Monday, June 2, 2014

A Bunch of Words

Friends, friends, friends, here come a bunch of words. I am constantly struggling to not be overwhelmed by the prospect of blogging, which is weird, since I typically enjoy it. Plus, it catalogs our family’s history. So many life events are rushing by and I indeed manage to catch most of them in photographs but they are just sitting in my camera or phone or laptop. But an update needs to be done and here it comes.

Mother’s Day, it came filled with many homemade cards for myself and my own Mother, who actually got to be with me for Mother’s Day. Noah picked out some cute things for me such as a giant fuzzy purple pillow that says, “Happy Mother’s Day.” He also picked out his own card and gave me purple bubble gum. I got beautiful things from the girls (and their amazing teacher, Ms. Mary) made at pre-school.

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End of School Year program with Classical Conversations. Finishing up our “formal” school year was so  much fun. Both the last day of class and later the end of school year program were really enjoyable. I am so thankful to God for this incredible group of families and outstanding homeschool program.

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SAT. Stanford Achievement Test. Yep. Already started Noah on this path. He took the SAT for his grade level (4th) and did OUTSTANDING. May I take a moment to brag a little. My incredible son had an overall grade equivalence of 5.7, meaning he is functioning like a 5th grade student in the 7th month of the school year…so almost a 6th grader. Just finished 4th grade mind you and testing a year ahead. Thank you homeschooling. If he were to brag he’d want you to know that his science grade equivalent was 9.4, 9th grader in his 4th month of the school year. Yep. Freaky smart in science. 

Eden’s little surgery. Like her brother Noah, Eden had one ear tube that didn’t fall out normally. So, she had to have it surgically removed and then have a patch put over the hole on her eardrum. It was the fastest surgery ever. She did fabulous. Preparation was the key. She knew exactly what would happen and she was a trooper. I held her to the, “you can go no further” point, then set her down on the hospital bed. She didn’t cry, nor did she look back but put on her brave face and off she went. Five minutes later the surgeon was in our room saying she did great! What?! Then 10 minutes later she was back with us. She was a little tired, but did great post surgery. Mama’s brave girl!

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Summer Homeschooling. We are doing Math, Science and Spelling over the summer. Noah would have likely scored much higher on the SAT  if I had taught the poor kid how to spell. Somehow spelling has gotten overlooked. So I am working with Noah this summer using a great program called, All About Spelling. We are starting from ground zero so needless to say he is flying through it but it is laying a great foundation to build on. Learning all the rules to spelling is so helpful, I promise you, no one ever taught me the stuff we are learning together. Plus, we are having a really good time. Who knew? Math is just grueling. For both of us. Not even joking around. However, we temper that with Science. Answers in Genesis is our Science. We are only doing science because he just enjoys it so much. Molecules and Chemistry…woo hoo, bring on the fun! Don’t you just wish you were me?!

Then there are the girls. I am “summer schooling” them too. Unlike Noah, they love it! They are also doing All About Spelling and are doing super! I can’t believe it! They are learning to spell and read! Practicing writing their name and tracing all their letters and numbers is a big hit. I just racked up at the Dollar Store finding a ton of little workbooks with Disney characters and such that are numbers and letters tracing books with other little games inside.  Also, I have several fun Montessori math jobs that they are really enjoying and of course there is art. I

Gotcha Day. Adoption Day. Relinquishment Day. I never know what to call that day. May 14, 2012. The 2 months or so leading up to May 14, 2014 were very difficult. But it was like switch was flipped on May 15, 2014.  She is doing really great, all things considered. Can’t believe it has been 2 years!

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Yaya’s speech. Hmmm. Hard to explain all this, but I’ll sum it up with this: her palate is not functioning correctly so articulated non-airy speech is not happening. Yaya started to struggle with speech around February of this year.  Which is really frustrating because she is so smart. She talks in huge sentences…but we only get half of what she is saying. She knows all her phonograms and knows what sounds every letter makes. Including the 4 sounds for Y and O; the three sounds for A and I; and the two sounds for E, G, and S! But she just can’t pronounce them! Hunting down the problem has taken up many months and we still haven’t discovered what the problem really is. Scoping her nose while awake was one terrible method we tried, it isn’t painful, but if you are not prepared for it cognitively and you have sensory issues…it is a train wreck. After this traumatic procedure we were told we would have to wait 6 months and try it again and see if she would be compliant for the scope at that time. Hubba Waaaa???? Yeah, no. So our amazing speech wonder woman, Melissa has begun doing things to help prep Yaya for the next scope. Wow! I love this woman. Another suggestion she made was to equip Yaya with a program that we can put on an ipad and it will talk for her. With much anticipation and excitement we go tomorrow to get our “borrowed” license to test out the program for a month. Yaya has been able to play with the program once and she LOVED it. We are praying for success with this program. It will be freakishly expensive but if she can communicate, I’m good with selling a kidney to pay for it. I jest. It will be like $300.00 plus the cost of an ipad to put it on. Not kidney worthy but still steep.

In the meantime, my Mom hooked us up with another resource out of Children’s of Atlanta. A woman she knows has a son with cleft who had gotten frustrated with her son’s lack of speech progress and sought other opinions. They are now on a path that will allow their son to begin school in the fall. We hope to get an appointment to see the Director of Speech Pathology at the Children’s Hospital in Atlanta. I have been told that “the scope” is not the only thing that can solve our mystery. Apparently there are other non-invasive techniques that can be used. God love and bless our speech therapist, she agreed to go to the appointment with us! So thankful for her! So now we hurry up and wait. More on this topic as it unfolds.

Surgery anyone? Why, yes please, I’d like some! Not. Okay so my right foot has been bugging for like 7 months now. I’ve done two rounds of a 6 week course of physical therapy with no real relief. An MRI showed that the ligament that stabilizes my ankle is chronically torn. So the thought is to go in with to anchors and a suture, and pull my tibia and fibula bones together to stabilize from the inside, allowing my ligament to heal. The surgical gold standard for an unstable ankle is the Broström procedure modified by Gould. There is the link if you want all the medical garbage and pictures. Sounds all hunky-dory until the words, “non-weight bearing for 6 weeks in a cast” come tumbling out. Followed by the words, “knee scooter and no driving”. Sigh. Seriously? It is summer in Alabama! I have two preschoolers! Kill me now! Soooo, I have my prescription of Wellbutrin waiting for me at the pharmacy so I don’t  have a total panic attack when the put me in a cast for 6 weeks!! Having said all this garbage about surgery…I don’t know for sure, sure, that it will happen. I go in for my second opinion on May 16th. I’m sure there will be a blog post to follow. Below is some cool tape from physical therapy…sadly PT did not work. Pray for THIS foot please.

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In preparation for the possibility though, we have moved our bedroom upstairs which has made all our children ethereally happy. Truth be told, we have a lot more fun and cuddle time upstairs now on our big king size bed. The girls like to come in and snuggle in the morning and often at night we all play around on the bed and let kiddos drift off to sleep before transporting them to their own beds. Noah’s nighttime anxiety had gone way down and I like not having to climb a flight of stairs when the girls cry out at night. So it is a win/win for everyone.

Whew. I’m worded out. I think that is all friends. I have no idea what I’ve written here but it is close to what I’d like to record, with I’m sure tons of typos and run on sentences and perhaps some that don’t even make much sense. I’m to tired to proof it. But here we are one big happy family. So thankful. P.S. Yaya is eating a S’more for the first time so she is chewing in this picture below. The one below that was her response when I asked her, while her mouth was full,  if she liked S’mores…two thumbs up.

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