The Holiday Season

Nelson craves structure in his life, and everything he does pretty much needs to be structured. His days at school are just like that, and when he comes home he gets a chunk of structure too. Evidently the holiday season present itself as the complete opposite, a moments for the kids to be kids and to be completely spontaneous about what we do every day and why not a way to escape all the rigidity of our lives filled with responsibilities and work that needs to be done to keep him where he needs to be.
Even though I love structure (and those who know me well know is true), sometimes is overwhelming. I guess we all parents of a child with special needs and mainstream ones go through that at least once every now and then. The good news about it is that everything you do for your child will come back to you in the form of reward, such as the happy feelings when you see him/her eating the right foods, or when he uses more words to communicate, or even when he comes home from school and gives you a kiss. I guess all those little things are not taken for granted any more.
So for this holiday season I guess the structure will have to prevail, and even more cooking will have to be done. This weekend I cooked a lot, and I felt like I was all day at the kitchen, yet it was nice to see how the kids ate their meals (after some faces of disgust hehehehe) and they end up the day with a smile.
Ohhh I got the new probiotic 2 days ago, is definitely more drinkable and they have been drinking it for 2 days now. I have to be there and ask them 100 times to drink, yet they drink so that is good. I am now using a new technique with Nelson so he drinks the liquid with his probiotic: I take I piece of my delicious homemade cake, or cookie, and I place it on his hand, and then I say please drink, he will say to me 1st drink then cookie/cake, and I will say yes, he will drink a few sips, and then he will have some cake/cookie, I do this 4 to 6 times and his drink is gone, if he does not want to drink, I take the cake/cookie from his hand and I say: bye bye cake/cookie, and immediately I say that he looks at me and says: I want a drink! 

Yes! I know is a lot of work, but it needs to be done and it will work I know, something tells me that it will. We have the Christmas tree up and the Nativity set right beside the tree, it looks so nice and warm… I guess this Christmas is going to be a melancholic one, yet full with great cooks and the smell of home bake goods all day long!