world wide web

Tonight, Travis told me that at the bottom of the world, everything is upside down. Then he said if you sailed to the bottom of the world, you would fall off. He reflected on this for a moment and then asked if someone fell off the bottom of the world, where would they land? I said, "where do you think they would land?" He said, "I don't know. Let's go to 'www dot whats under the world dot com' to find out!"

on a side note...

...I hate the BCS as much as the next guy, but THIS IS RIDICULOUS.

What a disgrace.

That sound you hear is Thomas Jefferson rolling over in his grave.

Link: House Subcommittee passes college football playoff bill

no cavities!

Busy day today. Travis went on a field trip, I did not attend this time, to see a Christmas play, which he described as being about "bad kids that turn good".

After school, took all three kids to the dentist. Only Travis and Noah had actual appointments, Sophie's 2 and a half teeth just aren't enough for them to be interested in yet. This was Noah's FIRST dentist appointment, and we conquered this milestone quite nicely. We practiced last night to get him a feel for what would happen, and he did very well when it came time for the real thing. I was quite proud. Travis has been there before, he got a full-blown cleaning with flouride and all, did great (picked cookie-dough toothpaste for them to clean his teeth with, blechh), and dentist said both kids have great teeth and no issues. Hooray! (He also said 1 in 3 kids Noah's age have tooth decay already, which I'm guessing means Sophie's doomed since the first two have been decay-free....)

So we left the dentist office armed with two new toothbrushes (identical, by the way, they have similar taste...I guess I'll have to engrave their names on them or something), a couple of new toys, a Polaroid commemorating Noah's first visit, some kiddie-flossers, and about 40 stickers. Went outside in the ridiculously blustery wind, 50mph gusts, carrying Sophie in her bulky car seat, holding Noah's hand who is holding Travis's hand, trying to avoid ice patches in the parking lot. Went for lunch at ya-ya's house, then packed everyone back up in the car for a trip to the library. I literally sat in the library parking lot thinking, I should just go home rather than unload and re-load everyone in this horrible weather that is getting worse as we speak, but I had to turn our books in and the boys really love getting new library books, so we decided to try it and it went off without a hitch.

Travis and Ben are off to go bowling now. Sophie and Noah are napping. I think I'm gonna go make some hot chocolate.

the musical stylings of the davidson boys

"twinkle twinkle little star" by Noah

"the alphabet song" by Travis

Happy Thanksgiving, and some mummy talk

I'm thankful for:

• Travis's love of reading
• Noah's charming smile
• Sophie's never-ending curiosity
• my fabulous husband who can be an insensitive brute sometimes but still supports me in the ways he can and puts up with me more than he should
• my job
• christmas lights
• the new iTouch
• my gym membership
• comfy pjs
• cheese and crackers
• the public library
• Colts football
• my mom, who watches my kids every day
• ski trips
• pinot grigio
• not driving a mini-van
• new washer and dryer
• babysitters
• date nights
• euchre
• snickerdoodles
• DVR
• suspense novels
• the muppets Christmas album (and muppets in general)

Not an exhaustive list, but that pretty much covers the important stuff.

Today, on the way home, Travis says to me "At school we learned that people wrap dead people in toilet paper". I was not quite sure how to respond. Further inquiry appeared to reveal a conversation with a classmate regarding mummies, presumably in reference to Halloween. I'm assuming this wasn't part of the standard pre-K curriculum.

Time to start planning birthday parties for Sophie (her first!!) and Travis (his fifth!!) in December. Gee, isn't there something else in December we have to buy presents for?

Obstacle Course Sunday

- The balance beam

- Shoot a basket

- Crawl across the loveseat

- Leap over the mat

- Jump onto the bean bag / pillow pile

And, on an unrelated note, Travis's happy face:

Back in the saddle

Its been a while since I've posted. Strangely, I feel like I have a million things to blog about, but somehow, its not seeming to find its way from my brain to my fingers. Plus I've been feeling just a little overwhelmed lately, and not really interested in laying that all out in a blog, so its a little difficult to get my mind in a place to write about interesting things.

But here goes.

Let's see, when we last met, I was talking about Travis's food sensitivity, and his ability to distinguish between granola bars. So, for a food update: 2 weeks ago, his speech/food therapist got him to eat bananas with peanut butter; last week, apples and peanut butter. He's since been eating apples on a somewhat regular basis...although we've taken a slide backward in the last couple days since he's been sick. This whole food thing is a terribly slow process. Wow. Who would have thought I'd be so excited about getting the kid to eat a gummy bear, for pete's sake.

I've started getting Travis working on his Christmas list. The first thing we did was sit down and talk about what Christmas is all about, and why we celebrate. Then we talked about being able to make other people happy, from buying gifts for people we love to helping out others less fortunate. Travis is a pretty thoughtful kid, so this stuff resonates with him. So then we get to making out his own list, and its like pulling teeth. He can't think of anything he really wants. We looked through an entire kids toy magazine and there was barely anything he truly cared about. Its kind of heartwarming, actually, to see him developing into a primarily unmaterialistic kid. That's something that is pretty important to me.

Highlights (and lowlights) of the last week: many of us battling illness -- slight fever for Sophie and me, stronger one for Travis, runny noses and sore throats all the way around. Ben in Indy for a technology conference this week. Had a gorgeous weekend last weekend and did some tailgating, Ben went to ND game. Pics below:

Noah posing for the camera

Travis playing kick the can

The family (minus Sophie)

Ahh, there she is.

A tale of two granola bars

This morning Travis asked for a granola bar. I told him that I only had the kind in the blue wrapper (Aldi's brand), and he quietly and sadly said, "no thank you". He's turned these down before, he much prefers the Wal-mart brand. So Ben and I decided to put him to the test.

We showed him two granola bars.... blue wrapper and brown wrapper. Ben took the two of them to a secret location, unwrapped them, put them on a plate, and brought them both to Travis and asked him to pick which one he wanted. Incidentally, both granola bars were of the chewy chocolate chip variety, but the Aldi's brand one was much chocolate-ier and in general looked better. But at this point Travis didn't know which was which. He looked them both over, then decided to go for the better looking one and said "that's the brown wrapper one". He took one bite and said "nope, its the blue wrapper," put it back, and grabbed and ate the other one. I'll be honest, I was a little surprised he could tell so quickly -- I thought it might be more psychological than anything else -- but his little sensitive mouth can seriously tell the difference, and fast. So, he won that battle.

Grapes! Cheese! I'm Happy!

Okay, so Sophie is naturally a good-natured, happy baby. But, I've just about never seen her any happier than when eating her grapes and cheese tonight.

Looks good ma!

Seriously, I could not wipe this smile off her face.

The only time she wasn't grinning ear to ear was when she was shoveling the food into her mouth.

pumpkin craft wednesday

So, for the first Wednesday in quite some time, I had no real plans other than trying to get caught up on laundry. Turned out to be a nice day but they just never turn out to be as productive as I hope.

Highlights of the day.... I got destroyed in "Ants in the Pants". Both boys ganged up on me and I didn't stand a chance. They're actually both quite good. Then we played outside for a while and then painted and decorated some pumpkins.

We had a conference with Travis's teacher this week, I do feel a little better about the situation. He's painfully shy, but I think it will improve, and even if he is always somewhat timid.... well, its not like thats unheard of and there's no chance of coming back from that. Ben and I were both shy as kids and I think we've done alright for ourselves.

Getting ready for Halloween this weekend, can't wait to get some pics of the kiddos.

Perfecting their technique

After their victory

"Mom! MOM! I'm in the bree-house!!"

Mastered the ladder!

Our pitifully tiny pile of leaves

Oh well, its still fun

Proud pumpkin creators

Henry and Moe

Sometimes Mean

One of Travis's classmates in Pre-K had his father pass away last week. They sent a little note home with all the Pre-K kids, explaining about the little boy's loss and that the school counselor had come into the class to explain what happened to the kids, and they all prayed for the boy and his family and then made cards for him for his return.

Now, Travis has told me about this little boy before, his name is Jarell, and Travis describes him as "sometimes mean". So, I decided to take this opportunity to explain that while Travis might think of Jarell as "mean", that no one really knows what someone has going on in their lives; and we talked about how it might have been very hard on Jarell if his dad was very sick, and that might be why he sometimes acted out.

So, last night, we drove out to my sister's house to see my aunt and grandma visiting from North Dakota. On the way home, Travis was kind of in and out of sleep. At one point, he woke up and said he had a dream about his old pre-school, about how he was afraid of the Blues Clues stamps on the first day (I can't believe he remembers that... it was a full year ago). Then he starts talking about this little boy Tyler who was in his pre-school last year, and about how Tyler was "sometimes mean and sometimes funny" -- which had always been his description of that little boy. Anyway, then he said "and his dad didn't die while we were in pre-school". I'm taking this to mean that the lesson he learned from our little discussion is that people who are sometimes mean probably have a dying parent. Oops.

Sophie has started waving. I'm very excited. I can't get her to clap for the life of me, though. She thinks I'm mildly interesting when I clap at her, but she treats it more as some idiotic gestures that her excitable mother is making and not at all as something she intends to emulate.

Noah and Travis are really starting to play well together. Noah is finally at the age where he is understanding more how to play with someone -- before it was a lot of just trying to do whatever his big brother was doing... which generally meant snatching toys away from each other. Now, they both do a pretty good job of finding ways to share or to play together. It's very endearing to watch. Take today, for example, both boys wanted to play with Travis's football field (a Christmas present from last year); but Travis actually agreed to let Noah play on his own for a little bit and even helped show him how to set the players up. In a few minutes, Noah brought the football players to Travis and said "Travis can play now!" I could see how proud of himself he was that he voluntarily turned the toys over.

On the calendar for this week: Pre-K field trip to the pumpkin patch; doc appointments for the kids; nephew's birthday party/costume party; friends coming up for the ND game on Saturday. Next week: my birthday.

punkins

Well, fall has fallen. Cold weekend, so we decided to forego the previously scheduled camping trip. Instead, took the kids to a pumpkin patch with some friends.

Travis, Holly, Katie, Ganon, Noah

Pumpkin fantasyland... Sesame Street style

Me and Sophie on the hayride

Afterwards, went back to a friends house to watch the Notre Dame game. Travis was very upset about the loss to USC. The game had a rather dramatic end (with a somewhat anti-climactic finish after all that drama), and when it was over, and he realized they had lost, he said to me "I did not like that game one tiny bit!", with furrowed brow and angry voice and all.

But, that was soon forgotten as he played with all of the Friends' cool toys. We stayed the night at their house, played in a shuffleboard tournament (I'm as bad as I thought I would be!), and Ben cleaned up in a game of Texas Hold Em. A good time was had by all.

Drove home this morning, then spent the afternoon playing in the backyard and pumpkin-carving:

posing with punkins

Hey! I'm cute!

The finished product

Happy Halloween

Check out our Halloween video...

road trip

what a crazy week this has been. Recap of the week below.

Sunday: Took two separate vehicles to church. Afterwards, Ben left with the kids for Angola to visit his family, while I stayed behind to head in to the office and get some work wrapped up since I was to be out of the office for three full days this week. Brought my gym bag, fully intending to get a work-out in once I got my work done. Didn't happen.... I worked from noon until 3:37 when I finally looked at the clock and realized I was supposed to be back at home around 4ish if I wanted to catch a movie with the gals. Made it home at 3:58, just in time for a friend to pick me up to meet the girls for a 4:30 showing of Couples Retreat. Enjoyed the movie and some DQ quesadillas after (what??!? Dairy Queen makes quesadillas?!?? Why, yes they do, and aside from the smothering in olives, they are quite tasty.) Thankful I had that outing as it was certainly a stress release for the upcoming week.

Monday night: Home from work, am now faced with having to be out of the office for three full days in Indianapolis. Two days of ri-dic-u-lous classes and one client meeting. Am not prepared for client meeting but don't have any more time to get things ready so head back into the office Monday evening to square things away as much as possible. Get back home just before eight, load the two young'uns into the car (Travis stayed home with Ben so as not to miss school), and made the three hour trek to my dad's house. Collapsed into bed. No workout today.

Tuesday: First day of worthless classes. Had to leave class for about 20 minutes to fix a problem back at the office but didn't miss anything. I could have taught this class. In my sleep. And by sleep I mean in a coma. Tuesday night went to Mongolian barbecue for dinner with a friend from BSU that was suffering thru this class with me, and his friend and co-worker. Ate cheesecake. I love cheesecake. Also, no workout.

Wednesday: Second and final day of worthless classes. Left a scathing review on the course evaluation because I've now sat through five of these mind-numbing, shoot-myself-in-the-head, I'd-rather-be-pouring-acid-in-my-nasal-cavities classes and feel like someone has to pay for this near torture. But, I'm fairly certain I passed (read: if I didn't pass I'll need to consider fleeing the country out of humiliation) and now have some letters after my name that should supposedly make people feel more confident in my ability to assess risk for public schools. Now, don't get my wrong, I'm good at that...but no thanks to these courses.

Wednesday night went to go visit some old high school friends with Noah and Sophie. Had a nice dinner and dessert (apple pie) and catching up, then back home to fall asleep on my dad's couch at 9:30. And, no workout.

Thursday: Head to downtown Indy for my client meeting in the morning. Meeting goes fairly well. Meeting ends just before noon, call up a friend that works downtown on the circle and we meet for a nice lunch. Then back to dad's house to pick up the kids for the long drive home. Eat some KFC on the way home. And (you guessed it), no workout. Thursday night got into a fight with Ben because I'm too stressed and totally taking it out on him. Sorry, Ben.

Friday: dragged my sorry behind out of bed at 5:30 a.m. against my better judgment (and by that I mean that very convincing and hypnotizing voice in the back of my head that says "c'mon...just stay in bed...what's the point? So you miss one more workout....this week is a waste anyway, no need to pretend you can redeem yourself today...." and do indeed fit in a workout and actually a fairly good one. Being out for three days this week did indeed mean my desk was a mess today, but somehow I still was not as productive as I intended.

So, this weekend, our camping trip has been re-designed to just a hanging-out-with-Friends trip, since weather does not look to be cooperative. It should be enjoyable. But, I probably won't get in a workout.

Nicolas, what are you thinking?

Last month, I took the kids to the library to pick out books. Normally, we pick out a stack of books, then sit in the corner and read them and decide which ones we want to take home. Sometimes we decide some of them are not as enjoyable as we first hoped, but usually, most of them make the cut. So anyway, at this particular visit, we had picked out our books and were packing up to head out. I was strapping Sophie in and rounding up Noah, so Travis did a little wandering, and he came up to me with a book called "Nicolas, where have you been?" So I flipped through it, the blurb on the cover indicates its a lesson about not judging a group based on one bad experience, a little mouse named Nicolas that is told not to like birds and then meets a group of super-nice birds and realizes that birds are good. Okay, sounds decent, into the stack it goes.

Then we get home and actually read the book. Its okay...Nicolas and his field mice friends all believe that birds are bad and then one day Nicolas gets picked up by a mean bird...who ends up dropping him in a nest with a family of birds that take him in and feed him and love him. Soon he realizes its time to go home, finds his field mice family and starts to relay the story. As soon as they hear he was abducted by a bird, the field mice literally declare "War on the birds!" and on the next page there appears a full-color spread of field mice wielding weapons and bludgeoning birds, one field mouse actually stabbing a bird to death with blood spurting everywhere. It was horrible. Now, at the end of the story, Nicolas finally explains to his family that the birds took care of him and were his friends, and they all calm down and come to the realization that you can't pass judgment like that, one bad bird does not make a flock, and all is well. Subsequent online research on this book has revealed that it is touted for teaching conflict resolution and offers a valuable lesson on compassion and understanding. And that its recommended for kids as young as 4.

Now, I'm not one to shy away from difficult conversations with my kids, and I do try to find ways to teach lessons out of unfortunate circumstances. Still, I have a hard time reconciling such a violent image in a kids book...I mean, we're not just taking anger here, we're talking death. That was a little much for me.

So, we kept the book, read it a few times, but always skipped over the evil page. And we did talk about how the mice learned that one bad bird did not mean that all birds were bad, and that they should try to be more understanding of those that are different from them and all that. And I don't think the page of death got burned into his memory or anything.

I guess the moral of this story is, never again will I leave the library without reading every book in its entirety. Yeesh.

vocabulary lesson

The other day I was talking to Travis and trying to explain what "unpredictable" meant. So I told him what it meant when something was "predictable". I illustrated the concept by saying "Say you're watching a Colts game. The Colts are pretty predictable.... you can be pretty sure that they're going to win. Now, say you're watching a Notre Dame game. They are unpredictable -- you never know if they're going to win or not." He responded "unless they're playing the Colts! Then you know they're going to lose because the Colts always win!" I think he gets it.

success!

Travis ate a raisin tonight! And a tiny bit of carrot! You can't imagine my delight. I started with raisins tonight, again did baby steps with just touching it with his tongue, holding it with his teeth, then taking itty bitty bites. His first raisin he ate in about seven bites, if you can imagine that, tearing tiny little pieces off. By his fourth he actually put the whole darn thing in his mouth, I could hardly believe it. So we decided to try a little bit of carrot again, he didn't do quite as well with that as he did with the raisin but it is worlds ahead of where we were a few months ago.

I just got back from the gym, Ben has been horribly sick for the past few weeks, this week the worst, so I've been on kid duty for both mornings and lunchtime. Normally we switch back and forth, I drop the kids off in the morning and he picks Travis up from school at lunch, or vice versa. That way I can use whichever one I don't have kid duty on to work out. Anyway, he was feeling a little better this evening so I gave them all baths and put Sophie to bed, and he agreed to put the boys to bed so I could get in a workout. I'm totally loving my workout time and I think Ben's pretty confident that his present to me -- the gym membership -- is money well spent.

BSU Homecoming this weekend, looking forward to seeing old college buddies. Sounds like most of us (yours truly included) are getting babysitters for the actual tailgating and the game, so we won't be the 'old people with kids' hanging out with all the college folk. We'll just be the 'old people' hanging out with all the college folk. Hooray.

My journey with Apraxia

Well here it is. I've decided to write a blog about our battle with apraxia. The battle is far from won at this point -- but I think I could get some value from expressing some of what we've been going through. I've struggled a lot with it, some times more than others -- and as of late that struggle seems to have intensified somewhat.

So, at Travis's two-year old doc appointment, I mentioned to the doctor about possible speech issues. At that point, I really wasn't worried. I thought he was perhaps a little behind but not much else. He wasn't really speech delayed - his speech was just unintelligible. I did a little research in the months that followed and any speech concerns focused primarily on speech delays. Everything said, "see your doctor if your child doesn't have x number of words by 2 yrs old". Well, he had a bazillion words -- its just that most people couldn't understand them. I could, of course, but most people couldn't. And I couldn't imagine that they expected all those words to be perfectly pronounced at age 2. Take Noah, for instance, he's a few months past two years old, has an insane vocabulary, but certainly doesn't pronounce everything correctly. With the benefit of comparison, I can clearly tell that Travis was light years behind Noah when he was that age...but as a first time mom, I didn't know for sure that the pronunciation issues were all that deep-seated, and thought perhaps they'd just clear up over time. All the parenting books and magazines said its not that unusual for a child to fall behind in certain developmental areas when they're overloading on learning another one....so, I thought, hey... Travis is such a smart kid, maybe his brain is focusing on critical thinking skills, unraveling the human genome, solving the Rubix cube, whatever... so he's not quite so focused on the speech. At any rate, I brought it up in passing at his 2-yr appointment, doc said lets just keep an eye on it and I bet you'll see it improve over the next 3-4 months.

Well, it didn't, at least not terribly noticeably, although it did a little bit. And I never really knew when to draw the line. I kept holding out hope that it would get better on its own. In retrospect, I wish I would have pushed it sooner, but I'm just not the type of person to jump immediately to outside intervention. I tried to work with him at home and just kept blindly thinking it would get better. I've done a lot of beating myself up over not getting him enrolled in speech therapy earlier, thinking he could be x percent improved over where he right now if I'd just gotten him started earlier.

So, at about 2 yrs and 9 months or so, I called the doctor and got a referral to the First Steps program which has a speech therapy component. Called them and they said it would take a few weeks to get an evaluation appointment, and then they'd only be able to treat him until he turned three at which point they have to turn him over to the school system who would have to re-evaluate so it probably wasn't worth it to go through it, we should just wait the few months until he turned three and start with the school program. So we did.

Shortly after his third birthday, we had the school evaluation, informal diagnosis of apraxia and began the one-on-one speech therapy. It was then that we learned that the problem was likely an issue of Travis's brain not sending the right messages to his muscles to allow them to form the words correctly. It was clearly not a cognition problem because the kid was sharp as a tack. He spoke primarily in vowel sounds, very few consonant sounds which he used occasionally correctly but more often incorrectly. Never used consonants in the middle of a word. The average person could probably understand about 5% of his speech. This was when it got the worst for me as I realized this wasn't something that would just improve on its own with a little time, and that we were going to have quite a road ahead of us. This is also when I started battling with the guilt of perhaps making a harder way for my son by not having been more aggressive and getting treatment started sooner.

Now, here we are, over a year and a half later, and certainly things have improved. I would say he is 85-90% intelligible to most people. If they're paying attention. I cried at back-t0-school night at his new Pre-K because his teacher told me she has a hard time understanding him. If you're talking to him one-on-one, for the most part he's understandable. If he's in a classroom with 19 other kids and he's one of many vying for attention, its probably much more difficult. So now I worry incessantly about whether he's adapting well socially in the class, if other kids avoid him because they can't understand him very well... if the teachers don't even understand him, does that mean he's all alone in the classroom? I can't be there by his side to help people understand what he's saying, how do I protect him, how do I get other people to realize what a fabulous little kid he is?

So we are doing private speech therapy on the side to address remaining issues. Ironically, since his speech two years ago was mostly just vowels, its his vowels now that need the most work. The hospital therapist said that, because jaw placement varies extremely slightly among the vowel sounds, that its likely jaw weakness that leads to his incorrect vowel pronunciation. He has a very difficult time saying "uh" and "oy" sounds, "a" sounds like "i", and short vowel sounds (short e in particular) are tougher. So we are currently working on jaw strengthening to hopefully remedy this situation.

Then there's the other issues. Fine motor skills, due to muscle weakness in his hands -- he has a difficult time coloring, holding writing utensils, changing his clothes, etc. He can do it, but its just not that easy for him. Then there's the feeding issue. As it turns out, the overactive gag reflex is a huge problem. His problem is not with the flavor of foods. I don't think its even just a texture issue. Yesterday, we did an exercise with a carrot stick where I had him hold the carrot stick in his teeth but not bite it, then put it against his tongue but again not bite it. Then I had him take a tiny shaving off the carrot stick, which he swallowed just fine (and said, yummmm, that's good....), but when I had him take an actual bite of it, it was too much for his poor tongue and he gagged and just couldn't keep it in his mouth. I then had him take just a tiny bit of carrot, place it on his tongue and hold it there for a few seconds, and then take it off. I was stunned by how hard this was for him. I told him we just have to work on training his tongue not to freak out, and we'd have to practice with carrot sticks for a while. I don't know how much energy I'll have for this....it brought me to tears yesterday seeing him struggle so much with something that most people would think nothing about.

And that's the end of my story. Hopefully in a year or so I'll be able to report that speech and feeding issues are 100% resolved. Until then, I'm just hoping not to be a total basket-case, for my children's sake. And my husband's (that's another post altogether.... its not that he doesn't take this seriously but he also doesn't stress about it, it just is what it is for him).

Anybody looking for more resources, visit www.apraxia-kids.org.

Attitude adjustment

I could learn a thing or two from my four-year-old.

Today, I went to pick the kids up after work, and Travis was asleep when I got to mom's. He'd kind of outgrown his naps, but now that he has to get up and go to school every day, he has picked the afternoon nap back up, at least on school days. So anyway, I get there, have to wake him up, he's a little groggy and definitely grumpy. And, as it turns out, Sophie had knocked over a cup of water earlier, and one of Moose's antlers was a tiny bit wet. Well, this was just too much for Travis to deal with in his sleepy emotional state, and he started crying nearly uncontrollably, going on and on about moose being wet.

So I load everyone up in the car, toss Moose into the front passenger seat, try to console Travis by assuring him I'll get Moose in the dryer as soon as we get home, to no avail and continuous wailing from the back seat. Finally, I exasperatedly flip Moose back into the backseat hoping the kid will just take hold of him and shut up for a minute, wet antler and all.

And miraculously, he does. He said, with tear-stained cheeks and a residual sniffle, "Mom, I didn't even know that Moose would calm me down even when he's a little wet. I discovered something new today. This is the best day ever!" I kid you not. I was astounded. I cannot believe how sweet this kid is. He literally tries to find the good in any situation, if at all possible.

For example, last week at speech therapy, his therapist asked him if he liked pudding. Now, mind you, this is also feeding therapy, so what he eats and how he eats it is kind of a big deal. So when she asked that, I thought, hey, great, something he actually does like. So she asks if he likes chocolate pudding or vanilla pudding, and he says "well, I love chocolate!" So off she goes. She comes back a few minutes later with vanilla pudding in hand and says, "Travis, I am so sorry, we had two big, unopened boxes of pudding and we all thought it was one box of chocolate and one box of vanilla but it turns out it was two boxes of vanilla -- so we don't have any chocolate pudding, I am so sorry! I hope this is okay!" and Travis immediately breaks out into this huge smile and says, "oh, I really like vanilla. I really wanted to have vanilla but I didn't know if you would have any. If you have vanilla I really want it." It's like he really wanted her to not feel bad about the whole thing. She was thrilled and delighted and went on and on about what a good attitude he has.

Meanwhile, I had a meltdown this weekend because... well, I don't even remember why. I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with soggy stuffed animals or pudding, but still. I could learn a thing or two from my four-year-old.

Productive Day

Me: Dusting

Travis, age 4: Trying to help. Gets distracted. Races around room flinging dust cloth through the air.

Noah, age 2: Trying to help. Gets distracted by older brother. Races around the room following a flying dust cloth, swatting at dust speckles floating through the air.

Sophie, age 9 months. Crawling around the room, trying to get my attention, screaming bloody murder.

Ben: Snoring on the couch.

-----------------------

Me: Vacuuming

Travis: Running around the room, pretending to avoid getting swept up by the vacuum cleaner. Occasional screeching.

Noah: Running around the room, emulating his older brother. Has no idea what he's supposed to be pretending to do. Constant screeching.

Sophie: Sitting square in the middle of the floor, tears streaking down her cheeks and full-on wail in high power.

Ben: Snoring on the couch.

------------------------

Me: Steam Cleaing

Travis: Sliding around the carpet. Leaving soggy footprints everywhere.

Noah: Still following his brother. Leaving soggy footprints everywhere.

Sophie: Being toted around the living room as she forces her mother to steam clean one-handed. Occasional sniffle.

Ben: Snoring on the couch.

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Baby steps and cheese

Second feeding therapy appointment tonight, Travis did very well again. Willing to try what she asked, and even ate some pudding with Cheerios that surprised me. I got inspired to try some new things on my own, and managed to get Travis to eat a few bites of chicken nugget with tiny bits of string cheese added. We gave his elephant nugget a cheese hat, and the lion an eye and shoes made of cheese. He did eat them, then I tried to get him to eat a couple bites of cheese alone, but he still gagged and choked as per usual. Baby steps.

Someone made a comment to me that if I only fed him the food I wanted him to eat (more veggies, whatever we're eating for dinner, etc.), that he'd eventually eat it rather than starve. But I kind of equate that to those people who don't teach their deaf children sign language. I don't feel like I'm indulging him just because I'm not forcing food down his throat. He truly has a physical problem that prohibits him from eating normally. Far be it from me to judge anyone else on their preferred parenting methods, but I do feel like I did the right thing by not forcing that on him. I certainly went through phases where I second-guessed myself, sent him to bed without eating since he didn't eat what I put on his plate, etc. I still do, in fact (second guess myself, that is). But I knew from the beginning that I did not want to make the food battle one that consumed our lives, so I've taken it fairly easy and tried not to get too worked up about it. (If Ben's reading this, I guarantee you he's snorting under his breath right now, thinking "this is what you call not getting worked up?!? I can only imagine what our lives would have been like if you had allowed yourself to get worked up about this...") But my point is, my goal has been to get through this as reasonably as possible without unnecessarily stressing myself out and pushing too much on my poor son, who tries so hard to please me but just physically can't force his tongue to comply.

Noah, on the other hand, he's just a stinker. He just decides he doesn't want to eat, just to be a pill. So I feel much better about telling him it's this or nothing, because I know full well he's just trying to test me by refusing. He's cute, but I'm still smarter.

Speaking of cute, here's my babies on the day of the Colts' regular season opener:

Travis and Ben have been sick with pneumonia, its been a very rough week at the Davidson household.

Also, in keeping with the baby steps theme of this post, Sophie's taken to trying to balance. She's not quite furniture cruising yet, but she does pull herself up onto anything and everything. This week, she's been pulling up, then letting go with both hands and trying to balance. Not much longer now, folks.

new digs

Yesterday I took Travis into my office building with me to make my official move from cube to office. The batteries were almost dead in my camera, so the flash didn't work, but, pictures of the new digs:

On Friday, my team surprised me with some flowers and a congratulatory card, and then we headed out for an impromptu group lunch. It was very nice.

Noah's slowly moving out of his clingy phase, I think. He still wants me to pick him up an awful lot, but he's doing much better when babysitters come over and all. We went out to dinner Friday night with one of Ben's co-workers, her daughter watched the kids, and Noah just trotted over to me, gave me a kiss and a hug, and said "g'bye mom" without a second thought. Today at church he scampered into the play room and never looked back. Afterwards he said "I had fun in the play room at church! I'm so happy to see you!" A far cry from the death grip I got last week.

Sophie, meanwhile, is picking up any clinginess that Noah's leaving behind. Most days, she crawls around the house following me, crying, tears streaming down her face, until I pick her up. Case in point, this is Sophie after finally catching up with me the other day:

Finally, victory:

imagination button

Today I asked Travis where he got such an imagination, and he looked at me and matter-of-factly said, "from my imagination button". A little more probing determined that said button is located on the back of his neck. Naturally.

Remember-y

Travis had his first feeding therapy appointment today; the eval so we can start actual therapy finally. He did good, answered questions, talked about pictures, etc. Its really a combination speech and feeding issue, since it primarily involves muscle weakness which is contributing to the problems in both areas.

At any rate, Travis was a real crack-up during the appointment. Kind of a chatterbox, which is a little unlike him (around strangers at least), which is a good sign I think. She had him look at pictures and then she would ask questions about those pictures to elicit certain responses. And then all of a sudden he'd go off on some tangent about how "my dad bought me my very own Nemo fishing pole. I caught two fish on it. One was really little but the second was a little bigger. We fish on a lake at grandma and pa-pas house on my dad's fishing boat. It's fast and sometimes I get to help drive it. Sometimes we stand on the dock on go fishing...." and on and on. Later on, he was describing the therapy appointment to my mom, and he commented that he told the therapist a "remembery". He meant "memory". I love it.

So, here's hoping we're on the road to recovery. Maybe soon I'll be able to get this boy to eat a hot dog. Or a candy bar.

As I type, Sophie is strapped into her high chair drinking a bottle. Every so often she drops it on the floor. I've perfected the art of slave-driving my children, however, so I just have to say, "Noah! Sophie dropped her bottle!" and he races into the kitchen shouting "I can gick it!" (get it) and quickly retrieves it for her. Then he bounds in here exclaiming "I did it!" and is very awful proud of himself. It's quite a racket I've got going here.

Jumping Jacks

Today at Pre-K, Travis filled up his sticker chart, meaning he got to pick a prize from the prize box. He picked a jumprope and jacks set. He's very excited about both. It's also his first encounter with both. (Yes, even with a superstar jumproping aunt, he's never actually jumped rope before. I fully expect, however, that she'll turn him into her protege, teach him the 'ropes', so to speak, and he'll be an expert before spring. Got it, Jody?)

In other school news, rock-throwing incident has not recurred. I'm staying out of it for now.

Went to free museum day at Health Works. Some pics below, full set here.

Travis Davidson, DDS

Showin off his ink. I mean paint.

Noah made a friend. They're holding hands. Very cute.

They made "unusual hats" as Travis calls them. I'll say.

I think Noah might have a touch of some kind of bug. He's not feeling too well.

I'll be making the move to my new space at work later this week. Finally, my own office.

And that's all. Davidson OUT

Cows and cousins

Ahhh, Labor Day weekend. Saturday went to the in-laws, kids played with cousins. Sunday went to my sister's, kids played with cousins. Today went to a ball game, no cousins there, but at least a bouncy house for the boys to enjoy.

This morning Travis and I went to the bookstore to pick out a few chapter books for him, then decided to stop by Chick-Fil-A on the way home, where we ran into what can only be described as utter chaos. It was apparently chicken-sandwich-giveaway day at Chick-Fil-A, unbeknownst to me. I just picked it cause it has a play room with a slide. Anyway, when we got there, the restaurant was only mildly packed and we got our food fairly quickly. Three minutes later, the place was swarming with people. And a cow. Travis was pretty pumped up about the cow. I got a short video of him on the way out. I mean, for real, its not that often you run into people dressed as livestock at a fast food restaurant.

Other pics of the weekend.....

Sophie doing what she does best

Big fan

Travis in the fun zone

adorable headache

Thanks to my fabulous photographer, looks like the session yesterday will turn out some pretty nice pics. (Look for her Sept 3rd blog entry for the sneak peeks.)

www.jennyhokephotography.com

Thanks Jenny!

As per usual, I could barely get Noah to cooperate in any fashion. Did not want to sit for pictures. Did not want to stand for pictures. Did not want to smile, laugh, or stay in one place for pictures. Did want to run around screaming like a maniac showing off his dance moves and his jumping abilities. I tell ya, its a good thing he's cute.

Travis did great. Sophie did reasonably well. I was a mess.

backyardin' it

Decided to take the Flipcam outside for a few shots of the kiddos playing in the backyard. View the whole set here, but here are a few of my favs: