Saturday, July 26, 2008

Jefferson Update

Yesterday was another big cooking day. I'll include pictures at the end. We're still debating about Jefferson's reaction to green beans, if it was to green beans at all. In the last post, I said that he had broken out on his face after every meal. He continued to do that until Thursday. Then after lunch on Thursday (while his speech therapist was there) the back of his neck had huge welts of hives on it! He was scratching away, but he never complains. He really is the sweetest boy you could ask for! The therapist thought it was because she had touched him without washing her hands, but we'll probably never know. That's how it is with Jefferson.

On Friday, his face was slightly red after breakfast, but after lunch, he was scratching the underside of his legs with a vengeance. It's not unusual to see him scratching the underside of his knees because his eczema is concentrated there, but this was higher than his knees. So I turned him over, and he had the same exact welts on the underside of both of his thighs! If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to them. Both times he had been outside, but he's been outside other times as well with no reaction. He just seems to be extremely susceptible to everything -- most of which we don't even know. We just continue to pray for God to give guidance and wisdom and direction in how we deal with him.

In addition to the cooking for Jefferson that I did, I also washed all of the produce from grocery shopping on Wednesday (grapes, kale, broccoli), cooked a triple batch of black beans (for several meals this week), cooked a double batch of rice, baked chocolate chip cookies, made homemade applesauce from apples that some friends gave us and put a chicken in the crock pot for overnight. Believe it or not, I hate being in the kitchen, but, if you looked at my pattern of life, you would never know it! I guess we all do what is necessary, huh? :-)


Peeled and cubed zucchini ready to be steamed. This should last almost a week.

2 lbs. of broiled hamburgers. I'll be cooking more tomorrow.

Steamed spinach. My mom gets discouraged for me with the spinach. A lot of leaves get steamed down to almost nothing! Jefferson loves it and he eats quite a bit. Thankfully, it's not hard or time-consuming to make!

Baked acorn squash. Another favorite of Jefferson's. This should last about 5 days.

Steamed asparagus. Not his favorite, but since he's not eating a lot of greens right now, he doesn't have a choice! This will last for a week. I tried to steam it less this time, so it's still a little crunchy. This will help for his speech therapy, and I hope it will help the taste a little. Unfortunately, this is against protocol for this stage in his diet. It's not as easily digested. I've taken some other shortcuts as well though, so we'll see how this turns out.

His speech therapy went surprisingly well. I really like this therapist and so did Jefferson. She can only come every other week right now, at least until October, so another therapist will fill in on the off weeks. They really feel like he needs weekly therapy now. She used bubbles with him, and he loved it so much that he started saying, "bubl". I spelled it that way because it doesn't quite sound like "bubble". In fact, it's hard to differentiate among "Papa", "Bapa" and "bubl", but we are sure trying. It's neat that he's saying more words!

1 comment:

Heidi said...

This is proof of what I've always suspected. You're supermom. That you hate being in the kitchen and yet can wash and cook all this food on a single day with only two arms and ten fingers is proof.