Calm Amongst the Chaos

Wow has it ever been eventful around here. If I am barely able to get on Facebook, you know I am swamped! Not to mention Craigslist! Sigh…
We got Lily totally off Topamax and boy is she energetic and hungry! LOL! She is still having myoclonic clusters more now that she is off, but it is not enough to make me want her back on. Her sleeping is really poor right now though and she is waking up the entire house. We are going round and round what we should give her to help her sleep. While in Colorado we gave her klonopin every night after the first night she started screaming at 3am waking up the house full of family. She sleeps like an angel with half a klonopin, but I won’t put her back on that permanently, but it sure is nice for travel. Her appetite is hard to keep up with and I am not sure if we should tribute that to being off Topamax or another growth spurt. She was 55 lbs at the Dr. and about 50″ tall. She is growing so big that traveling is getting harder and harder. Our goal is to get an adaptive van by next summer for her so she can go in her wheelchair in the car.
This summer is already killing me and it is only the middle of June. AND it hasn’t even been very hot here yet. I think we had a few days above 105, but for the most part it has been in the 90’s. I’m not looking forward to taking everyone back and forth to drop and pick Lily up from summer school when it is 110. I’m complaining. Sorry.
Last week we had VBS all week and I watched the leaders babies so I could be of a service AND stay with Oliver. It was a long week, I had to have all of us ready and out the door by 8:15am it always ended up being more like 8:30am, but it worked out. I fell in love with my boys, I had 4 boys all under 9 months, and made friends with the other volunteers. It was a fun week, but I have to say I was glad to see Friday come! I’m so glad I am finally getting to know people at our church, we’ve been going for almost 2 years but it is so big it has been hard making new friends, but I am so glad I am starting to!
The weekend went too fast and Monday was here with a 6am Horse therapy session in my view plus an apt with the geneticist at 8:45am in Phoenix. Andrew took Lily to Horse for me, but I still had to have her fed, dressed and ready to go by 5:45am. Then I had Ariel, my niece, come over at 7:30am and watch Ollie an Andi so I could take Lily solo. It was much needed since the apt went long (after I was late going first to the wrong office) and then Lily needed X-Rays. Apparently with Rett Syndrome most likely comes scoliosis. Although geneticists thought Lily looked pretty good, she did feel there is reason for concern. Sigh. I will see what the X-rays say. It is a good thing Lily does have an awesome PT who is very aware of scoliosis and Lily’s risk and really works with posture and of course the horse therapy is probably the number one thing we can do to keep her posture straight.
Summer school started this week and it will go on for three weeks. It is at our beloved Foundation for Blind Children and Lily is in the best mood when I pick her up! 🙂 It is hard not having busing though and having to drag Andi and Ollie with me on our trips to and fro. Ollie doesn’t make it easy when he constantly tells me of his dislike of car rides and his car seat. Oh Ollie, you are the spitting image of your feisty sister Andi Jane. My two curers of cancer. Or law fighters. Or stripper and jail bird. It is too early to really tell which way those feisty attitudes will go. Let’s pray they will go with the first two options.
Yesterday I got the pleasure of taking Oliver and Andi to the gyno with me. I thought I would be able to drop them off with Andrew or my mom at the office but both of them weren’t around. I had to scramble to borrow a car seat from my friend since I use a rear facing car seat for him instead of the infant seat, which he cries less in, BUT I had to have a place to put him while my feet are in stirrups. Let’s just say when the Dr. asked me what I was doing about birth control I said “this” pointing to my kids and I think the Dr. got the point. Having another child will absolutely never happen. When I complained I can’t even go to the bathroom alone, I really had no idea what I was complaining about until I was stark naked with my feet in stirrups explaining to Andi this is only ok because he is a Dr….. I need a massage…..alone.
In all seriousness I’ve been really struggling with Lily and her recent growth spurt. I am no shrinking violet, I am a strong woman and caring for Lily has not been much of a struggle until now and it really worries me for her future. I just didn’t picture her getting so big this fast. Getting her in and out of the car is getting to be more and more of a struggle. Her head gets bonked, she scoots down before I buckle her up and then buckling her in is harder and harder. Bath time is harder. Sigh. I hate to complain about something out of my control, but it is just one of those things that is going to happen and I will have to adjust. Just like every stage we go through with Lily we have to adjust. It probably is just more prevalent right now since I am dealing with a newborn and a 4 year old who likes to fight me in every decision I make.
In July, after summer school is out, I am taking the kids up to Greer for a week. My friend Kim and her family will join me for the weekend as well as Andrew, but for a few days it will just be us. I am looking forward to a week of not needing to be anywhere, not dealing with the heat and having a large area to let Andi run. She sounds like a dog, but that child has to have a lot of room to run. To exert lots of energy. We’ll fish. We’ll go on walks. We’ll relax. Fresh air. I cannot wait.
We are also thinking of taking the family to Disneyland for Lily’s birthday this year! We figure we better do it now before Oliver is a toddler and no fun to take anywhere. We have to capitalize on his lack of motion now before it is all over. He’s already getting up on his knees and I give him another month before he is off and crawling 😦 I so wanted for Lily to do things, we couldn’t wait for her to sit, to crawl, to walk. When we realized a lot of those weren’t gonna happen we pushed those wishes on Andi, naturally. We couldn’t wait for her to sit, to crawl, to walk. Well now I just want to keep Ollie my baby. I CAN wait for all those things and am sad to know they are just around the corner.
Again I am on here purging. I have so much to update and just do it all at once in one big run on sentence.
If you haven’t noticed I updated pix on flickr and they are on the slide show on the top. We had such a wonderful time in Colorado. The weather was perfect and it was so fun to see Andrew’s family (it’s my family as well of course, but I am just clarifying exactly which side of the family we were with) the kids (cousins) have so much fun with each other, although Andi got into it a bit with her cousins (which has a lot to do with the fact Andi doesn’t have to share really with anyone at home, yet, and she wasn’t being very nice with her cousins) she missed them the minute we left. All she’d say was I miss Ayden and Avery. And it is a blast to see Oliver with his cousin Jayda whom is only 11 days his senior. Boy am I glad we took Ariel with us on that trip! She was a wonderful help and I am so glad to have such a wonderful/helpful niece. We will really miss her when she is off to college in August.