It Happened One Night

Rita and James had a great time last night.  This cracked me up so much I had to share.  Sorry we don't have snapchat, Mom!

With love.

Chef James

SO much is going on, but here is a small snapshot of one part of James' life.

We have made very little progress with actual consumption of food, but we have been doing lots of food activities.  This covers a span of several months with the earliest videos first.

Mark made a garbanzo pancake cake for my birthday as I had strict sugar and grain restrictions to cure Rita's yeast infection.  We though James might like it, especially the coconut cream "icing."  Not so much.  At least he didn't throw it!

It is tradition in my family that the youngest child gets the pancake batter at our weekend pancake breakfasts.  We tried it with James and he liked it.  I think it was the spatula.  :D

James likes to visit Daddy at work.  He enjoys demanding a smell of our wine.  It is surprising that he wants to try it!  When we don't offer food or drink to him and just enjoy ourselves he shows greater interest.  Our life is not as picture perfect as the following picture looks.  We were waiting for daddy to finish work so we could go to a late Saturday Spanish Mass so that Daddy could get up to work a 12 hour shift at 5 the next morning. :D

In the hopes of associating fun with food we bought a watermelon to use as a ball.  Everything was going great until my brilliant idea backfired.  James was traumatized when we cut it.  But, we tried!  And it was good therapy.  Check out his muscles in the dishwasher picture!

We are visiting lots of farms and farmers markets to expose James to food (and so that we have awesome food to eat!).  A couple weeks ago we went to a farmers market and James enjoyed bagging the veggies and carrying around his basket of produce.  I wish I got a picture!


Now that James has his own stander (more on that to come) we can do new activities!  I hoped to get him interested in food by dubbing him my sous-chef, but the standing situation was difficult.  But yesterday James made ice cream!  And then ate it!  It wasn't extremely cold when we were done which may be why it didn't bother him.  The following picture progression cracks me up from his obvious displeasure that a spoon is being put in his face to his surprise on discovering that it actually tastes good!

With love.

Hands and Knees

I had a feeling James could do more than he let on which was certainly true when it came to crawling.  We had lost hope that he would truly crawl and not just army crawl.  There aren't many fun activities for strengthening the core while up on hands and knees.  But his physical therapist brought arm immobilizers so that James would have to be up if he wanted to move.  It worked really well!  The video below is his first attempts.  He has gotten really good and can crawl that same distance no problem.  It is still difficult to get him moving on hands and knees without the immobilizers, but he is getting in the right position and also using it to pull himself up into standing.

With love.

James' Baby

James loves his baby sister Rita!  Now at 7 weeks together he still gets mad at us when we hold her and he can't.  We thought they would end up learning a lot of things together (crawling, walking) but James decided to step things up and it looks like he may be teaching her (more on that to follow)!

One day old.

Home from the hospital.

Good kneeling, good therapy!

The "water wings" have led to James' crawling success.  But, he gave up on crawling here in favor of joining Daddy and Rita on the couch.

One Month.

Breakfast buddies.

More soon (I hope)!

With love.

What James Is Up To

James is eating lots of great foods, still blended, but we are making progress on textures and solids, as well as self-feeding.  James has prunes, banana, nut butter, prune juice, coconut oil, and beet kvas for breakfast (left) and meat, olive oil, and veggies for lunch (right - I think that is chicken, asparagus, and sweet potato.).  For dinner he usually has what we are eating.

He is getting comfortable with more foods and textures, but it usually has to be on his terms.  We give him a bowl with some pureed food or nut butter at each meal along with a solid food (cheerios, carrot, etc.) to get him used to the idea of self-feeding and solids, emotionally and sensorially.  Here I had finished my coconut ice cream.  I tried to offer some to him while I was eating, but he wouldn't take it.  After I was done he took the bowl and "ate" the small bit of melted coconut ice cream he could get on the spoon.  He really enjoyed it.  At occupational therapy he is working on eating cheerio crumbs off a spoon and is getting used to it.  He likes to taste things, sticking his finger in a food so just a small taste gets in his mouth.  But he really only tastes things when we don't offer it to him.

We are getting into crafts for James.  He mostly does painting, coloring, and playdough, although not very successfully.  He did ok with this finger painting session, but a lot of time the paints and marker end up on him and the playdough ends up on the floor.

Daddy built James a table and he really likes it.  It has been good for him to have his own space to be comfortable with crafts and we hope that we can get him to sit and play with toys at the table.

James absolutely loves to read.  I think it is his idea of heaven.  :D  He is, however, very opinionated about his books.  We usually have to go through ten books with him shaking his head at us until he finally signs "please" to one of the selection.  He also loves sitting on the floor looking through the books himself.  We put some of his books on the bottom shelf of our coffee table which is great motivation for him to kneel and get his books which he does well.  I snapped a picture but it didn't turn out well.

 James is making hilarious faces and gestures!  He is doing so much more with his hands now that we are really focusing on sign language, trying to teach him a sign each day, and songs with hand motions.  He loves singing and dancing and songs with motions are his favorite.  He asks to "da", which means sing or dance or music, all day long.  This picture cracked me up, his face and gesture are great!

James loves to give hugs.  Whenever Mark and I are both there he leans in for a group hug.  He also likes to sit in his high chair and wave his hands at us until we give him a hug.  He doesn't mind just hugging Daddy's head.

James has been waiting for his baby sister to arrive.  He loves saying "baby."

With love.

Story Time with James

James loves reading books and it is rubbing off on him, he is becoming a master story-teller himself.  He usually has a good story for us each night at dinner.  Here is the end of one of his stories.

I think this is James' idea of Heaven:

With love.

Stair Master

Here is a little montage of James' stair accomplishments.  Last night Mark and I went upstairs to do some cleaning to prep for Rita and a minute later James popped into the room.  It is so nice that he has the freedom to get around!

He still throws fits every once in awhile.  I took this picture a couple Sundays ago.  We were back from church and making breakfast.  James had climbed all the stairs except two when he decided to boycott the last ones.  He sat there peaking into the kitchen for ten minutes until he finally decided to join us.

These clips are a few weeks old, but give you an idea of how hard he is working.  He is really a pro now!

With love.