He had a good day

He had a good first day! Everything seemed to go pretty well. He really liked it when the teacher read them a book. In fact, he was laughing so much during the book that they were wondering if he has laughing seizures! I have wondered this before myself...when he starts laughing he really belly laughs for a while, but according to all his EEGs it's just laughing. He also did an art project today.

Jackson's first day at school

He was quite nervous I think, which I would probably be too, starting out on the first day at his new school. He was also kind of sleepy. He does not like his purple loaner chair (not because it's purple but because it is not as comfortable) so he was not feeling too smiley.


The bus driver was very nice, as was the aide on the bus, but I will be happier when he has a nurse to watch over him. They did not realize he needed a nurse on the bus and it might take a little while to find someone, so they are working on it.

Lee and I (and Miss Z) went up to school to get him settled in. They had a nice little flag ceremony since it was the first day. Jackson was still asleep but woke up soon after I got there. I spoke with the nurse to get the feeds and the meds all straight. Since he has gym first period, we decided that we were going to start his breakfast before he gets on the bus. Then he can be all done and ready for gym when he gets to school.




He was making a few smiles before we left, including a beautiful smile when one of the aides in the class introduced herself. I am so proud of him for this because it is something that we had been working on and talking about (smiling as a way of greeting people) but I had never actually seen him do it unprompted...yay Jackson!

Zoe's new food

Zoe has been a total food refuser lately (she is still big on mama's milk though). She does not want to eat baby food any more, but hates most table food. We went to the store today looking for foods she might possibly like. I made her some broccoli cheddar soup for dinner expecting her to reject it, but she ate a lot of it! We even switched to a real spoon so she could get more in faster. Yay!!

She has been working very hard at walking. She is cruising the furniture and using pushable items (boxes, baskets, wheelchairs, etc) to walk behind. She does not want to walk holding our hands...we call her our Lonesome Joan.

She is sleeping pretty decent most nights and just this week we went down to one nap a day because she had been not wanting to nap in the afternoon anyway.

Communicator trial

Yesterday Jackson got to try out a communication device that is activated by his eyes. It is a really cool system (I tried it too!), but the trial did not go so well. Jackson was really sleepy and wouldn't wake up. In fact, he completely fell asleep while the guy was here. But he said that we will most likely be able to get a longer trial with it when he goes on vacation unless someone else in the company needs it. I can't wait, I just know that Jackson can do well with this once he figures out what he can do with it.

Some good news!

I got a call today that soon we will be able to start back up with respite!! Yay!! We will only have 4 hours a week instead of 5, but since Jackson will be in school full days that will work out perfectly! We will have the same respite provider too, so that will be great since she is so good with him.

We also went to Jackson's new school to meet all his teachers and therapists and tell them all about him. I felt the meeting was a bit chaotic (mostly due to someone little and LOUD!) but hopefully he will have a great school year! He starts on Monday.

The bad news is that we had to get a loaner wheelchair for Jackson while his goes in for growth adjustments. Can you believe the one they brought is purple?! So he is going to be starting at his new school with a purple chair. :( It will be worth it though, he is getting all new cushions and a new harness and headrest. It was looking really small for him and we have been waiting since January for this to get done.

A funny video to brighten your day

Here is my silly daughter playing with Dizzy.

I am so excited!

I just made an appointment for Jackson to get a trial with an eye-gaze communication device! The rep is coming next Thursday morning. I really hope Jackson will do well with it and that if he does do well with it we will be able to get insurance to pay for at least some of it.

Loving this neighborhood!

Today we got a surprise at our front door as Lee was leaving for work! Neighbors had left a couple bags of (DELICIOUS) homemade scones for us!

Ha.

Apparently the owners of City Kids don't think a blog is an appropriate forum to discuss personal feelings so they called to say that Jackson is not welcome today for his last session. Nice!

Dumped!

Yesterday I got a call from Jackson's PT. Essentially he is being dumped from therapy at the clinic where he has been receiving PT and OT. Tuesday will be his last day there. Both of his therapists are pregnant and Jackson is quite labor intensive and heavy and I guess they don't want to deal with him any more.

He will be starting school (August 31) so we had asked them a while back to see if there was a time slot later in the day so that he will not have to miss school to come to therapy. I had also told them that I would consider an early morning time so then I could just drop him off at school after therapy. The PT said that since there was a waiting list for the afternoon times (ignoring that I would consider AM times) that they were not going to be able to see him anymore. I asked if he could finish out the summer and she said that since she was going to be taking vacation time and the OT was not going to be able to handle him alone that the answer was no.

I am pretty pissed off and hurt about this. First, it is very short notice and not at all professional, especially when Jackson has been coming there for years. Second, Jackson has had to deal with so many changes lately, it's really not fair to drop him all of a sudden like this. Third, with being on break from school AND losing his respite day AND being dropped from City Kids, that leaves him with NO activities for the rest of the summer and with the amount of attention Zoe has been demanding lately and with Lee and me trying to unpack and organize from our move it really sucks to be a kid who can do nothing for himself.

This was the best and pretty much only exercise that Jackson gets all week and he had such a good time there. They had a reasonably good grasp of his physical needs (not so much of his cognitive strengths) and they really were able to make it fun for him. He will get therapies at school, hopefully they will be a much better quality than what he was getting at his old school. He will have PE 5 days a week there at least.

Friendliest neighborhood EVER!

I think we have already met more neighbors here in 2 days than we have in our last neighborhood in 3 years. They have a neighborhood email listserve, they have a big block party coming up in Sept., they have neighborhood movie nights outdoors in the summer, and they have pancake brunches and spaghetti dinners. Crazy!

We are here

It was a real rough night. The movers did not leave until really late. They over-packed everything (like the chair!) and then took forever so it cost us way more than we had budgeted for the move.

The cats meowed all night and kept trying to get into Zoe's room. This was not good for having her sleep well and she woke up quite a bit. I also figured out today that she is teething again after she kept trying to bite everything, including getting a good one in on my face! She also bit up a foam football and swallowed some of the pieces and then barfed.

Jackson has been a trouper all throughout. If you ask him if he likes the new house he just smiles...what a sweetie!!

The living room looks semi-livable at this point. The kitchen is a total wreck, that is for tomorrow though.

We are packed...very very packed

We had put everything on the beds for each kid that we needed for tonight so the movers wouldn't pack it. I didn't even think to tell them not to pack the chair next to Zoe's crib that I nurse her and rock her in. I mean how in the world do you pack a chair, you just carry it out and put it on the truck, right? It just did not even occur to me. But yeah, it's packed.

We have a very poor substitute for tonight. Hopefully she will still sleep good tonight, she only got one nap in so maybe.

It's a challenge

to get all packed up for moving (which is happening Wednesday BTW!) when you have a little person who is deathly afraid of the sound of the packing tape!! We have movers coming tomorrow to help us pack so it will probably be a rough day for all of us.

Awesome big brother!

What I saw just now was too cool!

Zoe is seriously cranking out this evening. She was sitting near Jackson playing with some blocks while Jackson was playing with his Elmo toy. Then she started to cry (again!). Jackson reached over and hit the switch for his Tigger toy, which he knows she likes a lot. He totally distracted her from crying and she then proceeded to take the Tigger away from him and disconnected it from the switch so he couldn't play with it anymore. I really think he knew she would play with it and made it go on purpose to stop her from crying.

Of course now she is crying again, but that is another story.