We have had such a good day today! Very busy but a good day. I would say though that tonight I'm adjusting. Adjusting to a tweaked parenting style and an entire new attitude. I have to say I'm rather exhausted and overwhelmed by it all but also very happy because I can really see progress. While it is more work during the day to really be focused on those teachable moments even more than usual there is such a huge reward for it. In time I will adjust to it energy wise and it will all become routine. Until then I have a feeling I have a few exhausted evenings ahead of me. So worth it! I know I said that already but whatever. :)
"How many times have you heard me cry out God please take this. How many times have you given me strength to just keep breathing. Oh I need you, God I need you now. Standing on a road I didn't plan...I'm trying to hear that still small voice. I'm trying to hear above the noise." These are lyrics to a song by Plumb that speaks to how I have felt so often these past couple of years. There were many days that I needed to be given that strength to just breathe.Yet that desperation has turned into the attitude you just read in the first paragraph of this post. Some of it is thanks to finally knowing what is going on but mainly the attitude is because God has truly done a work in me as a mom (and as a Christ follower in general) over the past couple of years.
That is all. Short and sweet post tonight.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Could it be?
So we had almost given up hope on this gluten free diet. We knew it helped Eric's eczema but we hadn't seen any behavioral changes in him. Mind you it hasn't been 3 months yet so we truly shouldn't have even thought about stopping it yet but we are very impatient people. I know, I know...we must work on this. Anyways, almost a week ago Eric decided he wanted me to buy some baby carrots at the grocery store. I raised my eyebrows a bit at this because he doesn't like carrots. I told him if I bought them he would need to eat them. His response "okay." Sure thing kid...this is totally not going to work I was thinking to myself but I'll buy them anyways. At the very least it will force me to eat them. We get home and I put them on his plate and wouldn't you know it he ate them and liked them! Wow! But the shock wasn't over yet. We asked if he would like a little ranch dressing to dip them in and he pushed back a bit at that one. But we told him if he didn't like he wouldn't need to eat anymore of it. Well guess what? The child loved it! This was followed up with him agreeing to try raw spinach (and he liked it!), craisins (he liked it too!), and finally apple balsamic vinegar (another like!)....talk about being floored! We followed this record breaking day up with a trip to Yomii, the local frozen yogurt place that the kids LOVE. Since then he has been eating these foods like a champ. Follow all this up with the fact that while his behavior has had a few rough spots the past week (what child doesn't have behavior issues from time to time really?) we haven't had near the amount of behavioral issues we are used to. Now is this coincidence or a result of diet or just getting older? I'm not sure but we aren't going to change it if it is working. This does not mean that we won't have some hiccups along the way...in fact I'm sure there will be plenty...but it is exciting to see the changes happening.
And speaking of getting older, I believe I failed to mention that Eric is now 7 years old! Where is the time going? He is growing up so fast! He wanted to have a Lego party this year which is actually a very fun theme I found out. He had a great time with his friends at the party. Another fun activity was his first flag football practice on his birthday. He LOVED it! While he is the smallest on the team in stature, he is all heart and gives it his all out there! I can't wait for his first game this coming Saturday. At the ripe old age of 7 Eric is a very fun, silly, lovable young man! He loves God (one of his favorite gifts for his birthday was a new Bible that contains all the books), football, Star Wars, and bike riding. He is a great student and loves to help his friends at school. He is still a strong willed kid but you can really see how he is starting to grow up and learn how to use this to his advantage in a positive way.
Tyler has been so cute regarding Eric's birthday. All weekend long he has been walking around telling Eric that he is the birthday boy. Tyler reminds us that Eric gets to choose things or go first at something because Eric is the birthday boy. He loves his brother! Tyler has been learning how to add, subtract, and read. Ummm...what happened to my baby? With Eric starting football, Tyler has been at me to sign him up for "skoccer." I sent everything in this past week so hopefully I will hear back soon because I'm not sure how much longer Tyler will be able to hold out! :) Oh and I just had to put this in writing before I forget to but Tyler has some of the cutest vocabulary such as "stumpthing" for something and "pinano" for piano. I'm pretty sure he knows how to say it correctly (I've heard him do it) but he knows it is cute and does it for the cute factor. He is a charmer. In fact his teacher told me they were outside the other day and Tyler was on the swing. She looks over in time to see him blow a kiss at a group of girls on the playground! Say what?! Oh my goodness...it's the quiet ones you have to look out for apparently. Haha!
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Time to circle back around
So after a particularly good day followed by a particularly challenging night I once again find myself sitting at the computer researching behavioral stuff. Looking more and more at over excitabilities in children and seeing more and more of my child while I'm reading it. It just brings us right back to how this entire journey began. I can say, despite one test we've already had done over the summer, that I'm fairly sure I know what is going on with my child. Sometimes you just shouldn't ignore mommy intuition no matter what a piece of paper says. So now I am printing out articles and checklists to take to our appointment on Thursday to hopefully gain some insight. I have a good feeling about this psychologist and I'm giving it up to God that this is the person he wants in our lives to help us parent Eric better and to help us better meet his needs academically.
All this was spurred on by an epic dinner standoff. I asked Eric to eat half of his veggie fries before he got down from the table to which he assured me he would do. Well his story changed very quickly. He refused to eat them because he said they were yucky. Now they didn't taste great but I don't think it was bad enough to commence a show down over. Eric felt differently. He sat at the table for 2 1/2 hours refusing to eat. Screaming, crying, whining, wheeling and dealing, and finally just sulking. Then a friend on facebook gave me the idea of letting him dip them in nutella. Yes, Nutella. Not ketchup because he hates ketchup but he loves nutella. Wouldn't you know it, the kid ate it and loved it! So gross! At that point though I didn't care. As long as he ate so he could go to bed and I could decompress.
On the bright side that was our only meltdown of the day. I don't technically count it as a meltdown though since it was more of a battle of wills than anything. He made it all through church without any issues so that is a win! Yay! This is the first time this month that has happened. Now I'm just hoping it will continue through the week at school. Good night all! This tired momma is off to bed to recharge and do it all again tomorrow.
All this was spurred on by an epic dinner standoff. I asked Eric to eat half of his veggie fries before he got down from the table to which he assured me he would do. Well his story changed very quickly. He refused to eat them because he said they were yucky. Now they didn't taste great but I don't think it was bad enough to commence a show down over. Eric felt differently. He sat at the table for 2 1/2 hours refusing to eat. Screaming, crying, whining, wheeling and dealing, and finally just sulking. Then a friend on facebook gave me the idea of letting him dip them in nutella. Yes, Nutella. Not ketchup because he hates ketchup but he loves nutella. Wouldn't you know it, the kid ate it and loved it! So gross! At that point though I didn't care. As long as he ate so he could go to bed and I could decompress.
On the bright side that was our only meltdown of the day. I don't technically count it as a meltdown though since it was more of a battle of wills than anything. He made it all through church without any issues so that is a win! Yay! This is the first time this month that has happened. Now I'm just hoping it will continue through the week at school. Good night all! This tired momma is off to bed to recharge and do it all again tomorrow.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Such is life...
Where to begin. The past few weeks have been fun and challenging all at the same time. We got to have a surprise beach day in the middle of January which is always nice. Winter is back though which is just fine with me and my allergies. The boys enjoy being outside no matter what the weather or pollen count may be.
So what is new and exciting in our house as of late? We signed Eric up for flag football which starts this upcoming Friday. Should be interesting and entertaining. He is on the Redskins much to his dismay. He really wanted to be on the Gators but he is coming around to the fact that he will have to skip college teams and go straight to the pros. We are also going to sign Tyler up for soccer, or as he calls it skoccer. :) I'm usually pretty selfish of my family time so we don't tend to enroll the boys in a lot of extra activities but they have been asking for a while so we finally relented. I am looking forward to watching them on the field though. It should be quite fun and prove to be good material for writing.
Not much new on the gluten free living. No new recipes to share really this time. Plan on trying some new ones soon though. To be honest we aren't seeing much difference in behavior and we are actually seeing a ramping up of melt downs. I am seeing an improvement in Eric's eczema though. It is not nearly as bad as it was before gluten free. It is virtually non existent. We are still going to stick out the 3 months and see where it takes us. After that we are probably going to go back to a normal diet and see what happens. It may be that we are just living in the day to day and can't see the small incremental changes. I also have a super vitamin that was recommended by my chiropractor sitting in my amazon cart to try for Eric. The super vitamin is super expensive and will only be used again if it helps the first month. I still haven't gotten the nerve up to actually click the purchase now button for it because it is so expensive. I guess if it helps it would be worth it though.
Since we have seen an increase in melt downs and his inability to cope with situations that seem minor to most we have sought out help from a psychologist. I have to say that I don't like to put my child in a box when it comes to this be it ADHD, ODD, Gifted, Aspergers, Sensory Processing, etc. I have my suspicions as to what is going on but I'm not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination so we will leave assessments up to the professionals. However, we kind of need to get a diagnosis so we know how best to help him and how to teach him to handle situations when they don't go according to plan. Our initial appointment is this coming Thursday. He is about an hour away in my old college stomping grounds. He actually teaches at my old college as an adjunct professor. I don't think he taught my psych class though. I had a wonderful first impression of him over the phone. Really personable and sounds like a guy that will really listen to us and listen to Eric. The last psychologist we saw pretty much blew us off and told us to read him a bed time story if he couldn't go to sleep. Insert me rolling my eyes but trying to be nice at the same time when she said that. I have a feeling Eric may get a tad bit of his attitude from his momma. ;-)
Other than that we are plodding right along. We are back into the swing of things at school. Eric has his 7th birthday coming up and we have a party this coming weekend. Thankfully we are keeping it small this year. Well...small by our standards. It is a lego theme so really all I have to do is let the kids at the legos and they will be perfectly happy. Tyler has his 5th birthday coming up in another month so right after this party we will begin planning his. Gotta love January and February in our household. I am also in the midst of getting home school materials set up for the summer. I am bound and determined we will have a schedule this summer because I really want to have an enjoyable summer! Funny that to have a good summer we have to actually have school but it works so I'm not going to knock it. I'm actually going to go ahead and start with Tyler now each day after I pick him up from his half days at school. All we are going to work on is reading though. I wouldn't normally start now but he is so ready. Plus it will free me up to cover a lot of the same stuff, just more in depth for Eric, over the summer instead of having to do a lot of different things.
Until next time...
So what is new and exciting in our house as of late? We signed Eric up for flag football which starts this upcoming Friday. Should be interesting and entertaining. He is on the Redskins much to his dismay. He really wanted to be on the Gators but he is coming around to the fact that he will have to skip college teams and go straight to the pros. We are also going to sign Tyler up for soccer, or as he calls it skoccer. :) I'm usually pretty selfish of my family time so we don't tend to enroll the boys in a lot of extra activities but they have been asking for a while so we finally relented. I am looking forward to watching them on the field though. It should be quite fun and prove to be good material for writing.
Not much new on the gluten free living. No new recipes to share really this time. Plan on trying some new ones soon though. To be honest we aren't seeing much difference in behavior and we are actually seeing a ramping up of melt downs. I am seeing an improvement in Eric's eczema though. It is not nearly as bad as it was before gluten free. It is virtually non existent. We are still going to stick out the 3 months and see where it takes us. After that we are probably going to go back to a normal diet and see what happens. It may be that we are just living in the day to day and can't see the small incremental changes. I also have a super vitamin that was recommended by my chiropractor sitting in my amazon cart to try for Eric. The super vitamin is super expensive and will only be used again if it helps the first month. I still haven't gotten the nerve up to actually click the purchase now button for it because it is so expensive. I guess if it helps it would be worth it though.
Since we have seen an increase in melt downs and his inability to cope with situations that seem minor to most we have sought out help from a psychologist. I have to say that I don't like to put my child in a box when it comes to this be it ADHD, ODD, Gifted, Aspergers, Sensory Processing, etc. I have my suspicions as to what is going on but I'm not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination so we will leave assessments up to the professionals. However, we kind of need to get a diagnosis so we know how best to help him and how to teach him to handle situations when they don't go according to plan. Our initial appointment is this coming Thursday. He is about an hour away in my old college stomping grounds. He actually teaches at my old college as an adjunct professor. I don't think he taught my psych class though. I had a wonderful first impression of him over the phone. Really personable and sounds like a guy that will really listen to us and listen to Eric. The last psychologist we saw pretty much blew us off and told us to read him a bed time story if he couldn't go to sleep. Insert me rolling my eyes but trying to be nice at the same time when she said that. I have a feeling Eric may get a tad bit of his attitude from his momma. ;-)
Other than that we are plodding right along. We are back into the swing of things at school. Eric has his 7th birthday coming up and we have a party this coming weekend. Thankfully we are keeping it small this year. Well...small by our standards. It is a lego theme so really all I have to do is let the kids at the legos and they will be perfectly happy. Tyler has his 5th birthday coming up in another month so right after this party we will begin planning his. Gotta love January and February in our household. I am also in the midst of getting home school materials set up for the summer. I am bound and determined we will have a schedule this summer because I really want to have an enjoyable summer! Funny that to have a good summer we have to actually have school but it works so I'm not going to knock it. I'm actually going to go ahead and start with Tyler now each day after I pick him up from his half days at school. All we are going to work on is reading though. I wouldn't normally start now but he is so ready. Plus it will free me up to cover a lot of the same stuff, just more in depth for Eric, over the summer instead of having to do a lot of different things.
Until next time...
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!
Ever read that book? You know the one called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It's been a day! Yep...that about sums it up! Post complete. Not really. :)
Stay tuned below for a quite yummy sloppy joe tater tot casserole recipe that is gluten free. If you would prefer to skip my babbling then just go straight to the bottom of the post. I promise you won't hurt my feelings.
We had a great Christmas break. We went and saw the lights at Town Center, drove around to see Christmas lights, made cookies, took gifts to our neighbors, and visited family. Best of all we had a lot of great quality time as a family. The kids did quite well even with a lack of schedule. Eric's teacher was wonderful and sent home some reading material for him to work on comprehension and overall reading ability and gave me some areas to start pushing him in for math. This helped a lot! True to form though after a week of no real set schedule like at school it started getting rough. We expected it though and really, when compared to last year at this time, it was much better. I didn't realize that until I just typed it out but it was truthfully better. Now we didn't travel this year like we did the previous year but that wouldn't have made that big of a difference really. So yay for improvement!
Today though was just one of those rough days. We haven't seen one like this in a while. He was very hyperactive, ignoring everything you asked him to do, instigating issues with his brother, and whining and back talking when punished for it. That was all before we left for school this morning! Apparently during school there was a meltdown as well. Once he was home I could tell he was just very tired and not focused when doing homework. When dinner was set in front of him we knew the battle was on! Now Brian and I had our game faces on and were prepared for this. The new rule is you do not get down from the table until you have finished a decent portion of your food. Usually we wouldn't push this but Eric is lacking in nutrition and there are only so many things I can throw in a smoothie to help him with this. We also figured out he would rather go to bed early than eat a food he hasn't tried before so we finally resorted to the no leaving the table method. First night went well. Tonight however it was game on. He tried a bite of a very yummy, if I do say so myself, casserole and pronounced he didn't like it. We reminded him of the rule and you would have thought we beat the child. He then upped the anty with "well I have to go to bed at bedtime" to which we responded "not until you have eaten enough dinner." He wasn't expecting that because you would have thought I put a hot poker to him. After more than an hour of listening to him scream, wail, cry, complain, and whine about it he started to come around by asking me if I could warm his food up again. Now usually I wouldn't do this but I knew this was a big step forward for him because it meant he was actually thinking about doing what we asked him so I gladly warmed it up. After some more hyperventilating and freaking out (I'm sure I was doing some myself) about the food Brian somehow managed to get him to take a bite with his nose plugged. He also got him to take another bite while holding his nose. And wouldn't you know it by the end of it the stinker ate a bite without his nose plugged and didn't make one single nasty face or gag! He did admit it wasn't that bad and wasn't worth carrying on the fuss or losing over an hour of playtime. Victory is ours...at least for tonight! Now we are hoping it will carry over to tomorrow when he is served leftovers for dinner. After dinner it was still dicey regarding behavior but nothing compared to dinner. The saving grace was Eric gave up a book to his brother at bedtime because Tyler really wanted to read it. Instead of hanging onto it because he chose it, Eric was very kind and let Tyler have it.
So, on that note, I am going to post the recipe for this very yummy sloppy joe casserole. Brian's mom gave me the recipe and I tweaked it to make it gluten free. The original recipe is here: http://www.allthecooks.com/recipe/Sloppy+Joe+Tater+Tot+Casserole-44956693/
The only difference in mine is that I made the cream of mushroom soup because store bought contains gluten. You can find that recipe here: http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/soupsandsalads/r/Gluten-Free-Cream-Of-Mushroom-Soup.htm
Both recipes were very simple to make. My tweak to the casserole was I used ground venison because that is what I had. And the tweak to the mushroom soup was that I used an immersion blender and pureed the soup up a bit. Still chunky but more like the kind out of a can. I have to say this stuff tasted much better than canned! Very rich and would have been great with some garlic bread. I used about 10oz of the home made in the casserole and froze the rest for another use later. Ore Ida brand tater tots are gluten free. Manwich sloppy joe sauce is also gluten free. You could easily make your own but I chose the easy way out. I used the Velveeta it called for but will try it with a different cheese next time just to see the difference.
Alright folks, it is time for me to call it a night. I'm tired after this day. Thankfully God's mercies are new every morning. Praying for a better day tomorrow!
Stay tuned below for a quite yummy sloppy joe tater tot casserole recipe that is gluten free. If you would prefer to skip my babbling then just go straight to the bottom of the post. I promise you won't hurt my feelings.
We had a great Christmas break. We went and saw the lights at Town Center, drove around to see Christmas lights, made cookies, took gifts to our neighbors, and visited family. Best of all we had a lot of great quality time as a family. The kids did quite well even with a lack of schedule. Eric's teacher was wonderful and sent home some reading material for him to work on comprehension and overall reading ability and gave me some areas to start pushing him in for math. This helped a lot! True to form though after a week of no real set schedule like at school it started getting rough. We expected it though and really, when compared to last year at this time, it was much better. I didn't realize that until I just typed it out but it was truthfully better. Now we didn't travel this year like we did the previous year but that wouldn't have made that big of a difference really. So yay for improvement!
Today though was just one of those rough days. We haven't seen one like this in a while. He was very hyperactive, ignoring everything you asked him to do, instigating issues with his brother, and whining and back talking when punished for it. That was all before we left for school this morning! Apparently during school there was a meltdown as well. Once he was home I could tell he was just very tired and not focused when doing homework. When dinner was set in front of him we knew the battle was on! Now Brian and I had our game faces on and were prepared for this. The new rule is you do not get down from the table until you have finished a decent portion of your food. Usually we wouldn't push this but Eric is lacking in nutrition and there are only so many things I can throw in a smoothie to help him with this. We also figured out he would rather go to bed early than eat a food he hasn't tried before so we finally resorted to the no leaving the table method. First night went well. Tonight however it was game on. He tried a bite of a very yummy, if I do say so myself, casserole and pronounced he didn't like it. We reminded him of the rule and you would have thought we beat the child. He then upped the anty with "well I have to go to bed at bedtime" to which we responded "not until you have eaten enough dinner." He wasn't expecting that because you would have thought I put a hot poker to him. After more than an hour of listening to him scream, wail, cry, complain, and whine about it he started to come around by asking me if I could warm his food up again. Now usually I wouldn't do this but I knew this was a big step forward for him because it meant he was actually thinking about doing what we asked him so I gladly warmed it up. After some more hyperventilating and freaking out (I'm sure I was doing some myself) about the food Brian somehow managed to get him to take a bite with his nose plugged. He also got him to take another bite while holding his nose. And wouldn't you know it by the end of it the stinker ate a bite without his nose plugged and didn't make one single nasty face or gag! He did admit it wasn't that bad and wasn't worth carrying on the fuss or losing over an hour of playtime. Victory is ours...at least for tonight! Now we are hoping it will carry over to tomorrow when he is served leftovers for dinner. After dinner it was still dicey regarding behavior but nothing compared to dinner. The saving grace was Eric gave up a book to his brother at bedtime because Tyler really wanted to read it. Instead of hanging onto it because he chose it, Eric was very kind and let Tyler have it.
So, on that note, I am going to post the recipe for this very yummy sloppy joe casserole. Brian's mom gave me the recipe and I tweaked it to make it gluten free. The original recipe is here: http://www.allthecooks.com/recipe/Sloppy+Joe+Tater+Tot+Casserole-44956693/
The only difference in mine is that I made the cream of mushroom soup because store bought contains gluten. You can find that recipe here: http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/soupsandsalads/r/Gluten-Free-Cream-Of-Mushroom-Soup.htm
Both recipes were very simple to make. My tweak to the casserole was I used ground venison because that is what I had. And the tweak to the mushroom soup was that I used an immersion blender and pureed the soup up a bit. Still chunky but more like the kind out of a can. I have to say this stuff tasted much better than canned! Very rich and would have been great with some garlic bread. I used about 10oz of the home made in the casserole and froze the rest for another use later. Ore Ida brand tater tots are gluten free. Manwich sloppy joe sauce is also gluten free. You could easily make your own but I chose the easy way out. I used the Velveeta it called for but will try it with a different cheese next time just to see the difference.
Alright folks, it is time for me to call it a night. I'm tired after this day. Thankfully God's mercies are new every morning. Praying for a better day tomorrow!
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