Jennifer Briggs

In an effort to increase how much the girls drink, I was looking at various box juices and discovered a gem of an item. Ella’s Kitchen smoothies are fruit, veggies, and water. Unfortunately, Amy doesn’t like them. Sarah, on the other hand, helped herself to 4 of them yesterday morning before I realized what had… Read more »

It has been another amazing week full of insights. Thanks to Sarah’s nutritionist from years gone by (and now a friend), I started tracking how many ounces of fluid both girls consume in a day and it is at best half or 2/3 of what they should be getting. EGAD! This is awesome to know!!!… Read more »

Just because you come late to spoken language or find some words hard to say doesn’t mean you can’t be a word nerd. Yesterday Sarah came down for breakfast and declared, “Amy is ornery.” I’m so proud! We did a follow-up x-ray and Sarah’s digestive system is much clearer. YAY! She didn’t go to school… Read more »

Well… Poop. I saw the x-ray and met with Sarah’s GI doctor. Holy sh*t. We have a serious backup. Sometimes Carl and I have different opinions about the same situation. I was busy feeling like a failure for Sarah’s current situation. When I told Carl about the x-ray and the plan he was excited that… Read more »

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… Read more »

We began today with an Easter egg hunt. Since there aren’t pre-made candy items that Sarah can have, the chocolate that I make can’t be out of the fridge too long or it might melt, and Sarah can’t have eggs, I hid plastic eggs (as I have in years past). This year I put slips… Read more »

My sweet Amy just turned 5. I love how driven she is to create art. I love how she always wants to be dressed appropriately for any occasion (what is appropriate is determined by her) and changes her outfit about 20 times a day. I love how she creates pretend treats that are assembled from… Read more »

We let Sarah take Monday-Thursday off from kindergarten. We decided each day at a time. If she said she didn’t want to go I said that was ok. It felt really good to back off from pushing her at all (realizing from the previous week that pushing her to go was not benefitting anyone and… Read more »

This felt like a hard week and I wanted to wave my flag of surrender many a time. Sunday night Sarah got sick with a tummy bug. I spent the night on her floor so I could be ready at a moment’s notice to hold a bowl for her in case she had more puke… Read more »

I had thought that we were making progress with Sarah’s digestion and potty situation but it seems that we are not yet. I know that if the problem was too much gluten then it can take a few months to get it all out of her system. I had just hoped to have more clarity… Read more »