3 days til the big game

Day's expenses
6.74 Party City (last of SB party supplies)
30 co pay for my doctor's visit
1.76 cookie from Au Bon Pain after checkup

I am not a football fan but my husband is. After a few years of attending parties where he wasn't really able to watch the game due to lack of seats/tvs or too many people talking so he couldn't hear, we decided to claim it as our party and make it what we wanted. It's the one day a year where we entertain a lot of friends and neighbors and although it's rough having over 50 people in our house, in many ways it is the perfect party. We have adults and kids, set up 3 TVs and make chili and pulled pork and the rest is potluck. Lots of our friends bring beer, so it doesn't cost us a lot. People show up mid to late afternoon and usually people leave when the game is over (which works well since kids have school the next day).

It's about 75 hours til game time and I'm almost ready to have 59 people (at last count) come to our house. The first batch of pulled pork is in the crockpot, the house is mostly tidied (just need to hit the kitchen and the basement tomorrow - which need the most attention). I need to make another round of pork tomorrow, chili and cookies on Saturday and then dips on Sunday. For me this is more intense prep work than Christmas or Thanksgiving, but it's fun and to my husband Super Bowl Sunday is just as much a holiday as those other two.

Sunday also happens to be my friend's 40th birthday so after trying to figure out what kind of birthday treat we could make, last night my daughter and I decided on a Big Top Cupcake. I'll have to make it on Sunday pretty close to game time as there won't be any room in the fridge for it before. I got some chocolate cake mix and frosting today and figure I can ice the top with white lines to look like the laces on a football, stick a candle in it and serve it before kickoff.

Along with the party prep, we had the usual Thursday events. My son had "school". Today they talked about the letter D and dinosaurs and he came home with this cute little dinosaur tail.



His feeding therapist came after lunch. She started off doing the usual stuff in our family room, warming up his muscles, having him bite on her brushes. She let him play with a sorting toy and then we went into the kitchen to play with food. We did more holding Ritz crackers in our mouths and then putting Cheerios on them and dropping them down. She put a Cheerio on a string of dental floss and had him move it with his tongue - flicking it so it would spin and moving it side to side. She also had him rest a Cheerio or Crispix on his tongue for a five count. That last one took a lot of persuading but he finally did it, and she asked me to do that with him more this week. It's all about getting him used to having different textures in his mouth. She also had him break a Ritz cracker with his teeth and then take both pieces out of his mouth. Each time he was so anxious that he would just bite off a little bit and end up swallowing little bits. That wasn't her intention, she wanted him to take a big bite, and take the bitten part out with his hand just to get used to the feeling of biting. This is another thing she wants me to work on with him this week. We also talked about the feeding group that he is going to be starting in a couple of weeks. It's a drop off and she admitted that sometimes that first week or two are tough because the parents aren't there with the kid. She felt he would do fine in it, since he has gotten better with trying the things she asks of him. He will occasionally look to me for guidance/approval and when that is the case I do the exercise with him, but so far he has never completely refused to do anything she asked. 

I had my annual gyn exam today and had to bring the little man with me. It actually went pretty well because the doc was on time and quick and our neighbor had dropped off some hand me downs this morning so I brought some "new" books with us that he could look at while she did the exam. Luckily by the time I have to go next time, he'll be in school so I will finally be able to go solo to the doctor - can't remember the last time I did that.