I just figured I should pop in and give an update. OIT is going well…slow and steady…
The Thursday evening driving is not my favorite, but on the days he doesn’t have t-ball we can leave at a decent hour and so I don’t arrive at my parents’ house feeling like a scrambled egg.
I’ve given up on naps, but he still so clearly needs some mid day sleep since he passes out in the car anytime we drive somewhere after 3 pm.
On this particular day he fell asleep before we even left the garage. While V was screaming her head off.
Which leads to…
Late middle of the night flashlight reading. Ugh. We were at my parents’ house, and I was sharing a room with him (Kyle was out of town), so I was just like fine whatever read some books even though it’s 4 am.
My parents have been the most amazing grandparents ever…watching V on Fridays while I’m with P in Fremont. It’s nice to have some QT with my big boy, too.
I got him a treat at Starbucks.
And then we got busy with crafts. I feel like I could write a whole post on non-screen time activities to entertain a 4 year old. I have been finding it far easier than I thought, to be honest. I even forgot his headphones for his books on cds this past week (FAIL!) and still found the time flew by.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned ALEX products before on the blog, but if I haven’t here’s a link to the “little hands” crafts on amazon. We have done almost every one (each set comes with 5) and P loves them SO MUCH. I asked for them for Christmas this year and last year and they are so inexpensive, so we have a bunch that we fly through. He begs to do them all the time.
This one took a while.
And despite his face in the photo, he was THRILLED when it was done.
Pistachios and connect four. He doesn’t get connect four yet, but I suspect it’ll be no time before he is beating me.
Per the advice of OIT veterans, we know to keep his belly full any time he is being dosed, so I bring a ton of snacks for him. I try to encourage him to eat fairly consistently over the course of the 4-5 hours we are there. I also don’t dose him at home until he’s had most of his meal (breakfast for his am dose, and dinner for his pm dose).
I spy books from the library and vtech number games.
His first Highlights mag! I remember getting these when I was little – I loved them so much! My parents got him a subscription for his birthday 🙂
The activity I have been the most surprised about how much he has taken to it, is tracing. I showed off the Kumon books I got at Target a while back, and he is so into them!!
No idea if it’s doing anything for his writing skills, especially since I haven’t done much in terms of correcting his pencil hold (should I be?) but he really loves it and it passes the time in a productive way so that’s a win in many ways.
As of last week, he is currently tolerating 0.4 ml of whole milk. It’s insane to watch. This doesn’t mean he can have that amount whenever, but it does mean we are working our way towards maintenance. He started with a 1/100 dilution of water and milk, so to see him advancing is amazing. I’m a little worried about jinxing it with this post, but it’s out of my hands. He’s been a stellar patient. They alternate between a nurse doing an assessment and an aide taking vitals, so someone sees him every 15 minutes, but he handles it all like a champ. The usually do 3-4 up-doses per appointment followed by an hour of waiting just to be extra cautious. And at the end, we get to have a date at WF. While I watch him like a hawk (for the rest of the day).
He wanted to try the lemon flavor larabar and I was realllllly skeptical that he’d like it, but he insisted and so I succumbed (it’s healthy, so I didn’t really mind that much) and guess what?! He loved it. Moral of the story: trust his taste buds.
Look at my hot bar score!
They (rudely) listed the calorie count for the veggie potstickers right on the label, so I put a few back…each one was 360 calories?!?! What the what!?! Is that normal??
They were really dang good though, as was the zucchini. I love zucchini, but I don’t get enough because someeeeeeebody in our family doesn’t like them. 🙂
P fell asleep on the way back to my parents’ house and didn’t wake up when I stopped the car so I just loaded V up quickly and set back off to Davis. It was not ideal with the Friday evening traffic – everyone trying to get to Tahoe – but we powered on. Books on cd, snacks, facetime with Kyle, and more books…and finally home sweet home!
They played in the toy room so nicely while I made dinner. It’s like they were so happy to hang out with each other after being apart that morning…
I made tacos because it’s an obvious win. And without Kyle, I needed all the help I could in facilitating an agreeable evening.
Sleep that night was, in a word, hideous. This was the beginning of a very very troublesome phase, that I didn’t know was only going to get worse and worse…I’ve been troubleshooting but BLAG^&(LDKJN)(*&D(*#^( I can’t talk about anymore.
She was unaffected, obviously. Lucky girl.
I wouldn’t be too concerned about his grip. You could try grippers or really short pencils ( like golf size) to encourage a tripod grip since they’d be harder to put all his fingers around. Those activities look awesome and I’d love a post on no screen activities for inspiration!
We went through the horrid sleep stuff for about a year with my son. He is almost 5 now. He was waking up like 3-4 times a night!!! And I made him drop his nap a few months after he turned 3 because if he slept in the afternoon (which he def. needed to) he was up until 9 or 10 at night! So I fought the naps so that bedtime would be smoother and so he could go to bed at 7 like his sister. But that night time wake up stuff was brutal. We were just consistent. There were a lot of nights spent sleeping in his room with him (we do NOT allow our kids to sleep in our bed) to get him to go back to sleep and then we’d sneak out and go back to our own beds. Then if he woke up and we weren’t there it would start all over again. BUT eventually it got better. Now it’s our daughter who is a nightmare sleeper. Trade one for the other….She JUST turned 3 and it’s like a flip switched or something. UGH help me!! Just a phase right!?
UGH!!!!! It is so hard! It’s nice to hear others have been through it and are on the other side, haha. I need some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Fingers crossed your daughter gets through it quickly 😉