Days 34-36

Busy last few nights.  Such is life.

Sarah is doing well at the clinic.  Everyone is fine.  We are just busy.  Tuesday evening, we dropped my car off for service, and Wednesday night we picked it up.  I didn't have the energy to blog after those adventures.  I have to say we had both kids with us for the car drop-off on Tuesday and they did great.  We only had Sean on Wednesday and he was just fine.  My car needed way too much service, but that's the way it goes when you've had it for 3 1/2 years.

Anyway, Tuesday...Sarah did fine at her therapy sessions and her meals.  Her teacher told me that her principal (the teacher's) is coming in to observe on Monday and she chose Sarah as her student.  She asked me to please medicate her.  Ha ha! But I am honored that she chose Sarah.  Very cool.  Anyway, her breakfast wasn't anything out of the ordinary.  At lunch, they bumped her up a texture for her fruits and veggies.  She was caught a tad off-guard, but dealt just fine.  She made a few interesting faces, but she ate everything okay without any spitting or gagging or anything.  I got to observe OT and she had some baked potato and a fish stick, both were fork-mashed.  She had a little trouble with the baked potato, but that was because it was microwaved and she got a tough piece.  I understand that.

Wednesday was a busy therapy/school day.  She had OT, speech, and school.  She did fine for all of them.  I got to take turns with her speech pathologist and Sarah was fine for me with the oral motor exercises.  She seems to really like pretzel sticks and peaches from a fruit cup.  She wasn't as thrilled with marshmallows, but those are hard to chew and that's tough for her anyway.  She got through everything and didn't have a ton of trouble with any of it.  At OT, she had chili with ground beef, and she had some difficulty chewing the ground beef.  The OT put the beef in a therapy tool to help her out and she got it much better that way.  I was really proud of her.  School went fine, so that was good.

Today she was a bit more difficult.  At breakfast, she had cream of wheat, peach yogurt, and fork-mashed fruit cocktail.  Well, she devoured the yogurt (no surprise), and then decided she didn't want fruit cocktail.  Too bad she didn't realize that Mommy was going to make her eat it just like Miss D and Miss B do! She fought me, and I felt a bit flustered, but I'm apparently pretty good at hiding it.  I kept my cool, blocked her from swatting the spoon away, picked up bites she spit out as much as possible, and made her take her bites.  She gave in after a few.  She was not impressed with the cream of wheat either and took some extra prompting and reminders, but she didn't really fight me on that.  She seems to prefer oatmeal.  That's fine with me.  I don't care which one she eats because neither one is baby food!

At school, she was pulling a few stunts.  For one, she pulled the "bathroom" stunt.  I'd just taken her and she begged to go.  Refused to go back to the room.  I kept the trip brief and took her right back to the classroom.  Apparently she ripped up an activity she didn't want to do and the teacher made her help tape it back together.  Ugh.  I think part of the problem is she knew her feeding friends were going outside when she had school and she was upset about being excluded.  I understand that.  I promised her I'd take her outside myself after her lunch.  It was gorgeous today - about the mid-70's and sunny - so I'd planned on it anyway.

She had speech immediately following school.  She did just fine at speech, even though she had a different therapist than usual.  She didn't seem to like oranges too much there, but that didn't surprise me since she was a bit freaked out by them at breakfast today for her chew session.

We have things pretty well straightened out and set for her discharge, follow-ups, etc.  I still have a bunch of paperwork to fill out, but that will have to wait because Daddy is at guys' night tonight and I want his input on things.  Next week is it for us.  Wednesday is discharge day!  Monday, Daddy joins us for training, and Aunt Jenny joins us on Wednesday.  I'm so glad we are almost done.  I knew going in that we weren't going to have Sarah up to regular textures upon discharge, but I'm so glad she is where she is right now.  It's amazing to see, really.  Both her OT and her main feeding therapist told me they can't believe she is doing what she's doing.  They thought maybe she'd get just a bit beyond the purees, but now she's just below normal textured food.  Go Sarah!

For fun, I put Sarah in pigtails with braids today. I got a ton of compliments on her hair.  I snapped a couple pics, but they're not great because she was being a booger.