A Boring Week Is a Good Week

A sweet church friend--whom I've only had the privilege to meet a couple of times because she lives hours away--sent Thomas some sugar-free lollipops. They are made of tapioca fiber and don't use any sugar alcohols, which is a delightful find to me! Sugar alcohols are a great invention of late to create "sugar-free" food products, but they are actually known to cause GI distress, and they cause even worse distress in someone with a gastrectomy. Early on, our GI team advised we avoid them. It is a bitter pill that Thomas needs to limit his sugar so much now and we have to be very cautious when sampling from the massive selection of inviting, "sugar-free" products on the market nowadays because they're all full of sugar alcohols. (Yes, I know about the various natural sugars and we're sampling hundreds of products and making many homemade baked good recipes, but most of the natural sugar products don't taste particularly good to us.)

So thank you to my lovely friend for finding these lollipops!!!

New lollipops

Four-year-old David had his well-child check this week and I took Thomas along with me. Thomas insisted on wearing his scrubs and packing up his medical kit, which is full of genuine medical equipment he collected from various doctors and nurses during his 132 days in the hospital. Anytime a hospital staff member was doing a procedure on him, he would start his pitch, asking if he could have some of those bandages, blunt syringes, doohickeys, etc. and the sweet staff members could not resist this cute boy, so they would go retrieve new items in packages to give to him.

During the visit, Thomas very seriously did all the exam procedures right alongside the doctor, who played along with delight.

I had the privilege of taking this ten-year-old beauty out for some alone time because she felt eager and ready to get her ears pierced. A big girl milestone!

Homeschool is chugging along and we even got through some work-ahead assignments because of fun events that will take up our time this weekend . . . reports to come later!

Thomas proud of his math