happy Easter

Working on the crafts our neighbor Carol brought over!

Ryan's finished products; he was so creative and patient!

Ryan's tooth is growing in, slowly but surely

Making dough with Grandma Millie... homemade raviolis!

Coloring Easter eggs

Planting seeds for watermelons and cucumbers

Ryan making his GFCF pepperoni pizza

Making pizza for the grandmothers

Ryan wearing his pirate hat Grandma Jeanne brought from Disney World

Fishing

Having fun on papa's swing

Easter morning

Ryan's GFCF Easter cake

 

Waiting for their new playmate to arrive!

Besties!

Easter egg hunt

Just as we were finishing our outdoor egg hunt, my dad's friend stopped by with a little boy, similar to Ryan's age, and Autistic as well.  Ryan did not hesitate one minute when I asked him to take some of his eggs out of his bucket and rehide them for the other boy to find.  Ryan even ran around with him encouraging him to look in different places to find the eggs he had hidden.  All four kids eventually started taking their own eggs, hiding them for this little boy, but it seemed like Ryan was the first to understand what the adults were trying to quickly do and he set a trend of acceptance with the rest of the kids.  It brought tears to my eyes to watch as these children, ages 4 to 7, gave up their prizes to make another child happy.  I was one proud mom and aunt!

DC

Week 29

We had another good week with Ryan.  His language is improving greatly and he is now talking in full sentences most of the time.  We had his parent - teacher conference with his teacher Ms. Sue and it was a positive report.  He still is saying no sometimes to his teachers (although we have high school student that are not autistic telling teachers no!) and his fine motor skills are still below where they should be at his age. 

We did have a set back this week.  We tried re-introducing pizza and he loved it!  Unfortunately we then received two bad reports from school that he was not participating in circle time.  Circle time before this diet was a complete disaster and what they were describing (getting up, not wanting to participate, and playing with something else) were exactly the behaviors that gave us the push to visit the pediatric neurologist last spring.

Injections are still going great and we finally have a video of the procedure.    He has come such a long way in such a short amount of time with these injections. We wish we had a video of one of the injections six weeks ago to show the huge difference. 

We also had another birthday party this weekend.  It was at the Build-A-Bear in the Jefferson Valley Mall for a classmate of Ryan's.  He did such a great job at the place.  He followed directions, waited his turn on line, played duck-duck-goose and Simon Says with the other children, and had a great time.  We even had cake in the food court and we brought one of his cupcakes and he was fine with that as an option.  Although, he did walk into the food court and announced that he smelled French Fries then told me how much he loves fries!  One of the great things about this party was that he was able to build a bear.  The only ironic part is that the girl did not understand that Ryan wanted to name the bear Sally and she thought he said Shary!  On the certificate it now states that the bears name is Shary.  So below is a picture with a brown bear in a baseball outfit called Shary, a new addition to the sleep time collection.  Each one has a spot and each one has to be in the bed before we can turn out the lights.

 Over all a good week and hopefully we continue this this upward swing.  We will keep you updated with the Circle Time report next week.

PC 

Day 42

Well the pizza that we were all worried about turned into a big nothing. We made his own pizza and he took three bites and wanted to watch a show. He never asked for the take out pizza. Even Julia only took a few bites and then went to watch the show with Ryan. We will have to try Chinese food to see if we have the same luck. He used to eat an entire order of fried dumplings if we let him!

Today he spent the entire day at Day care and we had to pack his own lunch. According to daycare he had no problems with the food and ate the whole helping of corn pasta. He came running into the house today to show me his new prize box toy. If he gets five stars on his chart then he gets to pick a small prize out of the prize box. He gets a star if he remains on the "happy" side of the behavior chart. It was always depressing for us to look at the chart before the diet and see all the other children with stars and Ryan having none. He would have several meltdowns a day and rarely receive a star. Today he received two stars and that gave him enough to get a prize. He is now sleeping with his small helicopter. While this is not his first prize out of the box, this was the first prize the he was truly happy and proud to have!

PC

Day 41

Happy Birthday Phil!

Ryan, Julia, and I were invited to Phil's job to join in the celebration for his birthday. Ryan did very well eating his GFCF cookies while everyone else had birthday cake. Prior to this diet he would have had a full-fledged meltdown if we told him he couldn't eat chocolate cake. But he was content eating his cookies.

Prior to that he had his second "interview" for a new school this fall, and the directors feel he will fit right in and accepted our application. One more thing to check off of our list of things to take care of to set up Ryan's schooling for September.

Phil thought we could go out to dinner at the Outback but at 4:30 the kids were "off the wall" and we thought it best to stay in for dinner. Ryan didn't have much of an appetite. We made turkey burgers and put his on GF toasted bread but he only ate about 1/3 of it. He was a bit cranky the rest of the evening and I'm thinking it may have been from something he ate earlier in the day.

We began him on another supplement tonight, a type of vitamin E. It is the 4th one that Dr. Bock suggested out of the 6 we took home. So combine these four with the three we were already doing prior to seeing Dr. Bock, and we're up to 7. It took over 10 minutes before just to prep all of his "medicines". Some are liquid and were added to his drink. The capsules were broken open and mixed with other foods.

We have a friend coming over for dinner tomorrow night. I think we might try our first take out pizza since we started the diet. We'll put Ryan's pizza in the oven and get him psyched about it and then maybe he won't feel so bad when he sees the box from the pizzeria. We'll let you know how it goes! Until then...

DC

Day 30

Today we added a new supplement from Dr. Bock's list. This is now the 5th supplement and we have four more sitting in the shopping bag just waiting to be opened. We haven't added a new one in about a week so we figured we'd give it a try. This one is called Sugar Companion. I didn't know much about it so I looked it up and found that it is supposed to help reduce cravings for sweets. This was a big problem for Ryan before we started this diet and continues to be an issue, although it has diminished somewhat. I'm not sure how long it takes to work its way into the system but it didn't take effect today. He's been craving salty foods the past few days and that continued today. He asked for chips countless times, to the point where we gave in and let him have 2nd and 3rd helpings. It was out of control and by the afternoon we were super frustrated. He also asked several times for lollipops and cookies.

Phil's mom visited for lunch and Ryan was very talkative (he started some of the conversations) and made lots of eye contact. She noticed the recent improvements he's been making, even a few new ones after just seeing him last week for his birthday.

For dinner I made a GFCF pizza from scratch. He ate a little bit but wasn't crazy about it; the crust was bumpy looking and he said it had potatoes on it! It didn't help that Julia took one bite and made an announcement about how yucky it was. At Nature's Pantry today I found a GFCF frozen pizza and purchased it to try out. I would love to find pizza that Ryan is content with. I miss eating pizza at home, but can't bring myself to ordering it and then telling him he can't have it. Same goes with Chinese food. We used to order Chinese take out at least 2 times a month. Since we started this diet we haven't ordered out at all.

Most of the homemade pizza got wrapped up and put into the fridge and he ended up having toast before bed. We wanted him to have a full stomach before his 12 hour fast for his bloodwork. We spent time warning him about the morning and telling him that he was going to wake up, go to the doctor, and then eat breakfast. He asked if he could have cookies and we said yes. So we had him practice saying the routine aloud: wake up, go to the doctor, eat a cookie.

It was a very stressful day for me worrying about him going for bloodwork in the morning.

DC

Day 21

New foods. Tonight I made GFCF pizza for the first time. Granted, I bought the dough premade, but I've been wanting to try it to see if Ryan would eat it so I thought tonight was a good night to try it out. I topped it with fresh tomato sauce and a Vegan tofu "mozzarella" cheese. The cheese melted and got all bubbly and tasted really close to the real thing. Ryan walked through the door and immediately noticed the smell of the pizza cooking. And he said, "Mommy, you're making pizza?" So I felt good that it at least smelled like real pizza. And he ate it and I think he liked it. He asked for a second helping. He certainly didn't eat as much as he would have prior to this diet but he ate it. And we ate it too. Well, not all of us. Julia took one little bite and announced that she didn't like it. She has no filter! But it was okay because it didn't stop him from eating it.

Next task was to make a GFCF cake because we are celebrating Ryan's birthday on Sunday. I had good intentions to do it tonight, but it was a very exhausting and emotional day and I need to walk away from the computer and rest. Tomorrow is another day!

DC