Upside Down Tray

My daughter should be spending a reasonable amount of time on her back each day.   We’re trying, but we can only get her to do so a certain amount.   She’s not ill and she has a need to move around, be happy, jump, and have fun as a four-year-old.    We give her a dose of Benadryl once each day and try to get her to lie down on her back for a few hours to have the oil and PFO in her eyes press on the back of her retina.    We’re moderately successful at getting this to happen.

We have been able to get her to start sleeping on her back, which she didn’t do before.   That’s getting a lot of hours on her back each day.  She also isn’t spending time leaning forward via different ways to handle artwork, eating, playing, etc. so we’re avoiding the bad direction as well.   Overall, I hope it’s going to be what her retina and eye needs for the best healing outcome.

The thing we like the most is a floor-based tablet table that flips completely upside down.    She can lie flat on her back on the bed and have the iPad directly over her face.   She needs to have it so close it almost touches her nose, but it works for her and she’ll take a break and watch a television show or play a game for a while.    It’s been a big part of getting her to lie down during the day and I’m very glad there was an option that met this particular need.

She also likes to draw with paper held on to it.   She was leaning all the way over paper with her face close to the table before, but with this she can recline back and have paper at an angle and draw without leaning over at all.   Tonight she was so happy doing this I thought we were going to run out of paper before she went to bed.    She’s drawing all sorts of things that are things to her but aren’t those things to us until she tells us what she’s drawn.  

The Big Boy Update:  For Christmas day dinner last night my husband was making my son’s dinner plate.   He had out the rectangular cafeteria-style plates the children use from time to time.   As he was asking what he wanted, my son said, “how many compartments do I have?”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Over the past two days my daughter has been very interested in drawing snails.   You might look at the drawing and say, “what is this?” to which she would say, “it’s a snail,” and you would then look at it and realize it sort of does look like a snail with a large shell.   If you come over to visit, just ask for a snail and she’ll be glad to draw you one and then tell you what it’s name is.  (They’re each have their own special name she makes up.)