We have a lot of goals set for our family this year, but here are the biggest ones we want to accomplish in the year 2020.

Nicholas wears glasses and headphones — Nicholas wears his glasses at school, during therapy, for his grandparents, and for anyone but my husband and me. I really want to work with him on wearing his glasses all the time. It’s really going to help with his walking, learning words, feeding, and other activities. Now that he’s older and understands more, I think with a lot of practice we can get him to wear them every day. I also want him to start wearing headphones. His audiologist wants him to be able to wear headphones during his hearing tests so they can get a better understanding of his hearing ability. Both of these goals are things that go on his head, which we haven’t had great luck with in the past. We can reason with him now, which hopefully will help.

Potty training Daniel — We’re going to attempt to toilet train Daniel. We found out about a year ago that because of the condition he was born with, it’s possible he may not have nerves in the rectum area and won’t be able to feel when he has a bowel movement. We may have to do enemas for him every day. The good thing about enemas is it helps give him a bowel movement then he’s clean the rest of the day. It also helps him to be more regular with his bowels instead of the inconsistency we see now. But we do want to see first if he can tell us and if he has feeling. We bought him a potty and he loves playing with it. Hopefully the transition to not being able to play with it anymore goes well, but I’m glad he’s building a relationship with the potty.

Grace’s feeding independance — Grace is becoming more interested in food and what we’re eating. Although she doesn’t really bring anything to her mouth yet, she does like to play, which is the first step. Anytime we’re at the table she likes to play with spoons, bottles, whatever is up there. She’s still eating a lot of purees, so we’re trying to introduce some solids. She’s pretty sensitive to anything she has to chew like the fruit in yogurt or the level three purees with the chunks. We mash up yogurt melts and put it in the puree or mash up some kind of cereal and she plays with it. She’s getting a lot better with it. She’s started putting things in her mouth lately like toys, which she’s never really done before, so that’s a good sign.

Going to church as a family — Church used to be really hard. When we just had the boys, we would have to hold them the whole time, because neither of them could sit by themselves. When I got too pregnant with Grace, I couldn’t hold them anymore. Steve and I had to go to church separately. We did that for a year. We’re lucky that the church we go to now has a nursery where we can leave the kids while Steve and I go together. We’ve been doing that for a while. But just in the last month, we’ve been going as a family and it’s actually working out really well. I never like when we have to separate, so I hope we can continue to go as a family. We’re trying to get Daniel to understand the Mass and he seems to be learning quickly.

Better health for Kate and Steve — We really want to do better with being healthy, especially the way we eat. We eat out a lot because it’s easy, fast, and convenient. After a long day of therapy and doctor appointments for the kids, it’s nice to just go through the drive-thru really quick. But we’re trying to get into better spending habits and want to improve the way we eat. Making it a point to just eat the food we have at home, eating smaller portions, and buying healthier food in general. It also saves us money. I’m going to have a Wellness consult soon that was recommended by my doctor which will hopefully help us.