Friday, July 31, 2009

Still Celebrating...

Tonight we celebrated Ryan's birthday with cake and gifts. (Jessica had conflicts on the 29th, so we waited for her to join us.) Deborah and Daddy helped Ryan open his gifts.


Since this was a celebration for Ryan, we had the lights off and used a flashlight to spotlight the neon green wrapping paper. I used a flash in most of the pictures so that you could see what was happening.


The kids went shopping and picked out a gift for Ryan. He's a tough one to buy for. :) But they did a great job with the super sized green and yellow slinky. Ryan seems to really love it.

For the last few kids, I think it started with Johnathon, we have served Ding Dong Towers as their 1st birthday cake. They are the perfect first cake. They make a mess without a HUGE mess. Unfortunately, with Ryan's severe milk protein allergies and inability to eat solid foods, he didn't partake in the cake at all.


The other kids had a tough time accepting Ryan couldn't eat any of his own cake. So, we tried some stage 1 peaches. He wasn't at all interested in them, but I think it helped the other munchkins to feel better.


Happy Birthday, Ryan! We adore you!

*You might notice that Dwight has something covering his finger in the last picture. This is actually an infant toothbrush. However, we use it for "speech therapy." We suspect that Ryan's feeding issues with solids are two fold: 1) he lacks muscle tone and 2) he doesn't like the texture. The little plastic finger piece has a really soft bristled brush on one side and little bumps on the other side. When we first started working on "waking up his mouth muscles", we would stroke his cheeks (outside his mouth) and his chin. Then we progressed to using a washcloth to gently brush his cheeks and chin. Then we started touching just his outside lips with this little infant toothbrush and now we have progressed to gently brushing the inside of his mouth with the toothbrush. When we first started each of those stages, he would pull away. Now he seems to enjoy it.

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