ChezPerky

There are so many days where I have things to blog about, and yet there’s no time.  Ever.  When I finally have the time, I’m exhausted.  Who am I kidding?  I’m exhausted even when I don’t have the time.  Nevertheless, life is passing by and I’ve failed to record any of our comings and goings milestones, successes, failures, joys or frustrations.  So here are a few of the highlights…

• Because this is us, and because not enough things have gone wrong this year, our washing machine broke.  This may seem a minor inconvenience, but consider the amount of laundry that a family with five young children creates.  We do laundry multiple times every day in our house, and if we don’t, the piles take over.  We have great friends and neighbors who generously allowed us unfettered access to their laundry facilities, but it still adds complications to our already complicated lives.  I’m happy to say that we now have a new washing machine.  I’m less happy to say that it’s already broken (might have been defective from the start).  We’ve got someone coming out to look at it tomorrow.
• A first of firsts:  Tobie got her first tooth this past weekend.  This is the first time I’ve been the one to discover one of my chidrens’ first teeth.  I know it’s something small but it makes me feel unbelievably happy to have been the first to discover this milestone.  As a busy, working mom, it’s all too easy for milestones to slip by without immediate notice. 
• My health is not significantly improved since last I wrote about it – it’s just gotten to be boring to write about.  I had botox injections inside my stomach (around my pyloris).  While my pyloris as never looked younger, I still have crow’s feet and still have difficulty eating solid food.  Still, it wasn’t without at least a small amount of success.  I’m in less pain, and can now keep small amounts of solid food down.  It was very little trouble and did help a little bit, so it was definitely worth trying.  I have an appointment at Johns Hopkins in January, so hopefully they’ll have better answers for me.  As far as I know, I have exhausted my non-surgical options, so now it’s a matter of finding a doctor who can do the surgery that I need (there are a limited number of hospitals in the country who do gastric neurostimulator surgery).  We’ll see where this goes.
• We had Sam evaluated by our developmental pediatrician.  This is the same dev. ped. who evaluated and treats J for his ADHD, anxiety, etc.  J’s evaluation report 3 1/2 years ago was a page and a half.  Sam’s report was nine pages long.  There’s some possibility that Sam’s on the autism spectrum.  On paper, he looks very autistic, but in person, he’s far too socially engaged to strongly support that diagnosis.  He does, however, have a whole host of other issues.  He’s probably got OCD (he’s a little too young to diagnose with OCD, so normally at this age, his behaviours would be attributed to ASD instead.  This is where it all gets fuzzy).  He’s got ADHD inattentive type (no shock there).  Cognitive delays, speech/language delays, anxiety, and more.  He’s  a complex kid, to say the least.  The best thing I can say about the whole thing is that at least we have a great team working on his side.
• We had a gaggle of people over for Thanksgiving, including J’s mom and grandparents, our mothers, my BIL, and more.  A fascinating cast of characters, to be sure.  It was a stressful day, but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and I put out a delicious spread of food, if I do say so myself.
• Tobie still doesn’t sleep through the night.  This is partly because she’s been sick for the better part of a month, but also just that she’s not there yet.  This means that I am perpetually tired – I cannot wait to get a whole night’s sleep again. 
• I have more to say, but I’ve fallen asleep at the keyboard two or three times already, so I’ll have to catch up more later.