My Word of the Year is Illuminate. After a tough 2020, I hope this year is brighter and better for my family. I believe we can illuminate anything and make everything better. Some other words I’m focusing on are Healing, Health, and Humility.
We always set goals at the beginning of the year for our family. Of course, there’s always so many things we are working on. Here are the biggest things we’re working on for 2021.
Nicholas eating food — We spent the last few years working on communication with Nicholas. Now that he has a speech device, we’re going to really start working on feeding again. Nicholas has had a G-tube since he was 7 weeks old, originally for silent aspiration. He’s been cleared to eat regular food, but he’s not interested. He ate purees when he was a baby, but suddenly stopped when he was 1.5 years old. We’ve done feeding therapy off and on, and he was never really into it. After a long break, we hope he becomes interested in eating real food.
Controlling Daniel’s big feelings — Daniel has gotten so much better at communicating his emotions and feelings with us. He used to get mad randomly and couldn’t tell us why, which would result in a meltdown. That still happens sometimes, but he’s started telling us that he’s “mad, because” and giving us the reason. That’s such huge improvement! We’ve always encouraged him to ask for help with anything he needs. What we’re really working on is him to communicate and recognize his feelings before getting really upset. It’s always OK to ask for help.
Grace’s communication — Grace’s temperament has been really good lately. She’s happy and doesn’t have as many meltdowns as she used to. She’s really trying to communicate with words and some signs. Her imitation is really good and she even uses some words intentionally and often. There are times though when she’s still whining or can’t tell us what she needs despite her knowing the words and/or signs. This is something we’re really going to work on this year. Helping her remember to use the tools that she already knows to communicate with us.
Travel somewhere — I truly hope we can go somewhere this year as a family. I feel like last year we were ready to do this just us five, but then Covid hit and we weren’t allowed to. The last trip we went on as a family was almost four years ago. That’s when we just had the boys and it was actually a really successful trip. We haven’t felt confident enough to travel anywhere until last year. We are older and more independent now, so I feel like it would actually be really good. I think it would also be really good for our little family to go somewhere new.
Continue healthy habits — We had a goal last year about eating healthier and improving spending habits. We are definitely not the greatest at being healthy, but we’ve gotten so much better. Steve and I are both drinking more water and trying to eat better and less. We’re not going out to eat as much so we’re not spending as much money. I’ve been seeing a nutrionist for a year, which has been really helpful. I also do intermittent fasting and am still going on walks with the kids when we can. I’ve started working out with weights focusing on strength training now.