All that food therapy for nothing

Joseph is a picky eater.  It took him years to get to that point.  He used to be ... I don't know, whatever it is that's 100 stages beyond picky.  It took two years of occupation therapy with a heavy emphasis on sensory integration, nearly two years of food therapy and a ton of work from us and him to get him to where he is now.

In spite of all the work he's done he's still a picky eater.  He doesn't like different types of food to be touching or mixed.  He doesn't like sauces or condiments of any kind, he refuses to dip or dunk any of his food.  Soups have been declared totally off limits for being "too soupy".  Anything too spicy or sour or crunchy or slimy or chewy or strong smelling "gross looking" is on his won't-eat list.

But...

Yesterday we went to a teppanyaki grill.  Joseph ordered shrimp with rice and veggies.  He cheered and laughed as he watched it be prepared in front of him.  When it was placed on his plate he dug in.  With chopsticks!  He dipped his shrimp in sauce!  On purpose!  And he said it was yummy!

All that time spent on food therapy and it turns out the real trick to getting him to eat is to first light his food on fire and toss it around in the air before serveing it.  Thanks teppanyaki dining!

Also, it would seem that the trick to getting me to eat scrambled eggs is to have a Japanese man toss them into my open mouth.

Three years ago today I was preparing for an embryo transfer.
Five years ago today I found out I was having a girl.

I hope it's in the shape of a horsie!

A couple of weeks ago I took Joseph to the eye doctor because he was complaining about "floaties". Turns out he has the tiny problem most commonly know as Terrible Eyesight. The poor kid has been going around half blind and I didn't even know it.

Yesterday Joseph had an evaluation with a physical therapist because I notices his ankles were starting to turn down. After watching him run around the gym for a while the therapist recommended ankles braces and twice a week physical therapy.

In the span of two weeks the kid has gained glasses, braces and a standing therapy appointment.

I think next week I'll take Joseph for a social assessment where they'll determine that he's fitting in too well and recommend that he gets a farm animal shaped birthmark tattooed on his face.

One year ago today I loved Obama.
Two years ago I asked people to pray.
Three years ago today I nursed Elle for the last time.
Four years ago today I was having a bad day.

Not much new

There's not really much going on around here these days. The most exciting thing I can think of to tell you is that I had a dream last night that I went fishing with Simon from American Idol. He had to bait my hook for me because I didn't know how to do it. Then later we ate the fish we caught and he let me be a guest judge on American Idol. That's pretty ironic since in real life last night I was just laughed at for not knowing how American Idol worked. Anyway, that's the most interesting thing I could think of to tell you so if you're going to read further you might want to bring along something to entertain yourself.

I managed to somehow miss an appointment with Joseph's pychatrist last week. Those appointments are impossible to get too. I was just kicking myself. I'll make another one today while we're there for speech and OT but who knows how long it will be before I can get him in. Augh, not my best mom moment.

I also managed to miss a call from the surrogacy agency yetsterday. I'm not sure how that happened since I watch my cell like a hawk and I've got my ring tone tunred up to "earsplitting". Maybe this is the big call? Probably not. This wait is really starting to drag on. Sigh.

I accidently took some nighttime cold medicine this morning. That's why I'm not more interesting today. That's also why this lame entry took me nearly half an hour to type. But that's not your fault so I'll let you go now.

Tackle It Tuesday

I have 4 billion things that need to be done around the house but todays TiT is a little different.

Part 1: Fill out the 10,000 pieces of paperwork I need to do for Joseph's 3 year IEP re-assesment. (This is going to take a while.)

Part 2: Try to get a hold of someone about getting Joseph into the Mobile Assesment Unit so that he can be seen by a group of people who can get him a diagnosis. Call the Mental Health Triage Nurse I met last night to get a formal referal to a new behavioral therapist. I also have to talk to her about accessing Family Home Therapy. (So much to do but it's all really positive stuff!)

Part 3: Kick some butt. Back when I started getting into the swing of cooking dinner more regularly Jesse and I agreed that if I did the cooking he would take care of the cleaning up after. I've slowly started to notice that when I go to cook dinner now my first step has to be to clean up from last night's dinner because no one else has done it. This will not stand.

Part 4: General pick-up all over the house. Boring.

Update! - re part 2: The main person I need to get ahold of is out of the office all week. I left her a message to call me and if she hasn't called me by Monday I'll call her back. Small setback.

Joseph's good news

Joseph is done with food therapy! He finally had enough good sessions that his food therapist thinks he's ready to be done. He still has some real issues with food, he probably always will, but now he's able to eat a much wider range of foods. Texture is not as big of an issue for him as it used to be and he's much less sensitive to smell than he was when he started food therapy.

So, after over two years of therapy we've managed to knock physical therapy and food therapy out of his schedule. All that's left is occupational therapy and speech therapy. Neither of those are expected to go one very much longer either. A couple of months for OT and maybe 6 months for speech.

I'm really proud of Joseph. Therapy has never been much fun for him and most of the time he would rather not have been there but most of the time he did what he needed to do. He's such a great kid.

Six glorious hours

Jesse took the kids to his dad's house for a visit yesterday. I had the house to myself for six glorious hours. I don't remember the last time I was by myself for that long. It was wonderful. It was strange being away from Elle like that though. It's probably a good thing since she needs to learn to be away from me once in a while.

Jesse filled his dad and his wife (um, his dad's wife, not Jesse's) about the surrogacy. That went ..... not well. I guess it went about like I expected it to. It probably didn't help that Joseph was "helping" by telling them that I was doing it so that we could go on a cruise. Well, not everyone is going to be supportive and what really matters is how Jesse and I feel about it. We're the only one's who can really judge if we can do something like this and feel very confident that we can.

Some good news about Joseph! His behavioral therapist is now backing off her RAD theory. She really starting to think he has AS also. Hooray! Yet another person to tell me that my son is neuro-atypical! It's the best day ever. Ok, so I'm being a little sarcastic. I am glad though that she is more on the same page as us now.

As I type this there is a show on in the backgroud about "amazing" births. The story on right now is about a woman who wanted to give birth to her third child in the ocean. Yeah, I can't see how that would be dangerous or stupid at all. They actually found a midwife to help them find a good tidepool to birth in. Seriously? A fricken tidepool?

A tough day

Today was one of those tough days with Joseph that leaves me questioning nearly everything about myself as a mother. Sometimes I'm too tough on him and sometimes I'm not tough enough. It's so rare that I feel like I've found the right balance with him. He's such a great kid but sometimes (like today) I feel like I don't even get to enjoy being his mother. I feel like I'm always dealing with a meltdown or trying to figure out how to best avoid future meltdowns or wondering what it is exactly that caused the last meltdown. At the end of most days I just feel exhausted. It's like I'm fighting a battle and I don't even know who or what it is that I'm fighting against.

There was a big screaming fit today at food therapy over macaroni and cheese of all flipping things. It was one of those yucky times where I just want to grab him by the shoulders and say "Stop it! Just be normal!" I hate that those thoughts even go through my head. Then I feel guilty for thinking that when he can't control the way he is so I let him get away with doing stuff that he can control. I don't know how to break us out of this cycle right now. It's rough.

So, no more kids for me. I'm already in way over my head as it is. Ask me again in 10 years or so.

Annoyed

Argh. I'm not in a good mood today.

Joseph's behavioral therapist has come up with a theory that Joseph a) doesn't have Aspergers and b)has Reactive Attatchment Disorder. This bugs me for a lot of reasons. I'm suspicious that one of ther big reasons for thinking this is that he's adopted. In fact she told me that a lot of adopted children have this. I guess I don't buy it. I would be less skeptical if she had said she thought he has RAD in addition for AS. I'm annoyed and I don't want to think about it right now.

I got a call from the surrogacy agency that I was working with. The key word there is "was". Turns out that there is not a hospital close enough to me that will accept their insurance. There goes that. Now I have to start researching agencies again and start the whole application/intervew process over. Bah.

If you're the praying kind then please continue to pray for baby Jackson. He's very sick right now and could really use a little extra help. Thankfully IDAT has gotten better and is now out of the hospital but she hasn't even been able to hold her little guy yet since he's so sick. It breaks my heart that they're having such a rocky start so, yeah, keep them in your prayers. (Oh, and thank you mom for doing the distance healing for him.)

Joseph's big news

Joseph is done with physical therapy. He's met all of his goals so he's all done. Hooray! They'll re-evaluate him hin a year to see how he's doing and as long as no problems come up before that he's all done.

He'll continue going to food therapy, speech therapy and behavioral therapy once a week and I'm going to ask about having occupational therapy added to his schedule again. He still needs some extra help with writing and stuff so I think that might be good for him.

But for now it's nice to have one less thing Joseph has to do. He's pretty happy too. He told me that he's glad because now he'll be able to run faster at recess. Now I'm weepy.

Joseph's big prize

Yesterday was the last day of Joseph's summer sports and they had a little party to celebrate. They gave ribbons to all the kids who participated. Most of the kids kind of sauntered up to get their ribbons when their name was called but not our Mr Joseph. He ran/skipped up and yelled "Yea!" several times. He was so proud of himself for getting that ribbon. He kept calling it his prize and he wanted to hold it when they did group pictures of all the kids. He's really, really proud of that ribbon.

We got Joseph's school supply list the other day. Cripes! It seems like when I was a kid all we had to have was a backpack, a lunch box and maybe a Trapper-Keeper when you were older. Joseph has a big old list of stuff he needs to bring plus we'll have to take him shopping for school clothes. Man, this kid just keeps getting more and more spendy. Who knew that was going to happen?

On the good news front, we have finally gotten Joseph in to see a behavioral therapist. We'll finally have someone who can work with him on some of his social and behavior issues that his other therapies weren't able to address. He'll see this woman (who looks like she 18) once every 2 weeks but she said that if we think he needs to come more often then we canbump it up to once a week. She seems really nice and Joseph liked her a lot too so we're feeling pretty good about this.

Oh, and quick Elle update, she's now able to crawl a couple of paces at a time before she drops down and scoots. She's scooting so quick that I can't set her down and walk out of the room. She's a demon, getting into everything. It's awesome.

Money matters

Since Joseph was adopted through the county all his medical expenses will be covered until he's 18. It's a good thing too. I was just looking at his bill for last month's physical/occupational/speech therapy and it's over $1700. His 1/2 speech evaluation alone was over $340. It's crazy how much this stuff costs. We're working on getting him in to see a behavioral therapist too and I shudder to think how much that would cost us if we were paying for it.

Having a child with sepcial needs is so much work sometimes but this is one aspect that I never really considered before. Most families who need these services don't have them paid for by the state. Yet, they're right there, bringing their kids in 2, maybe 3 times a week and shelling out big bucks for the help that their kids need. I'm so gratful that on top of everything we don't have that financial burden hanging over us. We're so lucky that we have access to these services without the restrictions of trying to decide if we can afford it or not.

Big changes for little Joseph

Big changes are coming Joseph's way. In June we're going to cut his PT back to one half hour session a week. OT is going to go to once a week too but it's going to become an hour long. For 12 weeks he's going to do this new food therapy program during that hour long session. If he does well in that then he might go into group food therapy. Then, since he will have already gone through the 12 week course he'll get to be kind of the "leader" of the group. His OT's told me they picked Joseph out for this new therapy especailly because of how he thrives in the leader role.

Joseph is going to be the first kid they try this new program out on. Well, not the first kid ever, but the first kid they've ever worked with. The program was developed 30 years ago and for the last 15 there has been a clinic devoted to food issues that only uses this program and has had a lot of succes. I'm excited about it. Joseph's food issues have gotten a lot better but there's still a long way to go so I hope this will help. My hope is that by the end of summer he'll be more prepared to go to school and sit in the school cafeteria and actually eat what's being served. (Isn't it funny the goals we set for him sometimes? With God as my witness, he will eat mini corndogs and smilie fries!)

All grown up

Joseph has turned into a big boy over night. Yesterday he came home from school able to button his own shirt. That's just nuts. He's been working on that at home and in therapy for a long time now and all of the sudden he just go it.

Today at therapy his therapist asked him to skip. Instead of doing what he usually does (putting on a sullen face and gloomily stomping around while repeating "hop, step") he happily skipped all over the therapy room. His therapist and I were both shocked. He's never done that before. Just last week he couldn't skip.

Today he came home from school with a piece of paper that said "snow" on one side and "shi" (it was supposed to be "ski") on the other. He wrote them. By himself. Alone. I almost couldn't believe it.

It's like all of the sudden he started making these huge leaps forward. It's really amazing to watch. Elle, on the other hand, continues to lay around like a slug. Oh well, she's darned cute anyway.

We may be going to Florida for a few days in a week or so. I don't know yet. More details on that later.

I know the feeling

Joseph was such a little stinker today at therapy. He wouldn't listen to anything that he was aksed to do and pretty much just sat there and ignored the therapist. I dopn't know if it's the weather, the fact that he's leaving for his trip tomorrow or what. When we were leaving therapy I asked him what was up with the way he was acting and he said "I don't know Mommy, I'm just not myself today." Couldn't have put it better myself.

As for me, I can't wait for this baby to be born so that I can get some sleep. I started having contractions again last night and that led to a night of terrible back pain. I think I managed to fall asleep at about 4 AM and even then I only got about 2 hours of real, uninterupted sleep. I am totally miserable and there's nothing I can do about it but wait, wait, wait.

I will say this though: Whatever problems I have had with this pregnancy I am glad that they only affected me and not the baby. I would rather have all this pain than a problem that could affect the baby like high blood pressure or gestational diabetes or something like that. I am thankful for that. And as much as I say I want to be done with the pregnancy because I'm tired of the pain (and I am!) I'm even more excited to meet my new little one. It's to strange to think that in just a little while I'm going to have 2 kids. How can that be? That's something grown-ups do!

A good day

Joseph ate ravioli at food therapy today. He just about had a melt down when he first saw it on the plate but his therapist was able to get him to try it after just a few minutes. He tasted it and then said "Sometimes I whine about trying new things and then I like it after all!" Color me suprised but he ate about 5 little raviolis all together. It was pretty cool. I think he was proud of himself too because he asked his therapist to leave some of the ravioli so that he could take it home and show his daddy how he could eat a new food.

I'm pretty sure he didn't know that it was pasta or we probably would not have had so much success but what he doesn't know won't hurt him. It was also a big deal because he really does not normally eat anything with a sauce on it. For him to have tomato sauce and not even complain was pretty cool.

Baby steps, I know but it's still a pretty big deal to me.

I need a new house

I think I need to move. This afternoon Joseph and I left to go to an appointment around noon. First thing I noticed was that all the car doors were unlocked. Then, as I was getting Joseph into his seat I noticed that the front seat had papers and jumk spread all over tha place. I went around to the front and the drivers side and the door was parly open. Not open enough to make the dome light go on but not shut tight either. All the stuff in the center consol was gone through and some papers that had been clipped to the visor were spread out on the seat. There was also a key to the other key laying out on the seat. Clearly someone got into the car (I must have let a door unlocked although I'm usually pretty careful about that) and went through it looking for money or cds or something. I'm almost 100% certain that nothing was missing, there was nothing of any kind of value in the car anyway.

Even though nothing was damaged or taken it's still a really yucky feeling. It was probably just some dumb kids. If it had been anyone with half a brain they would have taken the key to the other car and looked in there too since it was parked on the street last night. But it's yucky. Of course this kind of thing could happen anywhere but now I want to move into a house with a 20 foot electric fence around it.

So that's fun.

Joseph had his appointment with the new child psychiatrist today. She was really nice but it was another case of someone talking to us and saying "Yes, it sounds like he has some issues but there's really nothing I can do for you." Frustrating. She wants to see him again in about 3 months after he has been back in school for a while. She gave me some paperwork to have his teachers fill out after he's been in class for a month or so to get their take on his behavior. I guess that's something. Again, she seemed very nice but I just want someone to say "Here's what's wrong and here are some concrete things you can do to deal with it".

I'm just in a terrible mood right now. I don't think the weather is helping. I think a good cry and some ice cream might help. Sigh.

Sweeeeet!

Two good things to report today!

First: Yesterday Jesse came home with a baby present that a woman on his co-ed softball team had given us. She crocheted a very cute little pink baby blanket. It was such a sweet thing of her to do I thought.

Second: A new child psychologist started at the place where Joseph gets PT and OT. His food therapist is going to talk to his doctor to get him a referal to see her. Since she's new and still accepting patients we probably won't have any trouble getting in to see her. This gives us something to work with while we are waiting to get into the neurobehaviorlist. (Joseph needs to start seeing people who's titles I can spell correctly.)

So things are good. Also good is the fact that in about 10 minutes an 8 month old baby will be coming over to our house to be babysat for 4 hours. Joseph is so excited that he can hardly stand it. This morning he asked me if he could watch tv after the baby left. He said "I know the rules of babies and I know that babies don't like to watch tv so if you want to watch a show you have to wait till the baby leaves. I know that because I babysat Kiona lots of times so I'm an expert." He's so cute.

My head looks like a potato

I can't stop eating smoked almonds (despite the effect they have on me) and shredded wheat. They are the only two things I want right now. I eat bowl after bowl of shredded wheat and snack on almonds between that. I wonder what my body is telling me.

The baby likes baths. Whenever I take one she bounces all over the place. Of course, that might just mean that my bath water is too hot and she's to kick me so that I'll stop hard-boiling her but I like to think that she likes it. Too bad that our tub is so small that only about 1/7 of my tummy is underwater when I take a bath.

Today was "Bring your screaming baby to therapy day" at physical therapy. Joseph was having trouble even doing his work because there were 4 kids all under the age of 2 screaming their little hearts out. Joseph's therapist finally had to get him some headphones so that he could listen to music as he did his work. Even so it was very hard for him to concentrate and at one point he just threw his pencil down and said "I can't stand this screaming anymore! I can't even draw my picture! Look! My head looks like a potato and I can't figure out how to draw a tu-tu!" That tells you how bad things really were.

Phew!

Joseph slept through the night in his bed last night! A big change from the past week or so (especially the past few nights when he has been up from about 3:30 - 6:00)! He got up once at 3:30 to use the bathroom and he said "I'll only bother you for a second and then I'll go back to bed" And he did! At about 7:00 he crawled into bed with me and snoozed for a bit more. I was just about dancing with joy. Now he just needs to keep it up. All of us have been suffering from some big-time sleep deprevation so it was nice for everyone to get a good nights sleep. In the morning I made a big fuss over what a big boy Joseph was and how proud we were of him. He seemed pretty pleased with himself too. Over breakfast he kept saying "And I'm a big boy and I slept good and you only had to help me one time when I went to the bathroom and I got a checkmark on my chart and....."

More good news, last night for dinner he ate a bowl of applesauce, some cheese and about a quarter of a hamber patty. He ate the hamburger with almost no fuss at all. Then at the store he picked out some Scooby Doo mac and cheese that he wants to try. We're going to make it tonight se we'll have to see how that goes. Pasta is the big obstacle we're trying to overcome right now in food therapy.

So, all in all, things have been pretty good since about 7:00 last night.

So cute

Last night I was in the kitchen with Jesse and Joseph was in the living room playing with his train set and I could hear him singing a little song. I couldn't pick up everything he said but one part was "just me and my little sister". How sweet is that?

Everywhere we went today Joseph told everyone that we are going to be having a "new girl baby". He's very excited about the whole thing.

Today at OT joseph drew a picture of himself. I was amazed. It had a head, a shirt, legs, arms, hands, feet, eyes, mouth (kind of), a tounge and a "cute button nose". I have hardly ever seen him draw a complete smiley face before. The drawing took a little bit of prompting from his therapist to complete but he did suprisingly well.

Dad- That site you posted in the comment section carries a "Disney Princess Canteen Action". Well, the baby needs a "Disney Princess Canteen Action". Whatever the heck that is.

ADDED LATER
I just got a call from the doctors office confirming that everything looks good with the baby. All the measurments and pictures show that the baby looks healthy. That's good to hear.

Have I mentioned that I am totally excited that the baby is a girl? I can't wait to meet her.