Welcome to Balls and Balloons! I’m glad you stopped by! This is a blog about many things, but mostly I hope you’ll find it to be a place where you feel at home – especially if you can’t quite keep all your balls in the air.
What information can be found here?
I mostly focus on Aniridia, Low Vision, Sensory Processing Disorder, and Feeding Challenges. However, from time to time, I’ll also write about activities the kids and I have tried, pinterest pins I’ve attempted to duplicate, places we have explored, parenting tips, home-making tips, and of course, new recipes for chocolate desserts that I’ve tried! In all cases, I’ll share both what has worked for us…and what hasn’t!
Balls and Balloons is a strange name…
I know – it’s an unusual name for a blog. I promise it will make sense if you read the full explanations here in Balls and Balloons – the Meaning of the Name and The Analogy of Balls and Balloons. However, if you’re short on time, here’s the executive summary:
Balls are the ordinary things we all juggle in life regularly – feeding our family, playing with our kids, parenting, keeping our home functioning, dealing with finances, etc.
Balloons are the extraordinary and unusual things that life can throw our way – a special needs child, the loss of a loved one, health challenges, moving to a new home, etc.
I like to share my experiences with all of it – the ordinary AND the extraordinary – on this blog.
Speaking of names…
My name is Janelle. I’m a wife, stay-at-home mom, master grilled cheese sandwich maker, math geek, and lover of all things chocolate. Like you, I attempt to juggle whatever life throws my way.
My husband is D. He is a CPA by day and enjoys catering meals for fun in his spare time…if his chronic back pain allows him to. He also enjoys working with DJ equipment and playing games with his kids. Thankfully, he has a great imagination and is wonderful at playing imaginative games with them, since I have zero imagination.
My stepson is A. He’s an adult living in another state with a family of his own, but we talk with him regularly and see him whenever we can. Out of respect for his privacy and his right to his own life, I intentionally limit the information about him and his family on this blog.
My daughter is E. She is 10 years old, highly inquisitive, vivacious, energetic, amazing, and cognitively advanced for her age. My sweet girl also happens to have aniridia, low vision, feeding challenges, ADHD, high functioning autism, anxiety, and sensory processing disorder. She is one of the inspirations for this blog.
My son is R. He is 6 years old, all boy, energetic, typically developing, normally sighted, and just as remarkable in his own ways as his sister is in hers. He is the other inspiration for this blog.
Why are my family members only referred to by their initials?
I think one of the struggles of this new age of technology and social media is finding the balance between sharing enough of our lives to be real and sharing too much. Using my family members’ initials instead of full names is one way for me to try to find that balance – protecting some privacy for them, while still sharing our lives.
Why write about my family on the internet?
Seriously, if privacy is a concern, then why write a blog? First, I wanted to create a place where I can collate a lot of information that I’ve found helpful in our journey with E. I often think of information that I’ve come across, and think, “Now where did I find that?” It will be easier to simply have one place to look for all of my information.
Second, I hope that this information will be helpful to others walking similar roads. I’ve seen some great websites related to Aniridia, some fantastic websites related to blindness and low vision, some wonderful websites related to sensory processing, and a very few websites that are helpful for feeding challenges. However, I’ve not found any that address all of those together. Since many of these issues are common in the Aniridia community, it seemed that compiling this information in one place might be helpful.
Third, I also like to take any opportunity that I can to help others outside the Aniridia community learn about Aniridia, visual impairments, feeding challenges, and sensory processing disorder. The more awareness these things receive, the more E will be understood by everybody around her.
Fourth, we’ve been making significant changes to how we feed E and work on her feeding challenges, and I’ve chronicled some of them on my Facebook page. I’ve received a lot of feedback from people about how much they enjoy following this, so decided it might be fun to “journal” this journey a little more formally via a blog.
Fifth, it seems like a common discussion that I have with other moms is related to their picky eaters. They know that we struggle with these challenges, so it becomes easy for them to ask me questions that they might not be comfortable asking others. If I can share some of what I’ve learned on this journey and it helps even one person, then I’ll consider that a success!
Since I’m sharing tips about so many things, clearly this means that I’ve got my life and home all figured out, right?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….I’ll wait a minute so that people who know me and my life and have been to my home when it’s a disaster can stop laughing, too.
<Pause to let the laughter die down.>
OK, are we done laughing yet? No? Ok, I’ll wait a bit more…
<Pause again to let the laughter stop.>
No. Definitely not. Not even close. In all fairness, sometimes I’ll have a week or two where our home runs like a well-oiled machine, the kids seem to do well, no extra balloons are thrown my way, and I keep most of my balls in the air.
But most of the time? Life happens. Balloons happen. And then I have 5 baskets full of laundry sitting around to be put away, and the patio is a disaster, and I desperately need to clean the bathrooms, and there’s Rainbow Loom stuff all over the table, and I broke the blade on the lawn mower, so the lawn hasn’t been mowed, and…well you get the picture. (For the record, that’s seriously what my home’s status is today as I look around while I’m writing this…)
So, this website is for sharing my struggles and my successes…not for pretending that everything is perfect!
Do I follow a specific eating plan that is reflected in my recipes?
Yes. It’s called the “Food should be enjoyed” diet. Or perhaps the “We’ll try anything if it helps E expand her diet and enjoy food” diet. Or the “Everything is fair game” diet.
In all seriousness, one thing that having a child with feeding difficulties has taught me is that one can live quite well on an extremely limited diet. Yes, it would be nice if her diet could expand, and I know there are some nutrients that she’s missing and would benefit from including in her diet, but apparently one can thrive on primarily grilled cheese, applesauce, and milk. Who knew?
This has definitely colored my view of food and it’s role in our lives, which I’ll go into more in a future blog post. That being said, though, we like for our family to eat a lot of fruits, vegetables and lean proteins. So sometimes, dinner is wild-caught alaskan salmon, roasted organic sweet potatoes, zucchini and summer squash, with blueberries for dessert. We also love international foods, so sometimes dinner is Japanese curry or chicken tikka masala on rice.
On the other hand, since I can’t always be awesome, some days dinner is fish sticks out of the freezer, freezer veggies, jello, biscuits from a can, with some food coloring-laced candy for dessert. It’s all about balance.
Oh, I also love chocolate. I’m quite certain that chocolate will be prominently featured in the Marriage Supper of the Lamb someday in heaven. And I have approximately a lifetime’s worth of chocolate recipes to try that I’ve pinned on Pinterest, so I plan to try them and post here whether they are good or not!
So, if you are a family that eats only gluten-free, or only organic, or the keto diet, or Whole30, or any other specific diet, I applaud you and respect you…just know that might not be what you find here.
Is there anything else you should know about me?
Frankly, I kinda hate writing about myself. However, here are a few tidbits that will help you understand how I approach things on my blog:
- I am fascinated by math and science. As such, I enjoy reading things like medical articles, peer-reviewed journals, and other such scientific mumbo-jumbo. When I learn something new, I enjoy summarizing that information in plain English and sharing it with others!
- I love to read and believe that a home cannot have too many books. I enjoy many different types of books, including mysteries, suspense novels, some fantasy, and anything that helps me become a better person, mom, or Christian. A few of my favorite authors: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Mary Higgins Clark, Phillip Yancey, Mo Willems, Sandra Boynton, and of course, Dr. Seuss.
- I have a background in secondary education, but I never taught full time. As a result, I have great respect for teachers and other educators. I know schools aren’t perfect, and I realize that can be particularly true when it comes to special needs students. However, we’ve had nothing but wonderful experiences with teachers and schools for E.
- Our family recently moved from the suburbs of Chicago to South Florida. We’ve also lived in Michigan and Indiana. Moving to a different state is definitely a balloon with which I am well acquainted.
- I enjoy exploring new places, and it’s always a challenge to discover if a new location is easy to explore for someone who is visually impaired, has sensory processing disorder, and feeding challenges.
- I’m going to try to be as real as possible here (while respecting the privacy of those around me), and that starts with the pictures. I intend to use real pictures of every day life here, so you’ll see the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, I will not post something unflattering of my family without their permission.
- Others have occasionally said that I’ve experienced more than my fair share of balloons in my adult life. I’m not so sure that’s true – I think the concept of “fair share” is perhaps impacted by what we view as “normal”. So compared to someone who lives in third-world conditions with less than the necessary food, shelter, medical care, and other basic necessities for life, my balloons really have been mild. That being said, it is true that our family has experienced a significant number of first-world extraordinary things (many good things and many challenging ones), so writing about when balloons come does seem fairly natural to me.
What should you read first?
Not sure where to start? Try one of these topics…