Journey to our children: Thankful Thursday

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Thankful Thursday

1. I am very thankful that we were able to extend our time in Maryland. It has been great to have extra time with my parents and Maurice.

2. We were not expecting to see my sister Yvonne and her family. It has been wonderful to be able to spend a week with them, especially as it had been four years since I had spent more than one hour with them (since I was in the hospital the last time they were in the US). Today there are 22 of us all under one roof since my sister, Wendy and her family got back from Virginia this afternoon and Paul came back to MD this morning.

3. Aside from being able to spend time with all three of my siblings, my parents, my two brother-in-laws, five nephews, and five nieces, the other wonderful aspect about being down here in Maryland was that I was only involved in getting Ian to eat one meal (dinner on Saturday night while my parents were at the airport getting the eight Towfighis). He made progress this week with using a spoon to eat a bowl of cereal with milk in the morning (ex. Kix), and he did an amazing job eating lasagna on Friday night.

He ate his lasagna at the same speed as everyone else at the table (first time this EVER happened for any type of pasta), and he asked for seconds (and ate them)!!! I was in shock. It helped that most of the meals were things he likes (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pizza, and chicken nuggets), but he even ate some spaghetti on New Year's Eve because he wanted a chocolate chip cookie for dessert. Most of the time the most unpleasant and stressful part of my day revolves around getting Ian to eat so it was very nice to have a break from that for a few days. My sister who is an OT also showed us how to have him hold his fork (which has been part of his problem). She also has been showing me various other activities to do to help improve his fine motor skills and such. I'm hoping we'll see an improvement when we get back home because lately I have seriously wished the child had a feeding tube because I've been at my wits end with getting him to feed himself dinner in less than 2 hours.

4. I have enjoyed playing games with nieces and nephews. We've played Apples to Apples a few times, Uno, Connect Four, Life, Checkers, etc. Fun!!

5. Wendy's kids had lice that hadn't totally gone away when they were here, and it looks like we didn't get that from them (YAY). Five of Yvonne's kids and husband have a virus (fever, cough, headache, etc.), and Nadia and Paul have escaped that thus far. Unfortunately Oliver came down sick yesterday, and Ian and I came down sick today. In hind sight we should have left here on Monday. Please pray that Oliver will get better ASAP or his surgery that is scheduled to take place on Monday will have to be rescheduled.

6. Oliver is a brave little boy. Ian didn't start climbing through playland type things until he was three years old, but Oliver at 16 months old climbed to the very top of the structure at Chick-Fil-A yesterday and then went down the slide all by himself (going feet first on his belly). I was so proud of him! Nadia is proud of the fact that she mastered the pole in the basement for the first time this trip!