Grandparents-a-la-paloosa

Grrrrrrrrrrrandpa!!!

Ben and I just got back from a fantastic four-day visit with my parents in El Paso. We had fun visiting Old Mesilla In New Mexico, introducing Ben to (cooked) sushi, going to playgrounds, and running about town. It's fun to see how much Ben has changed every time we go see my parents (the last time we visited was 3 months ago). We definitely face different interesting challenges each time making things baby-safe (he has now learned to pull down boxes, etc and then stand on them to try to reach fun things put "safely" away). He was also more aware (although still wary) of my parents' dogs, and he got a huge thrill out of looking out the sliding glass door at their bird feeders. I really want to figure out how to install a squirrel-safe one here in our windows so he can enjoy more bird watching.

One real bright spot in our flying-to-El-Paso experience this visit was when we got our boarding passes, the lady at the Southwest counter asked Clay if he would like to go to the gate with me to "assist". Man, was that welcome! So instead of me being ready to collapse before the flight even began, Clay chased Ben up and down and up and down the San Antonio airport while I sat and relaxed pre-flight. Three cheers for Daddy!

Ben has also blossomed a bit more in his speaking lately. Although the most common word out of his mouth is "dawk" or "guck" (which sometimes means dog and sometimes definitely means duck), he has now started to say "dat?" (we think he means "that") and point to things. So now we are naming things for him a million times a day. He especially likes hanging ceiling lights and anything that might look like a cat.

Another good development is that sometimes Ben will actually allow us to put a hat on his head (& let it stay there more than four seconds!). A small victory, but a victory none-the-less.

Ben & Gramma & a very happy Lulu dog

having a contemplative moment with my parents' Buddha statue

playing with the musical Octopus Uncle Greg & Aunt Mari got him

and sometimes we still manage to nap in public

happy family waiting at the SA airport

playing with the musical Octopus Uncle Greg & Aunt Mari got him

bull ridin' at the Cielo Vista Mall

more grandpa time!

playground at Old Mesilla

holding Mama's hand? That's for babies!

@the playground right across from my childhood house

hiking with Daddy before we left for our trip

Ben's first taste of peanut butter (and "nana")

Swallow test results: all will be well

Ben finally had his "swallow study" done at the hospital today. (A swallow study is where the patient eats and drinks food that has been dipped in barium and the doctor and speech therapist watch his mouth and esophagus "live-action" on a tv screen). It's very weird to watch one's baby's mouth in action from the inside!

in his hospital gown playing with his new touch-screen "phone"

I've been stressed out for weeks worrying they might find something really wrong with him and knowing he might easily have a meltdown at the hospital and refuse to eat during the test.

However, all my fears were pretty much unfounded. I had luckily thought to buy two new special toys that made exciting beeping noises to entertain him while we waited at the hospital, which helped a lot. He also was reluctantly wiling to eat the baruim-dipped blueberries & velveeta cheese/chicken mash-up I'd brought. It took a bit of cajoling, but he ate and drank enough for a successful test.

this is the seat Ben sat in during the test 

The speech therapist present during the test said he does NOT aspirate while he eats or drinks (thank goodness!), and that he seems to keep all of the food he eats in the middle of his mouth instead of pushing it to the sides to chew with his gums (which is why he's not able to chew food like other young toddlers yet). The therapist said his own speech therapist could work with me to help him learn how to chew with the sides of his mouth more.

all the foods I brought to tempt Benben

So.... all my stress and worry may have been for nothing, but at least we're more sure he's just fine!

holding his bottle like a big boy

my two favorite people

Velveeta cheese: my new best friend

enjoying his Nuk-brush therapy

The last few weeks have been a bit of trial for me, as I have tried repeatedly to do the oral therapies as prescribed by the speech therapist. Almost all of the therapies require me putting my finger in Ben's mouth. However, he takes great offense at any attempt to do this, so we've been at a bit of a stand-still. I think he may be especially phobic of unwanted things going in his mouth because for months we had to force-feed him his reflux meds every night and he HATED that (we've since switched to dissolving tablets, which is much better).

Another of the speech therapist's requirements we've struggled with is going back to spoon-feeding Ben purees. (Since he only gained an ounce in the whole month of August, the pediatrician and the therapist were a little concerned he wasn't getting enough calories.) I guess Ben just really wants to do feeding all by himself, though, because whenever I try to spoon feed him, he closes his mouth up really tight and bats the spoon so that the puree goes flying.... again.... and again.

For the first two weeks after going to see the speech therapist I tried a variety of different sweet treats to get him to open up (for both the spoon-feeding, and trying to get him to let me put my finger in his mouth). I tried strawberry jam, grape jelly, honey, and two kinds of fruity yogurt. I would even smear a bit of these sweet foods on his resisting lips so that he'd have to get a little taste. I might as well have been offering him mud and rolly-pollies from the way he acts-- no wait, he LIKES mud and rolly-pollies!

my busy boy

Then it occurred to me that perhaps Ben just doesn't really like sweet things. (Oh, the horror!!) So yesterday I put some melted velteeta cheese on a spoon and he opened up like a hungry baby bird! Although I can't fathom not being tempted by jam and other delicious sweets, I am so grateful that I've found something that will help me finally do his therapy.

Another happy break-through I've had for getting more calories into my boy involves a further bit of grossness. A few days ago I had the idea of putting a few spoonfuls of our "grown-up" meals into the Baby Bullet blender and getting it into a chunky (and pretty disgusting) rough paste. He LOVES this, and he can actually eat pretty much all of what we give him (instead of 95 % of it ending up in his bib and lap like before). So that has been a wonderful break-through, even if his meals now look like regurgitated yuck.

splashing in his first mud puddle (while Mama's back was turned)

The therapist also told me to start weaning Ben off of baby bottles and onto sippy-cups. That is easier said than done! Ben is more than happy to be given a no-drip sippy cup filled with formula and carry it around the house. He'll stop every now and then to try to take a drink, but he hasn't mastered the concept of tilting one's head back when drinking a beverage, so mostly he just gets a lot of air and eventually tosses the sippy cup down somewhere. He also has a toddler cup with a straw that he loves to drink from. Sadly, most of the reason he loves his straw cup so much is that when drinking from it, he doesn't make a tight seal with his lips so most of the liquid gushes back out around the straw and down his front. Some days when I give him his straw cup filled with water during a meal, I have to totally change his whole outfit and diaper later, because so much water has leaked out of his mouth as he drank. I tried filling the straw cup with cold water (as the therapist suggested), but it didn't make any difference.  I do not want to fill the straw cup with milk, because that cleanup would be super messy!

our first true, satisfactory nap together!

So instead of trying to immediately switch Ben off of bottles, Clay suggested we put handles on the baby bottles we have and teach him to first hold his bottle all by himself while he lays next to us as we feed him. Once he's comfortable laying next to us holding his own bottle, maybe we can work towards him sitting up (& tilting his head back) while drinking from the bottle on his own. Who knew this whole process was going to be so complicated!!?

Oh, and we have the swallow test this coming Wednesday at the hospital. I hope hope hope that he will consent to eating the barium dipped food, or it will be a bust!

Luckily I have been able to actually complete two other things the therapist instructed me to do: getting him to chew on a "chewy tube" and "Nuk-brush", which both special tools used to strengthen the jaw muscles.  The other success is pressing on his chin to help him learn to say "Mama" (which is a fabulous success!).

In fact, I guess one might count "Mama" as Ben's first word (he says it more like "Muwm"). However, right after I started working with him to say "Mama," he also started saying "uck" for "duck" and "baba" for "ball." So really I'm counting all three as official "first words." I'm SO thankful he's making progress on his speech now. It's like all of a sudden a switch was turned on inside of him and now he's starting to get it. A little while ago I could hear Clay telling Ben he was putting on his "socks and shoes", and Ben responded saying "shsh". Things are so much more interesting and fun when it feels like he can start responding.

taking an alligator ride with Auden

Speaking of ducks, his morning I took Ben to Brackenridge Park to see the ducks for the first time. I was so impressed with him because he knew what they were immediately even though none of them were yellow (like most of the ducks in his books)! He kept saying "uck, uck" and cried when I decided it was time to leave (he was getting too close to the edge of the riverbank for my taste.) In the little video below I have to prompt him to say "duck" for the camera, but when we first arrived he said it with no prompting at all.

Another nice change in our house is that now Benito is a "free range" toddler. Previously, he was fenced-in in living room and dining room areas by baby gates. After some tricky toddler-proofing in the rest of the house (if there ever is truly anything safe from a toddler) he's now free to roam around, and only blocked from going into the kitchen and the bathroom. The bathroom is where the kitty litter box is and the cat's food and water is on the floor of the kitchen. Once he's learned to follow directions a bit better I'll try letting him into those rooms also. He really really enjoys having the run of the house and now he happily follows me from room to room, instead of crying at the baby gate every time I'd run to the other room to get something. Hurray for small things that make big differences!

In other positive news, I think I have finally kicked my pneumonia. Today is the first day I haven't taken any sort of medication. Yeah!

seeing the ducks at Brackenridge Park

Ben was the center of the party at Chick-fil-A last night

enjoying an indoor fast-food play area for the first time

Chewy McNoSwallow

Ben had his initial evaluation with the speech therapist this afternoon, and it was both reassuring and a debacle.  Without seeing the results of the swallow study (scheduled in two weeks), she couldn't be sure why his eating and possibly speaking is delayed. However, she suspects that either his tongue and cheeks aren't strong enough or working in proper concert, or his jaws just aren't biting down hard enough. 

blue boy

The visit was reassuring because it seems like there are good exercises I can do with Ben that will help strengthen his tongue, cheeks, and jaws (all of which involve me sticking my finger in his mouth). Ben is not overly-fond of me doing this, so just getting him to open his mouth for me will be our first challenge, I think. The therapist showed me some ways to make opening up into a bit of a game, though, so I have hope. I'm supposed to do these exercises about 30 minutes twice a day. We'll see how that goes!

She also suggested I take a step back from doing table-food-only with Ben to doing purees and dissolvable foods like Baby Mum-Mums and Yogurt Drops. She showed me where to put them on the back of his gums and press down to encourage him to chew more efficiently. She also told me of two baby chew toys to buy that will help encourage him to bite down hard.

The debacle part of our visit was that Ben REFUSED to eat for her! Oh, and when he drank water from his sippy/straw cup, he didn't spill half of it out the side of his mouth the way he always does at home. Not that I wanted him to make a huge mess in her office, but I wanted to show her what he does normally. He had eaten almost 3 hours previously, but I guess he wasn't hungry enough (or possibly just weirded out by the lady with the blue plastic gloves trying to poke his mouth).

She thought he might have had more success drinking his water from a straw sippy cup there in the office because the water we filled it with was very cold & she said that coldness often will make ones cheeks draw together and lips tighten (thus improving the seal on his lips). Usually when we give him water at home in that cup it's semi-warm tap water.

Anyway, after a long, long time trying to cajole him to eat, he finally did put one piece of cheese in his mouth. Luckily, he did his normal "chew chew chew, spit out large chunks" thing for her. So I guess she got a small picture of how he eats. It was frustrating, though.

As far as working on his language development, we didn't have much time for that, but she did show me how to encourage him to make the "m" sound (by putting my thumb on his chin and gently pushing down then up. So now when he makes the "more" sign we're going to make him at least try to put his lips in the "m" position before we grant his voracious "more" desires.

Now I'm a bit apprehensive about the success of the swallow study. For that test he'll have to try to eat bits of food dunked in the barium solution.... so I need to think of something he'll definitely want to eat. Perhaps it's time for coooookies. Or something.

yard explorations with his birthday party duck

In other news, Ben and I have been enjoying the backyard a bit every day lately. He's gotten to the lovely stage where he doesn't try to eat each and every leaf and stick, so he can roam around our large backyard and get some fun exploring time in.

handing me a stick he found in the backyard

daddy to the rescue

Benjen & the Iron Throne (at Lone Star Con 3)

Since finding out I have pneumonia (small wonder my cough wouldn't get better & hurt my ribs so much), I've been on potent antibiotics and heavy-duty cough syrup. The doctor also ordered "plenty of rest,"which is a pretty absurd thing to tell a mom of a 13-month old.

Luckily it's been Clay-to-the-rescue all weekend. I have only changed two diapers in the past few days, have taken extensive naps, and watched in a cough-syrupy daze while Clay performs feats of daddy magic.

Yesterday Clay took Benben to Lone Star Con 3 (the World Science Fiction Convention) for a seven-hour marathon of trying to listen to panel discussions on some of his favorite authors while keeping a very active toddler from breaking away and trying to pull the tablecloth off of the presenter's table (that only happened once, Clay tells me). I think that yesterday might possibly have been my longest break ever from Ben. Sadly, I spent all of it half-alive on the couch. Think how much I could have gotten done if I'd been myself!!!! *sigh*

Then today Clay took Ben to play at the park, to Clay's favorite coffee shop, and to the gym. It has been a surreal weekend, but very restful. I am already feeling a lot better (although I wonder what will happen on Tuesday when I stop taking the cough syrup so I am coherent enough drive).

Anyway, hurray for Clay.

Link says "no Exterminate!" (at Lone Star Con 3)

made it to the top! (at Lone Star Con 3)

the staircase BenBen climbed at Lone Star Con 3

looking tiny at the downtown library