Doughnuts!

Lately my Ezra has been super into doughnuts.  It's adorable.  He often asks: "Go get doughnuts with daddy?"  My husband, Jason, works a lot.  He is a patent attorney in Washington, D.C.  He is brilliant at what he does.  It's awesome, but it also means that most nights he gets home after the kids go to bed.  He has been trying to spend special time with each boy alone.  Saturday mornings he has been taking Ezra to go and get doughnuts.  Ezra loves it and feels so special!

It's really nothing fancy.  He just takes him to our local Shoppers grocery store.  It's kind of a ghetto grocery store, but they have the best doughnuts fresh each morning.  Cheap too.  Ezra knows the routine.  He picks up the box and chooses 3 doughnuts to put in his box.  Then they walk to the check out and Ezra puts the box on the conveyor belt.  He carries the box to the car and holds it during the drive home.  Once home he takes his shoes off and brings the box of doughnuts upstairs and puts them on the kitchen counter.

I know this seems so simple for all of you parents out there that do this all of the time.  You don't even think about it because it is so easy.  But we have worked our way up to this for weeks.  All of my boys' behaviors have been taught, mimicked, and practiced over and over.  At first Ezra did not want to let go of the box and would freak out once it went up on the conveyor belt.  He also would get mad if something came out of order- like if Jason grabbed a few extra groceries before they went to check out.  Or he would get upset since he had to put the box of doughnuts down in order to take his shoes off.  Believe me, we've experienced it all.  It's taken about 7 weeks, but he has it down now and loves spending time with daddy.

They also stop to check out the poodles getting haircuts.  My boys LOVE dogs.  Love them.  I definitely think that one of these days I will succumb and we will probably get a dog.  Not yet though.

Now Ezra finally gets to enjoy his doughnut!  Notice his rocketship shirt?  If you haven't already seen it, you will see a lot more of it.  He loves it and asks to wear it almost everyday.  I try to wash it as much as I can so that he can wear it.  He wears it probably three times a week.  His preschool teachers probably think that he has no clothes!

We are working on eating and chewing with both of our boys.  Ezra has the inability to take a bite of food.  He doesn't know how.  Our therapists say it has to do with the whole 'he cannot tell where his body is in space'.  Meaning he cannot tell when or if his mouth is full of food.  We are working on it though and he is getting much better!  All of Ezra's food is cut up or broken up into small pieces so that he can put them in his mouth and chew them.  If we gave him this entire doughnut then he would shove the whole thing in his mouth (which would not fit) and he would probably gag himself and throw-up.  That's another story, but the first few years of his life we had a lot of throwing up going on.