Reaching our sensory threshold

This was after about 15 minutes of solid spinning. (My arms got tired.) Obviously when she told me she "needed" to go to the playground, she really did need too. But is it ever worth it when we actually get to the relaxed point.

It is kind of nice being the parent who doesn't have to worry about her child throwing up if she's playing with others on the spinny tire swing.

After the tire swing, we went home and concocted a smoothie drink for Jupiter. Jupiter hates heat and humidity. I adore them. I think there is about a six degree spread where we are both content. But when it gets hot, Jupiter doesn't like to eat. Wednesday was a fairly warm day. After recess, Jupiter was hot when she went to lunch. So all she ate was her watermelon slice.

Then Mean Bear came to school. Which at least demonstrates to the school staff that I was not completely crazy when I made them write "She must eat at least every 2 1/2 hours" into her 504 plan. ( When I got my copy of the plan, I found out they actually wrote it in as "Check in with Jupiter to make sure she is not hungry" and then I banged my head on the wall. You can't just check in to see if she's hungry. 1- she needs to eat BEFORE she gets hungry. and 2- Even if she is hungry, if she's busy doing something else or doesn't want to seem different from her classmates, she's going to say no even if she is hungry."

So anyway, back to the smoothie topic. What she really needs is protein...preferably not combined with 400 grams of sugar. She won't eat deli meat, tuna fish, or eggs. Mostly she eats canned pasta. Which I hate, but she needs to eat something. But she has no desire to eat hot canned pasta from a thermos when she comes in hot from recess. And they're in school until the third week of June this year. So I'm trying to determine a smoothie recipe that she will drink, that I can put in her thermos which would be a cool option.

Last night we used frozen strawberries (leftover from last June...need to use those up anyway) and a banana and some homemade yogurt (slipped that in while she was busy cutting the banana into chunks). Then I let her see me put in 3 squeezes of fruit punch from the juice box and the splash of diet 7up for fizz. If I'd had another second before she finished cutting up her banana, I would have thrown in some flaxseed.

Looked pretty good when we whipped it up. She took a sip and pronounced it delicious. Just in case she needed more incentive (or bribery, it's a fine line...) I sprayed a little whip cream on the top, at which time she pronounced it a professional smoothie and drank half the mug. Which for her on a warm day, isn't bad. We saved the other half for today. Next she wants to make a mango smoothie.

Now my next challenge is to get her to drink smoothies both at school and for 3 1/2 weeks.