Our Week

Joy continued to recover.  By the end of the week, she has jumping around again.  But all of this pain has been worth it (at least to us!), her speech is markedly improved!  She is annunciating ending consonants.  Her acoustics are so much better!  We understand so much more of what she is trying to say!  Score one for communication!

Joy and Bella love to watch videos of themselves!

Back to school shopping – anxiety producing for some, exciting for others!

She was ready to get on the bus right this minute!  :)

In Brother news: he twisted his ankle on Sunday night.  His PT examined it and had us wrap it.  By the end of the week, he was putting full weight on it again.  Playing on the ipad.  He loved slapping the screen.  :)  Since Becca is in Nursery with Alex, we get these cute pictures of him.

He went to see the urologist and the neurologist this week.  The urologist pronounces him fine and normal.  We went to the neurologist to rule out any medical reasons for his head banging.  He said that Brother is engaging in self-stimulating and self-injurious behavior.  It is very common for children with sensory deprivation.  He wants us to work with a behavioral therapist to eliminate it.  He said it’s going to be difficult and challenging.  So encouraging.  Well, I thought I would get a baseline first of his behavior.  Saturday morning he crawled over to the table and banged his head three times.  Then he crawled across the rug and banged his head fifty times.  5. 0.  That’s it.  No more baseline.  Can’t handle watching him do that!  So I have started applying some negative consequences and then praising to the sky when he stops himself – and it’s working – after 24 hours we already have a significant decrease.  I know that Behavioral Theory says the behavior will increase before decreasing, but so far, so good.

By the end of the week, we had our happy Joy back!!

Becca made GF chocolate muffins – they were good and everyone ate them!  That is quite the accomplishment for GF baked goods!  She wouldn’t pose, so here she is in all of her glory!

Music  - everyone plays something, so the littles want to get into it too!!  They are so cute!

Lizzy spent Wed/Thur with Grandma Ball.  She had a great time!  She loves the farm!

Cut Brother’s hair.  Such a cute little boy!

Cute Jessi – this is her at church.  She just looks so grown up.  Wish everyone would slow down for a minute!                  The girls on Wednesday – we had an activity on Missionaries!

Had to renew our handicap placard.  Joy was done with waiting so Becca took her down the street for gelato!! Thanks Bec!

 

These two had fun with face masks and hanging out together.

 

 

 

 

 

We drove down to the Galleria to show the girls the wall of water.  We have never done that – hard to believe!  We ate at Jenni’s Noodles.  This was Becca’s choice, so many GF options.  We don’t think they normally have large families come in, but they were very accommodating to us.  Our favorite dish was Salt and Pepper Shrimp over Rice Vermicelli.  We are hoping to re-create it at home this week!

We tried a similar to this recipe we saw on Facebook (except we scrambled the eggs) – yummy Sunday morning breakfast.  I think if you paired it up with some fresh fruit and maybe something sweet, you’d have the perfect brunch!