A brownie a day keeps the doctor away!

I would love for J to eat these Kale Chips I made.

E grabbed the whole bowl out of my hands and curled up for some evening TV. I'm not worried about her nutrition.

J needs iron. And here is my new plan....one brownie per day. These aren't normal brownies. They are what we call "Super Brownies". Super because they contain spinach and carrots.  And not in minuscule amounts either! In one 8X8 square pan, these brownies contain a whopping 1/2 cup of spinach and a 1/2 cup of carrots. That doesn't seem like a lot of spinach, but as a puree I can pack a huge amount of spinach into that little measuring cup. It starts with this.

Jessica Seinfeld's, Deceptively Delicious. I have a lot to say about this book, but more about that later. Here is how this starts.

This is one and a half bags of prewashed baby spinach! That's a lot of spinach! After making our puree, we add carrot puree and this is what we have.

Not at all appetizing, but I just make sure the kids are out of the kitchen until I add the chocolate. We end with this little treat.

 These three little brownies disappeared so quickly and I was so tickled with myself.  The neighbor girl ate spinach at my house and she didn't even know it!


So back to Deceptively Delicious. I'm so thankful for this book. But not everyone is crazy about it. Many dieticians would prefer parents concentrate their efforts on actually putting spinach in front of a child rather than hiding it in a chocolate goodie. But these dieticians aren't talking about my child. They are talking about a "normal" child with eating habits that may include being very picky, but not with a serious feeding problem and vitamin deficiency. For a parent of a child with both of these problems, I rely on this book. If I wasn't able to get some veggies into J via this chocolate brownie, she wouldn't get any veggies! Ever!


This is a list provided by WebMD of some iron-rich foods.

To boost the amount of iron in your diet, try these foods:

• Red meat
• Egg yolks
• Dark, leafy greens (spinach, collards)
• Dried fruit (prunes, raisins)
• Iron-enriched cereals and grains (check the labels)
• Mollusks (oysters, clams, scallops)
• Turkey or chicken giblets
• Beans, lentils, chick peas and soybeans
• Liver
• Artichokes

The only food J will touch from the above list is an occasional scrambled egg. No dried fruit, no meat or fish of any kind, no veggies, no iron-enriched cereals. No! No! No! Yuk! Yuk! Yuk! She also likes to say it will make her sick.

UNLESS....it's hidden in a brownie.

And here is another little interesting tidbit. There are two distinct forms of Iron. Heme iron is the kind of iron found in red meat and it is extremely efficient and readily available to the body for absorption. Nonheme iron is found in other nonanimal sources. Vegans and vegetarians alike need to be particularly careful about increasing the absorption of iron because they ingest more nonheme iron. The answer lies in another vitamin. Vitamin C ingested with nonheme iron is the perfect way to get the most iron absorbed into our bodies. Well, second only to eating a plate of liver or a big juicy steak. And what do Mrs. Seinfeld's brownies have in them? Carrots which are loaded with vitamin C. Thus we are left with the true Super Brownie!

Behavior Charts

I love these! J has one to encourage eating. E completes her chart by doing chores around the house. Both girls earn prizes and they love how cute they are. Making behavior modification fun!

http://www.freeprintablebehaviorcharts.com/singlebehaviorcharts.htm

Back to School Dinosaurs!

And they're off!  My girls are headed back to school after a very eventful Christmas break. (For the record, with these two out of the house I was able to vacuum, finish two loads of laundry, empty the dishwasher, plan and prep dinner for later tonight, take a shower, sweep, take out garbage, facebook, and talk to my mom on the phone. All in two hours! AWESOME!) 


I thought I'd share some pics. Here is my first grader.

And J heading to Early Intervention "Preschool".

And on the bus no less. It's strange to put a tiny little thing on the bus. But we tried it and she makes it home to me every day at noon. Magic!


J is in a special Communications Class through our local ESD, an Early Intervention program. We are so thankful for this program! J is in a class with 5 other children who also have moderate to severe speech delays. These children are not able to be mainstreamed until their communication issues are addressed.  We've tried a community preschool through EI and even with a special education aide assisting the teacher, J did not speak and did not adjust. So she was moved into a more specialized class with a head teacher and two aides. She gets so much attention and they even work on some potty training. Go, Teacher Nina!  :)


So this morning, I put J on the bus as usual. EI provides for this transportation. And on the bus are her other classmates. I've always thought it must be a quiet ride for the bus driver of all these kids with speech delays. No rowdiness or talking back from these children! J is the last to be picked up before being taken to school so the bus is packed...well, for an EI bus it's considered packed with five other preschool age children. Unlike older children, J and the others are in car seats built into the bus seats. So I am required to actually walk into the bus and strap her into her seat. As I walked onto the bus today, one of the boys turned to me and growled. Yep, he's part dinosaur too! It was a first, but I was excited to show him that I understand some dinosaur language and I growled back. He smiled and off they went to school. I don't often encounter other dinosaurs in my daily life so it was very exciting. 


Like other kids with speech delays, J spends a good portion of her day growling at those she loves. Growling is a great way for her to "say" something when she can't form the words to REALLY say something. Over the holiday break, she spent a lot of time with family. And she growled a lot!!! Maybe because she was nervous, maybe because it's her way of relating to others, or maybe a little of both. It's quite common for toddlers to growl and I'm not worried! These children with communication issues need some way to relate. And J seriously loves dinosaurs and plays with her plastic dinosaur figurines every single day. So until then, my little dinosaur will continue to relate in the best way she knows how. ROOOOAAAAR!!!  

Faces

J is almost four years old and scribbles. For parents, it's worrisome when a child isn't able to draw even a face by the age of four. Especially when that child has a syndrome and her parents search for any little sign he/she could be delayed cognitively and how severe that delay will be. So I've been working with her and tracing with her. She doesn't seem to have good fine motor skills. Here is what the experts say about this milestone courtesy of Babycenter.


26 to 30 months
At about 29 or 30 months, your child moves from mere scribbles to true art; he's more interested in coloring and painting, and he starts adding colors and trying to represent real objects and things. A drawing may look to you like a solid mass of green ink, but ask him and he'll tell you it's a snake in the jungle. He may also start attempting to incorporate language into his drawings; look closely at a painting and you may see that the larger scribbles are figures, while the chicken scratches are attempts at letters or words. He may also start signing his pictures, though the letters won't look like any alphabet you recognize.

31 to 36 months
By the time he's 2 and a half, your child will be able to hold a thick pencil or crayon solidly in a writing position. According to Nina Lief, a child development expert and co-author of The First Three Years of Life, children this age are usually able to master the up-and-down movement required to make a "V," which is a little trickier and requires more dexterity than making a straight line. Between now and his third birthday your toddler will also start making circular strokes, and some will be able to write a few letters — or squiggles that look an awful lot like letters. A few will start writing their first name — or a few letters of it — around or just past their third birthday. Many don't, though, and that's okay. Don't feel pressured to push your child to learn to write; wait until he's really interested and excited about it. Writing is a developmental skill that does not have a formal timetable; your toddler can take his time and still be developmentally on track. Slow and steady may well win this race: A child who is just learning to write his letters in kindergarten may well have lovely penmanship by second grade.

Currently, coloring consists of J grabbing crayon after crayon scribbling as quickly as she can. She can go through a lot of paper! Then I got a call from my mom who had J over for her first sleepover. Apparently, J was drawing on a chalkboard and said it was Mulan. She pointed out eyes, a mouth and even eyebrows.  Exciting! True the drawing looked like a bunch of scribbles, but she was able to describe the features of a face and that's a big deal to us. Awaiting the day when we can fine tune those motor skills to enable to her finally tell a story with her pictures.

Until then she loves to make faces out of other things.  This is a wonderful game given to J by her Aunt Hilleri. She plays this game almost everyday and loves to take it to therapy.

I credit the Silly Faces game with helping her to identify features of a face and it doesn't require the kind of fine motor skills that writing does require. It took her a long time to work in out in her head, but now she takes any game and makes a face. She was supposed to take this game and make a pizzas. 

Instead she turned over the pieces and did this...

ending with a face.  :)

That's my girl!  

And briefly, my other girl today is stressing about the test she will be taking for her driver's license....in 9 yrs.  She's 7!  E wanted to know what each floor pedal did and was very worried about how she was going to learn to drive on a road with other cars. She wanted me to also walk her though what the test will be like. I assured her she'll get lots of practice. Let's just get through first grade, okay?!?!

Happy New Year!

Let's see...if J had a New Years resolution it would be "Eat more chocolate."  

My little perfectionist, E, would set herself up for a little failure attempting to "Read 40 books in one hour. Teach Snow to do a backflip. And teach J to write her name and do complicated subtraction on her new white board." Snow is our guinea pig and she's not great at tricks. Although teaching her to do a backflip might be easier than teaching J to do any sort of math. 

Even if I could assist E with a plan for 2011, say...eat more fruits and vegetables. She would literally force herself to eat nothing but cucumbers and tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner until she fell into a state of physical weakness and suffer severe disappointment in a failed execution. So regardless of the AAP's recommendation about having children set appropriate resolutions, I think I'll avoid it completely. But the AAP as usual has some excellent suggestions if you are so inclined.


http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/jankidstips.cfm

My husband and I, on the other hand, have big plans! He's going with your typical "increase physical activity" as well as a surprising "learn guitar", all while working 70+ hours a week. I love him and I wish him lots of luck!

Me...I'm blogging! I'm not able to work outside the home with my little J still needing lots of attention, but I'm ready for some kind of brain stimulation and accountability. Blogging is going to allow me to reach out to other parents of children with special needs or rare medical conditions. It's also going to help me keep track of J's progress before entering Kindergarden in a couple years. Learn photography. Oh...and write. I do love to write! What other task could accomplish all those things? Thirty minutes of blogging per day.