Busy Days

We continue to be pretty busy around our house. Will it ever let up? I doubt it. This week might be a little quieter than last week. Right now, I have two days with nothing scheduled for the girls, so maybe we’ll have a couple of quiet days at home.

Rebekah seemed to enjoy going to see the horses on Friday. We’re trying to see about getting her scheduled for some sessions, but we haven’t gotten that done yet. The therapist that we are hoping to use is working on a degree in Speech Therapy and has been working with Rebekah’s physical therapist with hippotherapy (a combination of horse riding therapy and physical therapy) so she seems like a good fit. Horse Riding can be great for strengthening muscles, hand/eye coordination and balance – all things that Rebekah can use help with.

Jacob and Michael (or as Rebekah would say “two”) came out Friday for a play date (along with Aunt Tiffany). The kids all had fun. For a while, they played Elefun (the butterfly catching game) and seemed to enjoy that. They would all help get the butterflies back into the elephant for the next game and all (the older 3 anyway) took turns turning it on.

Saturday, Daddy was gone most of the day. By midday, Rebekah was getting pretty cranky. I tried a couple of times to get her to take a nap (to try to alleviate the crankies), but it didn’t work. We did some coloring and played with playdough and that helped a little. Playdough play is good strengthening play. The girls liked the playdough “cookie cutters”. Then, we decided to go outside and play for a while. As we were getting ready, there was a knock on our door. Some of the neighbor kids brought down their new puppies to show Rebekah and Sarah. The girls liked the puppies, but were more interested in playing.

Saturday night, we went out to eat with Grandma M. By the end of dinner, Rebekah was melting down. Mommy didn’t get to finish her sandwich before we had to go, so I had it for a late night snack.

Sunday, we went to Gales Creek Church. They have been praying for Rebekah and several of them have helped us out. It was good to be in church and worship. They are a very friendly church. They insisted that we stay for potluck afterward, but we had to get home.

Sunday afternoon, Uncle Chuck, Aunt Molly, Cousin Cole, Grandma M and Grandma A came out for a barbecue. Rebekah had been talking about Cole for a couple of weeks, so we thought we would try to get them together.

Potty training continues. She wanted to give her sticker papers to Grandma M, Uncle Chuck, Aunt Molly and Cousin Cole (Grandma A had already left). Often, while Rebekah is sitting on the potty, Sarah will be in the bathroom with us. Sarah, sometimes, wants to sit on her potty, too. Sarah thinks that she needs all her clothes off (except maybe socks) in order to sit on the potty. It is kind of funny, but cute.

The other day, she sat for a couple of minutes and she had gone pee into the potty. She got big praises and got to pick out two stickers for her paper – one for telling Mommy she needed to go potty and one for going pee. Meanwhile, her sister was still sitting on her potty, so I couldn’t dump Sarah’s. And Sarah decided to put her foot into her potty, sock and all. Ugh! That was just one more thing for Mommy to clean up.

When Sarah is in the bathroom with us, Rebekah will pick out her sticker(s), hand them to me and I’ll start to take the backing off and then hand them back to Rebekah to finish getting the backing off. Then she’ll give the sticker to Sarah to put on the paper while she puts the backing in the trash. Sarah wants to be so much involved and Rebekah wants to let her. It is neat to see their bond.

Last night, Rebekah threw up after one of her bolus feeds. I think it was just too soon and her tummy was over full and then she got mad and that was it. We’ll keep an eye on things, but I expect it was a one time thing (and not a new normal). She had been pretty insistent that she wanted tummy drinks, so I agreed, even though I thought it was a little too soon. Guess I’ll have to learn from that one.

The girls have been waking up earlier and earlier. This morning it was before 5:30 when Sarah started making noise. I was able to put her back to sleep for a while, but between her and her sister, I never fell back to sleep. Finally, about 6:15 we all got up. I’ve been lucky (with them sleeping late) for so long, maybe my luck is running out.