Hurricane Sandy Visit

Hurricane Sandy visited us on Monday and Tuesday.  Monday I had the kids clean their rooms and by Tuesday I knew they were going to be getting stir crazy.  So I set up centers at our kitchen table.  This kept them busy all morning.  I had 3 sensory buckets, a lego bucket, finger paint, paint with paint brushes, and dot painting.  I had them rotate through the centers every 10 minutes.  The kids quickly found their favorite center though and stayed there all morning.

I would love to say Jacob enjoyed finger painting, but I had to force his hand into it.  He was not happy about it.  But he did enjoy using the brushes and the dot painting bottles.

Kylie made the buckets into her own math problems.  There are 10 noodles in one and 10 peas in the other.

Brian surprised me by getting into the finger paint.  I thought he would never leave the lego center.

Haley loves playing with legos.

Kylie painted a picture of Hurricane Sandy.

Jacob dumped the sensory buckets.  Then Hurricane Jacob hit! He started throwing things and dumped paint water all over the table, thus ending his day at centers.  I think he may have become a little over stimulated.  At least he put his hands in the buckets without any issue this time.  I feel that is huge progress!

Sensory Project with Grape Nuts

I have just finished reading the book The Out-of Sync Child by Carol Kranowitz.  What an amazing book for me to read.  It was full of so many ah-ha moments with thinking back on how my kids have reacted to things.  My therapist has said she think Jacob my be SPD, and now I think she may be right. So I thought I would start working on his sensory issues myself at home.  This is my first sensory bucket or bowl.  I didn't know what to use and didn't want to go to the store.  So I went to my pantry and found expired Grape Nuts from the last time my parents visited.  I thought that would work great and be like a little sand box for Jacob.  I poured it all into a large bowl and gave him some measuring cups, plastic silverware, cars, and a spider.  

He loved it!  He thought it was so fun and didn't want to stop playing.  It took awhile for him to touch it with his hands.  He really enjoyed playing with the measuring cups and picking up the Grape Nuts and dumping them out.  After playing that way for about 10 minutes I put his hand in the cereal.  I had him open his hand to hold some of it too.  At first he did not like it and kept cleaning it off of his hands, but he was too happy to want to quit.

Even Haley who is 4 thought this was so much fun.  She said this could be her pre-school lesson for the day.  So she started counting the Grape Nuts she scooped up in the measuring cup.  She counted to 20 over and over again and did it correctly.  So I think this ended up being a math lesson for her, even if there were way more than 20 Grape Nuts in the 1/4 cup measuring cup! :)

After 15 or 20 minutes of stirring he started to use his hands!  He loved picking it up and looking at each of the Grape Nuts.  It was great!  The mess he was making all over the floor...was not so great.  I really had to not think about the mess so he could enjoy making it.

The clean up took about as much time as the play time did.  But I had some great help!

Therapy

I have so much going on in my mind right now.  I have to write it down and see if any of it makes sense.  I haven't been on my blog in weeks.  I haven't sewn in months.  My life has taken a huge turn and I am still trying to understand where it is going.

I am now taking my baby Jacob to therapy 3 times a day.  It started about 4 months ago because he wasn't saying more than 3 words and only one of those words was said correctly.  Turns out he was basically deaf.  That was a scary thing in itself to hear for me.  The doctors said tubes would help because they were so backed up with fluid the ear drum couldn't move.  I am now wondering how long this had been going on.  He never had ear infections.  The only signs of him not hearing was that he never listened when we called for him unless we yelled.  He would put his ear on the noisy toys and lay on them that way.  When I would talk to him to try to get him to say things he would just poke at my mouth and tongue and never try to imitate my sounds.  Little things like this are just swimming through my mind right now.  Why hadn't I realized this sooner.

3 weeks ago he had the tubes put in and that same day he stared repeating words!  He is now really trying to talk.  Every day he says a new word.  I will sing him songs now and he will sing a long with me!  It is amazing and often makes me want to cry because I am so happy he can finally hear!  I wish I could say that this was the end of our concern with him though.  Our next hurdle is now his eating.

Jacob has only been eating crackers and cheese since he turned one.  He seems to have a few things he will eat, sometimes a new one will be picked up at the sacrifice of something else.  He used to only eat nutri-grain bars and bananas.  Then he stopped eating those to only eat crackers, string cheese and fruit cups.  Now he eats prunes and not fruit cups or bananas.  When I say eating is a challenge I don't mean it is a little tantrum that in a few minutes will pass and he will become hungry enough that he will eat what we are eating.  I mean this is huge to him.  He will not eat anything else!  He will not look at it!  He will not TOUCH it!  He doesn't want it near him at all and it is like we are hurting him trying to get him to change.  I have anxieties over feeding him.

Our third therapy session is for eating now.  We are seeing an Eating Therapist.  I had no idea that there were Eating Therapists!  I was curious.  What can they do that I am not doing?

The first few days was just watching him eat.  He does have a muscular issue in his mouth.  He used to never pick his tongue up and that is why we thought he couldn't speak.  I am now wondering if his mouth muscles became weak because he couldn't hear to move his tongue and make normal sounds.  He always sounded like a bird...anyways, back to eating.  After trying to teach him to chew his food instead of just sucking on it and stuffing his mouth the therapist said to try bringing food from home so she could see him eat real food instead of crackers.

I brought in mac n cheese, a hot dog, green beans, a rice dish and a piece of chicken.  He saw it and screamed for 30-45 minutes.  He never ate anything that lunch.  Not even the crackers and fruit snacks we tried to get him to calm down with.  So for her to see his reaction was good because she could finally see what I go through all the time with him.  She said it wasn't good or normal how he behaves and after watching him thinks he may have a little SPD, a Sensory Processing Disorder.  She started recommending all of these other doctors to go see.  More doctors!  More tests!  More therapy!  This time Occupational Therapy!  All these new things for me to learn about and try to decide what is best for my son.  Does he really need all this to learn how to eat normally?  SPD?  Really?  What is that exactly?  I was so confused.

After a day of being in shock over his eating therapy I started to read up on SPD.  I haven't been able to really sleep in weeks and now it is getting worse.  I find my mind waking up to remember things I have said or felt about how Jacob has been developing. Things that I had always thought were interesting because my other 3 children went about it so differently.  He has this thing with his hands.  He doesn't like them to be dirty, he loves to use forks for everything when he eats.  He even used to use them on his crackers, which I thought was funny.  He used to just stare at his hands as a baby.  When he started crawling he was always watching his hands to see how they moved and it was like he was thinking about how it was going to work before actually trying it out.  Then he would look back at his legs and move them back and forth too to see how it was going to be for them.  And then after days of just doing that he took off.

He is now the most happy when he is running around and being very active.  I figured this was because he was a boy.  Our eating therapist said that we need to find things that calm him down before he eats so he can try to do something he is not comfortable doing.  So for the past few days I have let him run around outside for over an hour before bringing him in to eat.  Our eating both those days have been dramatically different!  He didn't fuss as long, and it was just fussing not a melt down.  He kept closing his eyes to see if the food would go away, but eventually he ate 1/4 of a pb&j.  He even ate a chicken nugget and 3 french fries at CFA!  That day I had him out for 3 hours at a farm, he took a nap and then we went to CFA to eat.  I was so worried about how it was going to go and so hopeful that the time outside would do the trick again.  And it did!  He has never eaten a chicken nugget before or french fries! Maybe he also built up a good appetite from being outside too.

So this is where I have become confused.  What do I do next?  Do I get him tested at 22 months for a sensory disorder?  Do I add another therapy session to our week?  Do I get a swallowing x-ray done?

I think I have a lot to learn right now.  I am going to keep learning before I answer those questions.  I have seen so many sensory buckets and activities on other blogs.  I am going to give those a try.  I never understood why those were important, but now I am starting to.  I have so much going on in my head over this.  It is good to write it all down.

This blog is to follow my life and it has taken a huge change.  I am beginning to wonder when I will ever have time to sew again.

This Crazy Time of Life

I think I have found a moment to write.  I just sat at the computer with my tea and picked out a few pictures to share.  I am trying to find time for me again.  My life has been so busy I had to put a lot of things aside.  This blog might need a different name with the way events have been going for us.  This blog is becoming more about my family than about sewing.  I haven't looked at or touched my sewing machine in 6 weeks!  This means something is very wrong with me!  I am definitely depressed, this can be the only reason I can come up with for not having the energy to do what I love, sewing.

Truly, I have been so busy.  My husband had shoulder surgery for the 3rd time on the same shoulder.  For the first 2 weeks he is in so much pain and on so many pain killers we just go into survival mode.  Then the 3rd week he can start moving around, but can't do much for himself.  The 4th week is when everyone is tired and wishing Daddy was better.  But it takes 12 weeks for him to recover from this type of surgery and be out of his sling.  SO we are finding a new normal and waiting for November 2nd when he has to have surgery on his other shoulder.

In the middle of all of this we have discovered that our son, Jacob, who is 20 months, cannot hear.  He seems to be mostly deaf, but since there are no deaf people in our family the doctors are optimistic that tubes in his ears will help.  The day we found out about this was a very hard day for us.  I have been taking him to a speech therapist 2 times a week for 3 months now trying to help him speak.  We really thought he could hear just fine and that his problem was related to his mouth.  While we were trying to wrap our minds around this news, our daughter Kylie, who is 6, broke her ankle.  This was something I did NOT want to be dealing with on top of everything else.  She actually severley fractured her ankle and smashed her growth plate.  They put a cast on her and she is walking around with crutches for the next month.

So this has been my crazy life.

Jacob just had his tubes put in a couple days ago.  The doctor said there was so much fluid in his ears that his ear drums couldn't vibrate.  It was a great thing we had this done.  He already seems to be able to hear now.  He is saying words and trying to sing songs that he has never attempted before.  It really made me want to sit down and cry and thank God that he is able to hear and it was not a permanent problem.  We are still going to take him to speech therapy because he is very behind where he should be at.  He only says a few words, but I know that now he can hear it wont be long before he starts talking up a storm!

I feel my time and attention is needed for my family.  This is why I haven't been able to sew.  This is why I am not getting ready for the craft shows.  And I actually feel good about not being stressed over sewing projects and filling orders.  I love this time I have with Haley and teaching her pre-school.  She begs all day everyday to do school work.  She loves school and loves learning.  It is so fun for me to be a part of her learning too and focus on what she finds the most fun and interesting.

Brian is also finding who he is as an individual.  He is 8 now and such a big helper for me.  He has really stepped up in doing the chores Daddy normally did.  He never complains about it either.  He has also become an amazing soccer player.  He told us that he knows this is what he was born to do.  All the other sports he tried out he never truly enjoyed or cared about.  But soccer seems to be a new passion for him.  And he is really good too.  It is so fun watching him play and practice.

Each one of my kids amaze me everyday.  They are each so different.  It is fun discovering who they are and who God created them to be.  I am so thankful that I am able to stay home and take care of my family when they need me most.

Bear Tea Party

This year I am homeschooling Haley for pre-school.  Next year she will be gone all day in Kindergarden.  I really want this to be a special and memorable year for us.  I want her to find learning fun and exciting so when she does go to school she is ready.  I do have my degree in elementary education so I feel very capable in writing lesson plans.  I hope I am able to manage our time to keep going with them through out the day.  The lessons are very short, about 30 minutes to an hour.  But I can talk about what we are learning all day and every where we go.  The first week we learned the letter Ff and how to write using a pencil and write her name.  We really have to practice holding the pencil because she is just not getting it.  We are also going to really have to work on writing her own name and all the other letters.  She is excited and ready to learn though.

Here is our work from the last week and a half.  She is very proud of all she has done.

This week we are learning the letter Bb.  We have been putting lots of focus on bears because they start with the letter b and I have lots of books with bears.  On Monday we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle.  I also found some great print outs to color and some bear songs to sing from  Homeschool Share.  This is a great site.  I have also been using letter print outs from another great site called Kids Learning Station.  Today we made a Bb book and went over some cards I have and asked if they made the b sound or not.   While she was working on her Bb book I made an invitation for her for a Bear Tea Party.  Once we got all of her tea party toys and food together she got really excited about the party.  She set up all the bears we had on her quilt and made sure every bear had a place to sit.  

Here is my very simple invitation. 

And the inside.  We talked about where, when and what you need for the invitation.

Haley is ready for her tea party to begin.

Here are the books for today.  We read Tea with Ruby first because this was a tea party.  Then we read the devotion, School for Bears.  Then Good Night Sam and Jesus Loves Me! I read them to her and to all the bears.  We pretended that the bears were students and some of them were being very disruptive.  It was a fun party.

When the party was over we invited Jacob to sit for a little bit.  He couldn't take his eyes off of everything.  He really liked trying all of the food and stirring the pots.  When he left he made sure he had all of his bears.

Pumpkin Time

We went out into the garden today to check on the plants.  I really haven't been in the back yard in weeks.  I was wondering if everything was still alive.  There are lots of weeds, but the plants are still fine. We also picked our pumpkins today.  The date is August 21st and our pumpkins are done growing.  Maybe they started growing too early.  These pumpkin seeds came from our compost pile so they were an unexpected and unknown plant for months.  They turned out to be quite small too.  I know nothing about growing pumpkins and how to make them big.  Maybe they needed steroids.  The kids loved it though and were so excited about them.  Every chance they could they were checking on how their pumpkins were growing.  And that is the only reason I kept watering them. :)  They are a little too early for fall and too small for Halloween, but the kids do not care about that.

Jar of Dirt Dessert

As a treat for the kids going to school Haley and I thought it would be fun to make them a fun welcome back snack.  We made jars of dirt with gummy worms, gummy dinosaurs, cookie dirt, and chocolate pudding for the mud.  First she broke the cookies with a masher until they were like dirt.  We used Oreos, chocolate chip cookies and brownies.  We just happened to have all of those out and made.  We put 3 dinosaur gummys on the bottom, pudding on top, 2 worms dipped in and cookie dirt on top.  

I put the jars in the fridge until the kids got home.  They definitely were a mess to make and looked like mud and dirt in a jar!  Before I gave them to the kids I told them that there was fun and yummy stuff to find in the dirt.  I told them they could go digging for dinosaurs in this jar. :) 

Brian came home upset about school because they don't get a snack any more and recess is only 15 minutes now.  I told him that school is kind of like this jar of dirt.  It doesn't look good right now, but once you get into it and start digging through the work good stuff does come out of it.  There is great stuff ahead of them this year.  I know God has a great plan for all of them.  School can be a difficult time and place, but if you keep digging through it, each year gets better.  After this jar and some good conversation about their day, I think tomorrow will be better.