And the accommodation begins ...

Truman is scheduled to start Parent's Day Out in about six weeks. He'll be attending Wednesdays for about half a day. Although based on age, he should be in the two-year-old class, we enrolled him in the older toddler class because we thought that would be a better fit at this point. He'll be 25 months; the class is for 18-24 months.

We received a letter last week all about the program, supplies, etc. It stated that kids in his class have to have only finger foods. Well, clearly that's a problem. So, I talked to the program director this morning. I had to fight to keep him in the older toddler (as opposed to the 10-18 month) class. We worked out a solution where he will bring his own crunchies for snack time, and he will leave for the day during lunchtime. Lunchtime starts at 11:45. Truman will leave around noon, which will give him some time to watch other kids eat for some peer modeling, but Ben will pick him up and give him a full meal at home. The rest of the kids stay until 2 p.m.

Truman will also miss the naptime with the other kids. I don't think that's a huge loss because can you imagine our non-sleep-trained child being asked to take a nap on a mat on the floor without throwing up on someone or running around like a little banshee. That's actually quite hilarious.

Terribles twos coming early ...

... at bedtime at least?

Getting Truman to bed the last three nights has been horrible. Friday night involved Truman vomiting on Mama's face twice with no warning. No fussing, no gagging--just bam, face and hair full of vomit, full bed soaked.

Mama was on her own Saturday night as Daddy was hosting a bachelor party. Three hours later, Daddy had to come home to help. This was after two rounds of vomit, a third threatened one, much screaming and crying, a squirt of cleaning fluid in the eyes by a misbehaving toddler. Remember, there were no sheets on the big bed because of the previous night's vomit, so I had to get out the upholstery cleaner where he got beyond the towels I laid down "just in case." Well, when I was scrubbing, Truman grabbed the cleaner and squirted himself in the eyes, so add an eye and face bath to the two baths he already had that night.

Those sound bad, but Truman was just building up to Sunday night. Last night the bedtime process lasted from 8:30 to about 2 a.m. with a one-hour nap in there by Truman. It took both parents, vomit, lots of screaming and crying to get him to sleep.

Although this sounds like a really rough night of crying-it-out, it wasn't. Truman was usually in the arms of one or the other of his parents or in his bed with one of his parents patting him this entire time.

We really have no idea what to do. We're almost to the point of letting him sleep in his own vomit. Would that really be that horrible?

Another Beach trip

We spent the weekend in Galveston at a friend's beach house. It was a blast and way better than the Galveston of the 1980s and early 1990s. If we had a close enough shot, you could see that between his beach trips and time in the pool, Truman has gotten about half a dozen tiny freckles on his face. So cute!

Guess what Truman did!

We worked outside in the flowerbeds over the weekend, so I was using one of those insulated cups with a straw in it to drink iced tea. Truman really wanted to try it, so I let him, thinking if he can figure out how to get icea tea out of it, it couldn't really hurt him. Over the course of the day, he was able to get a few sips and promptly choke on them throughout the day. (He doesn't do well with thin liquids like water or juice).

Last night, I got up from the dinner table to grab something and moved the cup from where it was drying on a dishtowel. Truman asked for it, so I poured a little 3 ounce bottle of drinkable yogurt in it in some wild fantasy of parental normalcy. I sat back down and a few minutes later, Truman handed me the cup and signed "more." I opened it. He managed to drink all of it!! We were super excited and, of course, gave him more, which he didn't drink.

This is huge. We have worked with every kind of sippy cup, open cups, a therapeutic cup where we squeeze the liquid up a straw to him. Nothing has worked. Heck, we can't even get him to hold his own bottle. And then yesterday, he sits there and quietly uses a straw with ease. We are super excited!!

Sunday o' Vomit

I think Truman threw up almost as much as he consumed yesterday. And, he woke up two hours early today -- probably from hunger, but still too tired to really eat. Poor kid.

You know your mom is from East Texas when ...

... she lets you go shirtless with a bag of Cheeto puffs.

GI & Other Updates

Truman's appointment with the GI specialist will be September 15. That was the soonest we could get under non-emergent circumstances. He will have a swallow study before that appointment, which is in the process of being scheduled. Depending on the results of the swallow study, I assume the GI appointment could move closer.

In good news, we have a lot less vomit since we took away table food we cut his diet back to only milk, fruit and veggie purees, and dissolvable crunchy things like Cheeto puffs, veggie sticks, and Gerber crunchies. However, in the meantime, we do seem to be making some strides with the behaviorial vomits now that we've taken texture-based vomits out of the equation. Still, it's caused a major stall in developmental progress with regard to eating. I worry that it will greatly impact--or prevent--the start of Parent's Day Out this fall if he can't eat with his peers.

Truman is still just making leaps and bounds in other areas. He seems to understand more and more words every day, can point to several body parts now, can follow simple directions, and (hallelujah) has learned to tell us when he wants to eat or stop eating. He is signing more and more words and is using more objects correctly like putting a phone to his ear or trying to put on his shoes. He has always been a problem solver, but he is starting to seem very mechanically-minded. He is good at figuring out buttons and knobs and moving things to get at things that his parents are attempting to hide or place out of reach. He has a really great memory, too, for where things are, his books, which cabinets have broken baby proofing devices. He has learned to go up and down his slide on his own.

He is digressing in the going to bed department. Sometimes, we are still struggling with him at 11 p.m. Before you all start posting comments about sleep training, remember he has the vomit "trump card." We can't just put him down and let him cry because even moderate crying causes vomit, which means we have to start all over the last meal, bath, etc. We are trying to make adjustments to his napping schedule to see if we make going to bed easier in the evenings.

Truman has turned into a rock star in the swimming department. He is now swimming between two people underwater--not far, but from point A to a specific target, which is a big deal as far as safety. He is swimming without being guided, which means he comes up on his own from underwater. He has also learned to hang on the pool side for a few seconds and where the steps are that enable him to get in and out of our pool at home all by himself. He even signs "more" at swim lessons to take another turn at the slide that dumps him underwater.

The occupational therapist is concerned with Truman's strong left-handed preference. She believes hand preference shouldn't be so strong at this point, so little "CP" hints are being dropped again. Even if that turns out to be true, it looks like he will be able to compensate with his left side just fine. In the meantime, they are focusing on strengthening him on the right for now.