We had not one, but two dinner parties this week. The first was the annual school pizza party featuring some musical entertainment. As was the case last year, it was way to exciting an environment for anyone to even consider the possibility of eating anything. It was also too daunting for Lemon to try to go down onto the dance floor with the other kids, that is, until Lime agreed to go with him. Then, they both made it as far as the rear edge of the dance floor before retreating to the top of the steps.
The second dinner party featured Indian food at our house, and some very special guests--Uncle Joel and Aunt Donna, whom we haven't seen for just over two years. They live in Maine, and back when we lived in Boston, we used to see them all the time. Now, not so much. This is the part of living in Wisconsin that is still hard--we are so far from so many people, and given the particulars of our travel situation, we just don't get to see people nearly as often as we would like. So, it is especially wonderful when people come to visit us, even if it's just for a few days. We started talking again about our idea of taking the kids to Maine in the summer to enjoy the beach and all the other fun things there. We'll definitely do it. Maybe in 2022.
If memory serves, slightly more food was eaten at the home dinner party, although this was definitely not a banner week for Lemon, eating-wise. He is clearly still working on some kind of cognitive development, it shows in every aspect of his behavior (sigh). His food school teacher said she could definitely see it at their session today. She's shifting focus now from challenging him with new foods, which he's become relatively proficient at, to focusing on eating more bites in a row of the same food. That is still a big hurdle. Nowadays we can almost always get him to take one bite of something (which is huge progress, let's not discount it). Even in this sort of eating dry spell that we're in, he did surprise me yesterday by eating, of all things, a slice of pickled daikon radish. But eating any sort of volume of anything at any given eating occasion? Not so much.
Spring is gradually starting to creep into the air here. It hasn't been exactly warm, but there is some hint around of what is to come. Or maybe I'm just imagining it as I stare at the pictures in the garden catalog that showed up a few days ago. But, the kids can clearly detect it, too, and we've started spending more time outside each day, for which the interior of our house is extremely grateful!
