Mitchell Memories: Sensory Fun and Our Garden

Lately we've been trying to help Oliver start eating more. He's a pretty good eater, but has a hard time with textures. He'll try something and seem to like it, but gag or vomit before he can swallow. I did some research on the internet and found another family who was struggling with the same thing. This mother said they started doing sensory play each day and it helped their little one with his texture issues. So, I did a bunch of pinning on Pinterest and we started our sensory play.

Here's O's first sensory play: fun with dry macaroni.

We try to do something different a couple times a week.

He loved this shaving cream day...

At first he thought the shaving cream was pretty gross, but then he started to get used to the texture and by the end he was covered with shaving cream from head to toe!

We've also done flour and some different textures in gallon-sized bags. The easy part about sensory is that he often encounters new sensory experiences as we go through our normal day. The sandbox at the park is a good one, or the leaves and grass, just anything I can think of that would have a new or different texture. I think Thursday we're going to do boiled spaghetti noodles, it should be fun!

We've already seen it starting to help his texture issues, too. He's a much better eater now and hasn't vommitted at dinner for about a month, yay!

Two weeks ago I had a bit of an energy boost and it is still continuing, so we've knocked several things off the to-do list, hooray!

First was the garden.

Our last lawn maintenance person would only mow when he would come, and if there was anything on the lawn then he mowed around it. I can't believe they actually paid him, how does that even count as lawn maintenance? Whatever. So, it meant that the weeds around our apartment were crazy huge, especially lately since we've been getting quite a bit of rain. We had been planning on tearing them all out and planting a garden anyway, so we weren't too worried about it. Then, I actually started to work on pulling the weeds out and it was exhausting and took forever!

Here's O and I's progress on Day 1:

This chunk took me about 1 hour.

We only needed this front bed on the right clear to plant in, but I was going to do the strip on the left and the back bed on the right so we could actually see our sidewalk and it didn't look so trashy. I could see it was going to take me forever after I finished this first day, so I hit it for an hour a day as often as we had sunshine. Mike came home one afternoon and helped me do a chunk and then helped me finish it last week, woohoo! He would have helped me more often, but he almost always gets home after dark.

Then, this awesome thing happened... a guy showed up to do the lawn maintenance. This was surprising because we hadn't actually even seen the lawn guy for months. He mowed... then he edged... then he blew the clippings off with a leaf blower! What?! We love this new guy, he actually does something! Woohoo! This meant I didn't have to clear out the strip on the left or the bed in the back, since he knocked them down with the weed eater, yay! So much faster than a pregnant lady with a two-yr-old and a hoe!

Here's the friend O made on our first day:

I don't know what this thing is, but I was trying to be brave for O. No one wants their boy to be afraid of bugs! When we first found him I was a little surprised and I said, "Oh!" and jumped back. When O saw him he said, "I don't like him, let's run away!" I felt the same way, but I said, "Oh no, he's our friend! Look how cool he is!" O talked to him the rest of the time we were out there. We found him again the second day we went out to weed, lovely! Haha!

On later days we found a worm and a grub, both of which O took to immediately. He called them his friends and held them for awhile. He even wanted to kiss them, but I drew the line at that, no kissing critters! Unfortunately for his friends, he's not very gentle yet and neither of them survived the day. He didn't mean to kill them, but I'm pretty sure they didn't make it, poor little guys. Too much love I guess. We'll have to work on that.

Here's our spot all cleared out and planted, yay!!