Feeding Raya

That's right, Mommy is on vacation. Last week was a hectic and stressful week but we survived it and I managed to finish my anatomy class with a comfortable A. Yay. Once I was done with that, we celebrated Donny's birthday a day or two early because on his actual birthday, he got to take me to the airport at 4:00 in the morning so I could catch my 6:00 flight. Which ended up leaving shortly before 9:00. And that was after I got to experience the TSA's full body scanner for the first time, followed by a pat-down. Not a full pat-down though, only my head. She squeezed my bun and then said I could go. It was a fun thing to do at 4:30 on a Monday morning. Not as fun as sitting at the gate for an hour, boarding the plane, sitting on the plane for another 90 minutes or so, getting back off the plane to try and rebook the connecting flight I was surely going to miss in Chicago because of the mechanical delay, getting back on the plane because there was no other open flight to Chi…

Raya has another new food! She got to try some black beans yesterday. She was very happy once again to eat something we were eating.
She only ate about 7 or 8 beans so it's hard to say whether or not they'll agree with her yet but she likes them. I didn't want to be a negative Nellie so I didn't say anything earlier this week but the night Raya ate the corn spaghetti with ped corn, tortilla chips, and grapes for dinner, she had a yucky night. She woke up in the middle of the night because of belly pain. For about 30-40 minutes, she would sleep for a few minutes and then cry and writhe around on the floor for a few minutes before going back to sleep. She wouldn't answer me when I talked to her and didn't want me near her so there wasn't a whole lot I could do for her. She finally went back to sleep after she...ummm...relieved some pressure. We inadvertently forgot her sleep medicine that night so she only got about 6 hours of sleep that night. She should…

Summer is in full swing, and with a new season comes new opportunities to find creative ways to use surplus medical supplies. Sunday was Father's Day, so we set out late in the bright, sunny afternoon on the 1 hour drive to Grandma & Grandpa's house to celebrate. We weren't more than 15 minutes down the road when Donny's sunglasses spontaneously combusted on his face. Well, okay, they didn't catch on fire, but they might as well have. They just flat out fell apart. Donny can't function in sunlight without sunglasses on. He has very sensitive eyes. Our wedding pictures are proof of that. The outdoor pictures are a mixture of sunglasses and squinty eyes. He didn't want to wear mine, so I did the only thing I could do: whipped out a roll of medical tape and slapped those puppies back together.
VOILA: Good as new. Not sure why he refused to wear them outside of the car... Today was supposed to be pool day with friends from church. We were running a little late…

Dinnertime tonight was awesome. I had completely slacked off on planning what we were going to have for dinner, so we decided at the last minute to have spaghetti. I was going to just give Raya some corn, grapes, and tortilla chips for dinner but then I remembered that I still had a package of corn pasta in the cupboard from before we had to stop letting her eat. I asked her if she wanted to eat noodles for dinner like the big kids were having and she got all excited and yelled, "YES! I LIKE NOODLES!" (because lately, she's either whispering or yelling...)

At first I planned on giving her the noodles plain, but then I decided to take it one step further and make her some "pasta sauce" out of corn. How's that for making good use of a single-ingredient food? Corn corn corn corn corn. Ha ha. All I did was heat up some frozen corn kernels and put them in the Magic Bullet blender with water, salt and a tiny sprinkle of pepper until it was pureed but slightly lum…

Raya had a lovely day at feeding therapy today. She was pretty hungry by the time we got there so she got to practice her patience skills by waiting until we went back to the feeding therapy room before she got to have her food. Today's menu was corn kernels, grapes, Splash, and tortilla chips for dessert. I gave her a grape with the skin on but cut it in half first so it would be easier to eat. It helped but not quite enough and she ended up having to spit the skins out. I peeled a grape to see if that would help and it made a huge difference. She took several little nibbles and had no trouble chewing and swallowing the grape halves. Then I gave her some corn. She had one bite but she was trying to chew it between her front teeth and it didn't work very well for her. She held one out and wanted me to peel the corn for her. Nice try, kiddo, but I will not be peeling any corn for you. :) She did well with the corn but still needs work at chewing, moving the food to the back of…

It's hot. We don't do much outside when it's hot but thankfully, we have access to swimming pools & splash pads close by and everything is air conditioned. We were going to go swimming on Tuesday morning but ended up needing to stay home and get some other things done. Raya had a therapy appointment that afternoon, which was probably the highlight of her day. She loves therapy!

Wednesday afternoon, the kids talked me into taking them swimming. I almost didn't because it was so hot outside. It was about 109 degrees when we left to go swimming, and that's about where I draw the line. It seems like an oxymoron to say that it's too hot to go swimming but it's easy to stay too long and get dehydrated when it's so hot and the water feels so good. Not to mention that we are all very pale people and I don't want anybody spending too much time in the sun. We only stayed for about half an hour but the kids had a great time.

Kaida refused to have her pictu…

The good:
1. Raya slept in her own bed all night long on Thursday night. Or was it Friday... Whatever. It was awesome.
2. She's been in a great mood all weekend with very few fits thrown and no big meltdowns. Also awesome.
3. She talks nonstop all day long. Although it makes my head spin sometimes and makes it difficult to form a coherent sentence when I'm writing an essay or to hear myself think, I love that she can talk. I love hearing her imagination expressed in words and to hear the off-the-wall stuff she comes up with. Most of all, I love heating her say, ”I love you Mommy.” Even though most of the time, the way she says it reminds me a lot of the orphans on Annie saying, ”We love you, Miss Hannigan.” :)
4. She's been drinking Splash again. Twice in the past 4 days, she's had a breakfast of Splash and tortilla chips that was enough calories to skip her morning tube feed. That makes her happy because she gets to stay unplugged for a couple extra hours.
5. Tod…

Summer is in full swing. Especially since nature got the memo that it was June and the weather suddenly got hot. We had our second swim of the summer yesterday. Thankfully this time Raya wasn't connected to her pump. That made it much easier. The good news is that our sunscreen worked. The bad news is that we are all painfully aware of the spots that I missed. In my defense, squirmy impatient kids are difficult to get even coverage on. As for myself, there are just certain directions that my shoulders can't rotate. That accounts for the crimson triangle right between my shoulder blades. The wrist spot is my left upper thigh/HP region, which I did not realize at the time was being exposed to sunlight but now I've learned my lesson. The left side of my neck was just forgetfulness. Fortunately I did a much better job on the kids than I diff on myself. They had a fabulous time swimming. They LOVE going to the pool and now that they're older, I'm not terrified to tak…

My little missy has developed some not great sleep habits that, when combined with her old not great sleep habits, are rather exhausting for me. And yes, they're probably mostly my fault. Sometimes you just do what you gotta do to get by. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't like the fact that she now wants to snuggle with me on the couch every night instead of going to bed. After such a long time with her resisting my every attempt to snuggle with her, I love every second of it. Even so, I know it's not the best thing for either of us in the long run. Sleep is a hard thing to get back on track once it's off.

One of the bad habits we've gotten into is letting her fall asleep in the living room instead of putting her to bed before she goes to sleep. Sometimes we can get her in her own bed after she's asleep and other times, she wakes up and throws a fit when she realizes I'm trying to get out of snuggling with her. Last night, I tried to put her in her …