13 Days...

Wow - I haven't had a real blog post since December 1st! That probably tells you how busy we've been! I just feel like every day flies by with me not accomplishing hardly anything that I had hoped to that day. And stress...oh, lots of stress right now. I mean Christmas is 13 days away! That's so soon! I have pretty much been done shopping (besides a couple little things) for awhile, but I have really nothing wrapped! I hate that because I love the look of presents overflowing under the tree. Hopefully I'll get a few wrapped tonight.

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When Henry went to DeVos a few weeks ago they recommended an "Oral Motor Movement" test/exam to see if they could get to the bottom of his drooling issue. It's been absolutely terrible again. It's not unusual for him to go through 4-5 shirts a day. He had his evaluation with Katie, his speech therapist from this Summer, this past Monday. She concluded that his lips and cheeks have poor muscle tone at this point, hence the drooling. We also discussed his nutrition (and lack of good nutrition) and she really stressed to us that we have to offer him bites of food that he doesn't like (any meat or veggie mostly) and they reward him by giving him something he does like. Oh yeah, that went over great the other night...or not. We'll see how it goes. He will be seeing Katie 30 minutes a week for the next 12 weeks or so to work on muscle tone and nutrition. My little guy is in "school" 3 times a week now!

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My foot is doing fairly well. I still have pain, but I can handle it. Work was really rough last Friday, but a little better on Saturday. Last night was okay again...I definitely feel small improvements each shift and that's all I can ask for right now.

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Abigail and I have the annual Northouse (my mom's side) ornament exchange tomorrow night. This started about 15 years ago with cookies. We spent the first couple of years getting together on a Saturday and baking together all day. The it evolved to bringing cookies and trading. Then it was strictly an ornament exchage and now it's still called that, but we bring ornaments or other Christmas decor. It's fun to do each year and fun to have Abigail joining the tradition. There are 15 girls, including the little ones, so it's great to get together each year.

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The rest of the days until Christmas are crazy busy. In the next 13 days I work 5 of them (which isn't too bad), but have two Christmas parties with Abigail's classes, have to get all the gifts together for Hanks' speech teachers (5 of them), Abigail's teachers (1 teacher, 1 aide), wrap a bazillion gifts, bake, etc., etc. But I know you all are in the same boat!

Have a great rest of the week. Hopefully we'll see Santa soon and I'll have some pics to show!