April 3

This week was a good clothing week. Grammy and Granddad sent some new clothes in the mail and the girls were squealing with delight as they shucked their old garments and donned the new. They started saying “look at me! look at me!” and then Sarah said, “Look at us!” Those tiny shifts in speech (especially pronouns) come so easily to so many but not Sarah, so it is really huge when she makes a shift on her own.

Sarah was outgrowing some of her pants so I took a chance and bought her some jeggings (jean leggings). She loves them! She has loved jeans for ages, but only when they were on other people. She wore them to school on Thursday and had a great day, the best day she has had at school in ages. We don’t know if it was the jeans that led to the extra good day or because I was outside the room the whole time (that was the needed security blanket to have her agree to try school). All week she had Sonia or me outside the room and we may need to continue in that fashion. She is doing great, but protests going unless we offer the option of being there. Friday was a good day too and also included jeans.

For the nitty gritty details and in case the information helps anyone else with their struggles, we got an x-ray of Sarah’s abdomen and confirmed my suspicion that she is in fact quite backed up. We are starting a temporary regimen of Miralax plus continuing increased fruits, veggies, and water. I also realized that for months now I have been wanting to keep my head in the sand and not give up any food items that I had long ago deemed ok. Yet, clearly things have not been ok (for either kid’s digestion) and so I had to face that and make changes. We are phasing out the rice bread that I had thought was ok. We are not going to have bananas around any more. No more orange juice (to cut back on the sugars ingested each day). I may phase out Beanitos at a later date if need be. I came to my realizations while grocery shopping and it took effort not to cry in the store. Sarah’s food is so limited anyway that I hated going back to even more limitations, even though she often handles it with more ease than I do. It is also different to limit Amy’s food more, but she seems ok after the initial disappointment. We will see how she does once the rice bread is actually all gone. When I initially eliminate a food option it has to be completely out of the house. It is too hard for me to say no if it is in the house. Decreased options also mean more work on my part because I have to make even more things from scratch. And did I mention that Sarah’s favorite veggie crackers are no longer being made??! I have a variation that she is now ok with and I have enough boxes to last for a few months, but after that I will have to experiment with making my own.

Yesterday our neighbor gave us an enormous cardboard box and Carl made a bus out of it. Sarah the Pigeon was very excited to drive the bus!