What We've Been Up To

It's been too long since I posted an update! In the past few weeks, we finished up our summer and all headed back to school. I finally managed to get new pictures of the kids up on our living room wall. Every summer, we try to get a good picture of each child to display for the coming year. Usually I get to it in June; this year, it was the end of August. But here are our beautiful and handsome kids!

Rabbit, age 11

Tigger, age 8

Pooh, age 4

Kellin, age 5

On August 29th (Kellin's birthday!), we started our school year routine - the kids off to daycare for a couple weeks until school started, Daddy and I off to prepare for our students this new school year. I was worried about this transition for Kellin, as last fall it was very traumatic and stressful for all of us. I'm happy to report that so far, he seems to be settling in pretty well. He has his fussy moments - at home, daycare, and preschool - but he gets over it.

We are continuing our approach to his eating, although I feel that we are "pushing" him to eat just a little more than we were for a while. I have learned that it doesn't seem to decrease his eating if he is coaxed or praised for eating, unless he gets upset, so I do offer food and put food into his mouth (as long as he is willing). He is tolerating chunks of food much better than he was (soup with small noodles, spaghettios, creamed corn) and swallows bigger mouthfuls than he used to, without gagging. A few weeks back, we were at a restaurant and he was eating crackers or cereal (can't quite remember), but he must have swallowed wrong or gotten something caught in his throat, like we all do occasionally. He started to cough and he spit out the food that was in his mouth - BUT HE DIDN'T THROW UP. I was amazed. Before we changed our approach, he would NEVER have gotten through this without throwing up. So we're still moving forward, but although I haven't dared to actually have him weighed, I'm still pretty sure his weight is down. He has an appointment in a week and we'll see what he really weighs. Gulp. He must be taller though because the pants that fit him last spring are now looking a little short. I'm still on the hunt for a high-calorie, high-nutrient juice for him. Something like Pediasure, but not Pediasure because it's milk-based and he won't drink it. There are juice drinks out there for adults but I can't find anything for kids that seems to be what we need. So we continue to give him regular juice - but the most nutritious, high-calorie stuff I can find (orange juice, green fruit/veggie juice, etc.).

I'll leave you with a few pictures of our last trip of the summer "up North" (if you're from Minnesota, you know what that means!) Most of these are from the bear center we visited, but we also visited a wolf center (remember Tigger LOVES wolves) and went to a music festival. It was a great way to end the summer!

We had an awesome hotel room, which was actually two rooms with beds like this. This was the back bedroom and the front had a bed plus a table and chairs. It was perfect for us!

I'm planning to do another blog post soon about the kids getting back to school. Stay tuned!