Three!
05 May 2012 2 Comments
in Motherhood
38 weeks
Alert newborn
One month old
8 months old
18 months
Age two
And age three (well, a few weeks from it)
Yay! My kid qualified for developmental preschool!
20 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Motherhood
He’s aging out of Early Intervention in a few weeks. He was assessed last week by the school psychologist and the SLP. They did comment on a few of his spectrum-y behaviors that I am so used to that I barely notice them anymore. But I was still sort of thinking that they would only have him come once or twice a week for speech, since that still seems to be his main issue. Anyway, I just got the phone call that he qualifies for the entire program. Yay! One, I think he will really benefit from it and have fun getting to interact with other kids his age. Two, free preschool, paid for by our tax dollars! 
And three, with a newborn in the house, this will give me several hours a week with just the new baby in the house. Which rocks.
ETA after IEP meeting: While his original referral to Early Intervention was for speech delay, his primary issue is now officially developmental delay, with speech as the secondary issue on his IEP. He’s not officially diagnosed with PDD-NOS at this point, but it really wouldn’t surprise me if that happens at some point in the future. His scores for both atypicality and hyperactivity were both sky-high.
So, this fall he will start out going to preschool 3 half-days per week, and will get two speech sessions per week. He will also get evaluated by the OT, and I’m sure he’ll qualify for that again as well, given his sensory issues that compel him to do things like jumping repeatedly off of furniture and landing on his knees.
Spring update
21 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in family
I haven’t posted anything in a long, long time. We’ve been busy, and a lot of things have changed around here.
My daughter will be going to public school next year. We gave homeschooling, and then online public school, a good try, but it just isn’t for us, at least not right now. I work too many hours and too many weird shifts to be able to get her out and about to all the social opportunities I was hoping to give her. Working fewer hours isn’t an option, unless we wanted to do without little luxuries like food and health insurance. And homeschooling with a busy two-year-old underfoot often meant that he didn’t get his needs well met. The local public school is highly rated, has small class sizes, and the people I know with kids there are happy with the school. I may take her out again at some point when she’s older, but I’m hoping she does well there.
My son is just about old enough to age out of early intervention. He’s made leaps and bounds in development the past two or three months. His developmental therapist says that his main issue from here on out is practice, practice, practice with his articulation, rather than struggling to get him to communicate verbally at all, which is where we were 6 or 8 months ago. I’m waiting to hear back from the school system regarding getting him assessed for the developmental preschool. If he can get into it for the speech issue, yay, free preschool! If not, I’ll probably wait until next year to enroll him. I’m definitely planning to enroll him in at least one year of preschool, though. I think it was a big mistake when I decided not to put my daughter into it. There were lots of little social rules that she didn’t learn until this year at her church activity, and she was really embarrassed to be the only one who didn’t understand things like standing in lines and waiting until the teacher told her to do certain things.
And we’re also going to have a third child this summer, right before the school year starts, which is all the more reason why getting my kids both into school seems like such a lovely idea.
So, that’s where we’re at. I hope to be updating here more often, now that I’m not working a bunch of extra hours like I did over the winter.
So, my daughter…
24 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Motherhood, school
So, my daughter is finally in the online public school.
My son may not talk much, but he knows all his letters, most of his numbers 1-10, and a lot of shapes and colors (didn’t know how much he knew until two nights ago, watching him play with a question-and-answer electronic toy).
We don’t have to drive ANYWHERE for Thanksgiving this year.
My husband and I are both home, together, for two whole days.
I’ve seen some crazy, crazy stuff at work lately, stuff that will make me a better nurse in the long run.
All in all, a good week!
Yay! My kid got…
23 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
Yay! My kid got into online public school after two months of being waitlisted! Now to figure out how all this works…
15 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Motherhood
My son just clearly repeated ‘waffle’. :happydance: I was so excited that I walked over and smooched him and then smothered his waffle in extra honey. This is a banner day, because he also repeated ‘cracker’ this morning (well, it sounded like ‘caca’, but that’s okay ). The fact that he will actually repeat two-syllable words now is HUGE.
He’s up to about 20 words now at age 2.5, but I guess it’s closer to 40 words if you count him saying his letter sounds. He’s developing in leaps and bounds.
19 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
I like this essay regarding wealth and poverty over on Red Letter Christians.
Train tunnel
17 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Motherhood
My little guy is playing with the play tunnel and his battery-powered Thomas train. He turns on Thomas, puts him in the tunnel, then runs to the other end of the tunnel and patiently waits for Thomas to come chugging through. The only problem is that the tunnel is set up over a futon mattress on the floor, and also going around a curve. So needless to say, Thomas doesn’t get very far before he falls over on his side. So then little guy runs around to the other end and uprights Thomas, and runs back to wait at the end of the tunnel again. The little guy just looks so cute, peering into the tunnel, waiting and waiting. He has the concept down; he just doesn’t quite get that Thomas is facing insurmountable obstacles here.
17 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in health
Well, I ended up with bronchitis anyway, even though I tried to take it easy after my hard week. Apparently my immune system took a hit from all that sleep deprivation. I went to the family doc, who said there is definitely something bacterial going on, and sent me home with a script for 10 days of antibiotics. Last time I had bronchitis, 8 years ago, I was very anti-doctor, and coughed for 6 weeks before I finally went to the campus doctor, thinking that I had a broken rib. Nope, pleurisy. Four weeks of excruciating pain, which could have been avoided had I gone in a month earlier.
I’ve been off since last weekend. The nice thing is that I was called off tonight (was supposed to be my first night back, since I’m halfway better now), so I get a few more days to fully recover. Yay for low census.
The kids have been a dream this week, cooperating fully with my plan to use the TV as a babysitter while I recovered, but the house is beyond trashed. After being sedentary all week, I’m actually looking forward to cleaning it tomorrow. Nowhere to go but up; it’s pretty bad before I use the term ‘trashed’.
Sick day
11 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
I really overdid it this weekend. And now I’m sick. I don’t work more than 38 hours per two weeks normally, but due to a variety of circumstances hitting on the same week, I ended up working 50 hours in 5 days, with only 3 or 4 hours of sleep each day. I started feeling sick the second night, but calling in sick wasn’t an option for a minor cold, because I knew they were majorly understaffed even WITH me there. But today I’m sicker than I was, and I wouldn’t feel right going in there with a productive cough and fever, not just a sore throat and sinus headache like I had all week. Add in the fact that I don’t have a babysitter lined up for tomorrow so I can sleep for a few hours after my shift (not sleeping after working an overnight while already sick just sounds like the perfect recipe for making sure I get bronchitis), and it wasn’t a hard decision to call in sick this morning. I gave them 16 hours notice, so hopefully they can find an extra nurse, although I wouldn’t count on it, as short-staffed as the unit is already.
SO… I’m sick, I have a big paycheck coming my way from all that time and a half, and I feel soooo patient and happy to be with my kids today. Four of the five nights that I worked last week involved taking care of a roomful of manipulative lying thieves (they cleaned out our unit of hundreds of dollars worth of food and other items, and also did the same on the unit that they migrated to after leaving our floor. Pieces of work they were). It’s amazing how mature my two littles seem, even in full-out tantrum mode, after hours and hours dealing with those people. (I should mention here that the majority of my patients are lovely people, which is probably why the above family stood out so much- they are very much the exception!)
I was a little annoyed last night, to finally have a full night ahead of me for nothing but sleeping, only to lie down and find out that I couldn’t breathe. I moved out to the living room to avoid waking everyone with all my coughing, but on the couch, I was only able to get about four hours of sleep. So, no better than what I’ve been getting all week. Oh well. I was overdue for a cold; I don’t think I was sick even once last year. On the bright side, I am really glad to be a benefited employee again, meaning that I can actually get paid for staying home sick. I don’t think I’ve used any sick time at all since I was at my first nursing job, three years ago.
I’m tuckered out, but I’m really glad that I did work all those shifts, as it’s been a very educational week. I still have tons to learn, but I’m happy to say that I no longer feel like throwing up from the anxiety every time I go into work. My nursing skills are definitely improving, after being on this floor for close to two years now. Brag: I noticed a case of jaundice early, on a baby that wasn’t even my patient. I happened to see the baby lying there looking orange as a pumpkin, asked her nurse if I could check her (we normally don’t check them before 20 hours old), and found that she was already at a level of 18 at only 18 hours of age. 20 is where they start worrying about kernicterus. Yikes! So I have to pat myself on the back for noticing and responding to that (everyone around at the time seemed to think I was silly, and said that she was only that color because of her race).
I also witnessed one of scariest resuscitations I’ve ever seen. Scary enough that the practitioner in charge called for the code box, thinking that we might need to give epinephrine. Someone commented that God was watching over the baby, because if the practitioner had arrived only a few minutes later, the baby might not have survived. Anyway, it was terrifying, but it turned out okay, and I’m really glad I was there (the more experienced folks already had things under control when I arrived, so I was able to watch their decision making process and just take orders). Deliveries always make me nervous, even low-risk ones, but I feel more confident about attending them having seen this one, because less than 5% of deliveries require that long of a resuscitation. I’m so glad that everyone was on their toes that night.
And also, I’m still quite irritated at the oncoming nurse who criticized me for calling in the pediatrician to look at the baby right around shift change. “Why is SHE here?” “BECAUSE WE WANT HER TO BE HERE!” Apparently, I am supposed to respect her hatred for this particular doc by not notifying her about a baby who is doing scary things. Riiiiight. That sounds like responsible nursing care right there. I should know to expect that behavior from this particular nurse, but it’s still annoying as all get out.
Enough venting. Time for a fun-filling day of parenting from the couch, with a Kleenex in hand!
