June 11

This week we got 9 hours and 40 minutes of official Sarah-Rise time.

We are still gluten-free. For the past 3 days I have also given Sarah a chewable probiotic. I'm not sure if this is doing anything but I think it probably can't hurt and might help her digestive system overall. We also have tried stopping dessert intake after 3pm in an effort to help bedtimes. Yesterday since things had been going well with bedtimes and I felt like we were actually creating more intense obsession with ice-cream by denying access, I let her have some at 5pm. Bedtime was harder. Not terrible but not great. The other factor that might have contributed was that we had an earlier dinner than usual so she truly might have been hungry (that is what she said to get out of bedtime.) She only had a few bites of a bagel though. When she uses the claim of hunger to get out of going to bed we make her tell us what, specifically, she wants to eat. Two nights ago as Carl tried to get her to say what she wanted to eat she then responded "food." I love that she knows the system that saying she wants to eat can delay other things and that she was trying to milk the system. That wasn't specific enough for us, though, so to bed she went. Now I am uncertain about how to proceed. I know most parents don't give their kids whatever food they want whenever they want it and cutting gluten has worked by offering similar alternatives. The thing that I have loved about us letting her eat whatever whenever was that she didn't seem to see foods differently. An apple was just as good as ice-cream, whereas for me, the ice-cream would definitely be the treat. So I am hesitant to create the sugar-as-treat mentality that will then create more of an obsession. But maybe the obsession is already there and this is just letting me see it. I did buy frozen greek yogurt to try as an alternative since it is lower in sugar. Cutting sugar will also make it harder, at least initially, to keep the calorie intake up. I had been planning on trying to cut her sugar intake a lot overall but this experiment points out that I need to go slowly and that it will be challenging. It is more challenging still now that Sarah can quickly get out of her high chair and open the fridge, stepping on the lowest ledge to reach the ice-cream. Adorable and I love her capability, and at the same time, very frustrating. I may need to start strapping her in, which I haven't yet had to do in this particular chair.

Yesterday Carl was in  Sarah's bedroom with Sarah and Amy. Amy was trying unsuccessfully to open the door. Sarah observed the situation and then calmly got out of bed, walked over to Amy, removed Amy's hands from the knob, and opened the door. What a helpful and capable big sister! Sarah still has some knob work to figure out since she just wiggles it back and forth until the door opens; she doesn't fully understand what she is doing that makes it work.

We had  lovely visit with Carl's parents, known to Sarah and Amy as Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma did some great Sarah-Rise time and Amy-watching while Carl or I did SR time.

With language I have been encouraging Sarah to add in the missing "l" in words like blue, black, and play. If I step her through it and say what sound she needs to add she can do it. It's not her default but she can do it.