The Weekly Review: Week 80

SLP Resource of the Week

We Give Books is a website that has dozens of fiction and non-fiction books for children 0-10 years of age available for free online. Sign up for a free account and then sort books by age-range, subject, or author and a bookshelf full of amazing titles appears before you. Many of the nonfiction books are DK Publishing. Other familiar titles are classics by Jan Brett, the Skippyjon Jones series, and the Llama Llama series.

Ava this Week

It sounds like a little thing, but Ava finally let me buy her a leotard for gymnastics. She absolutely refused to put one on before now. Then, this week, she saunters over to the leotard display they have in the waiting area and asks why I hadn't gotten her one? I asked her, rather suspiciously, if she'd actually wear it if I bought her one. She assured me she would, so we picked out her favorite and I bought it. She wore it for the next 24 hours before I peeled it off her and told her it was just for gymnastics from now on.

Weekly Michael

Michael and I have been homeschooling while Ava is in speech. So, twice a week for 45 minutes we do a RightStart Math Lesson and work with our Usborne Very First Readers. We have the best time. The child takes in math like breathing. Reading takes a little more effort, but for 4 1/2 he's pretty darned good.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm up a pound. I have to say that compared to the 3.5 pounds a week I've been losing on the low-carb diet I was very disappointed. I was hungry all the time and craving carbs for the first time in weeks. I had started to slowly increase my veggie intake and even add a slice of apple or two here or there and I thought that was the problem at first.

Then I realized the weight gain, cravings, and water retention began at almost exactly the same time I began a 10 day course of antibiotics. I did a little research online and found that water retention, cravings, and other unpleasant side effects often accompany antibiotics due to all the good bacteria in the gut being wiped out along with the bad germs. Too bad I wasn't prepared with a really good probiotic a week ago.

I took a closer look at my data and realized that although the scale has gone up by a pound, my fat mass (as measured by my fancy scale) had gone down 1.2 pounds which seems to confirm that the gain I'm seeing on the scale is water weight. We'll see if things turn around next week after I finally finish off these antibiotics.

Weekly All Consuming Obsession

Not working! Other than daily blog posts I took a complete break from working on the speech resource kits this week. I needed a break after the big push I made getting the first two products ready to go and getting the store and back end stuff set up. I took the opportunity to survey you all to see what phoneme you'd like to see in the store next and I'm glad I did. I wouldn't have guessed /k/, but that has the lead by quite a bit. This week I watched some fall tv on Hulu and read several books. I'd better not count up quite how many books I've read this week, but they were a great change of pace. I'll start working on the /k/ resource kit next week. I'm hoping to have it up by next month, but until I get into it, I can't be sure how quickly the project will come together.