Updates on the children!
Hi everyone. Sorry it's taken me so long after we got back from vacation to post here, but it was Thanksgiving week, so it was a bit hectic. Just some tidbits from the previous few weeks, some when my parents were taking care of the ladies, and some when we got back.
The Saturday before we left, Mia threw up. That was charming. It turned out she had a viral infection and was fine, but long-time readers of this blog (there has to be at least one!) will recall that whenever she throws up, we should take her to the hospital, because vomiting is one sign of a shunt malfunction. So Krys took her off the hospital and sat there for many hours, all to find out it was a virus. We were relieved, naturally. They expressed some surprise that after well over three years, she had never had a shunt adjustment. Her neurosurgeon sure can put a shunt in well!
Unfortunately for my mother, this episode put her off food for a while. As you well know, she's never been a great eater, but this cut her enthusiasm for food even more. We felt bad leaving my mom with this difficulty, but she did a fine job (I guess; we weren't around to see) and now she's back up to her previous level - that is, not eating very much at all. But at least she's eating, which she didn't even want to do for about five days!
Norah, meanwhile, did not take kindly to Mommy and Daddy (specifically, Mommy) leaving her with all these weird strangers, and she screamed for approximately a week. She was actually fine if my mom or my sister (who came out for a few days to help out before my dad showed up) held her constantly, but if they put her down, the screaming began! She too got better, naturally, as the days went by. When Mommy came home last week, however, she became Velcro Baby! We're not terribly surprised that she has attached herself to Krys not unlike a remora, but it's getting a little annoying after a week in which she has barely let Krys out of her sight. It doesn't help that Krys lost her job (yes, she's unemployed again, this time because her company rather inexplicably went out of business the day after we returned), so she's around the house. I mean, that's great because we can both get stuff done while the other is watching the kids, but it also means that Norah wants Mommy all the time and she has access to her all the time, so she's whinier than usual.
Mia has been working hard, and is walking pretty well. We took her to the mall last week before it opened so she would have some wide open spaces in which to walk, but it didn't go over too well. We're wondering if the floor was too slippery, because she seemed to have trouble starting up. I'm going to try it again, this time with different shoes, and we'll see how it goes. Other than that, she has been walking well, although she is slumping a lot more in her chairs, and we're a bit puzzled by it. She seems to just not care about sitting up. It's quite annoying to spend an entire meal telling her every three seconds to sit up.
Last week she got another round of botox shots. They seemed to work pretty well the last time she got them, so we're hoping for similar results. I forgot to ask if she will get them indefinitely, or if there's a point where they need to stop. I know her doctor wants her therapists to give him a report about what muscles exactly they are working on so that he can target them next time, but I'll have to ask him if he stops the shots after a while.
Finally, Norah became much worse behaved while we were gone. She has reached a climbing phase, so she's scrambling up onto everything she can, including the sofa (it's like she's scaling Mount Everest!), and according to my mom, she also gets into everything. She gets into the cabinets, they said. Well, yes, but before she left, she would only get into the cabinet where we keep all her snacks, and then she would just take the boxes out and put them on the floor. She occasionally opened the other cabinets, but once you say her name, she runs off because she knows she's not supposed to get in there. She gets into the drawer to the desk by the front door, they said. She couldn't open it when we left, but she has opened it occasionally since we've gotten back. Vigilance! She tears her room apart, they said. We always keep the doors to the bedrooms closed. Why were the doors open? Well, we wanted her to have a place where she could play. As opposed to the living room and the family room, where there are toys aplenty? My mom said that they needed to get tough on Norah while they were here because she was so curious. But before we left she was relatively fine - I had to keep an eye on her, but she was fine. So they had to get tough because they weren't tough on her before? What's up with that? What did my mom and dad do to my child?
Still, they enjoyed taking care of her. Everyone, of course, falls instantly in love with the children. They enjoyed it so much that my mom had to go out to dinner a few times, enlisting the aid of babysitters. Mia's occupational therapist watched the kids a few times, and did such a good job Krys and I actually went out this past Saturday night. Krys has gotten over her "Only I can put the children to bed" thing that characterized her early months of motherhood, so we can actually leave before they're in bed! Good times.
So that's a quick update on the children. I'll be back soon with more. In the meantime, check out my other blog for long, rambling posts about our adventures in Egypt punctuated by many pictures!
The Saturday before we left, Mia threw up. That was charming. It turned out she had a viral infection and was fine, but long-time readers of this blog (there has to be at least one!) will recall that whenever she throws up, we should take her to the hospital, because vomiting is one sign of a shunt malfunction. So Krys took her off the hospital and sat there for many hours, all to find out it was a virus. We were relieved, naturally. They expressed some surprise that after well over three years, she had never had a shunt adjustment. Her neurosurgeon sure can put a shunt in well!
Unfortunately for my mother, this episode put her off food for a while. As you well know, she's never been a great eater, but this cut her enthusiasm for food even more. We felt bad leaving my mom with this difficulty, but she did a fine job (I guess; we weren't around to see) and now she's back up to her previous level - that is, not eating very much at all. But at least she's eating, which she didn't even want to do for about five days!
Norah, meanwhile, did not take kindly to Mommy and Daddy (specifically, Mommy) leaving her with all these weird strangers, and she screamed for approximately a week. She was actually fine if my mom or my sister (who came out for a few days to help out before my dad showed up) held her constantly, but if they put her down, the screaming began! She too got better, naturally, as the days went by. When Mommy came home last week, however, she became Velcro Baby! We're not terribly surprised that she has attached herself to Krys not unlike a remora, but it's getting a little annoying after a week in which she has barely let Krys out of her sight. It doesn't help that Krys lost her job (yes, she's unemployed again, this time because her company rather inexplicably went out of business the day after we returned), so she's around the house. I mean, that's great because we can both get stuff done while the other is watching the kids, but it also means that Norah wants Mommy all the time and she has access to her all the time, so she's whinier than usual.
Mia has been working hard, and is walking pretty well. We took her to the mall last week before it opened so she would have some wide open spaces in which to walk, but it didn't go over too well. We're wondering if the floor was too slippery, because she seemed to have trouble starting up. I'm going to try it again, this time with different shoes, and we'll see how it goes. Other than that, she has been walking well, although she is slumping a lot more in her chairs, and we're a bit puzzled by it. She seems to just not care about sitting up. It's quite annoying to spend an entire meal telling her every three seconds to sit up.
Last week she got another round of botox shots. They seemed to work pretty well the last time she got them, so we're hoping for similar results. I forgot to ask if she will get them indefinitely, or if there's a point where they need to stop. I know her doctor wants her therapists to give him a report about what muscles exactly they are working on so that he can target them next time, but I'll have to ask him if he stops the shots after a while.
Finally, Norah became much worse behaved while we were gone. She has reached a climbing phase, so she's scrambling up onto everything she can, including the sofa (it's like she's scaling Mount Everest!), and according to my mom, she also gets into everything. She gets into the cabinets, they said. Well, yes, but before she left, she would only get into the cabinet where we keep all her snacks, and then she would just take the boxes out and put them on the floor. She occasionally opened the other cabinets, but once you say her name, she runs off because she knows she's not supposed to get in there. She gets into the drawer to the desk by the front door, they said. She couldn't open it when we left, but she has opened it occasionally since we've gotten back. Vigilance! She tears her room apart, they said. We always keep the doors to the bedrooms closed. Why were the doors open? Well, we wanted her to have a place where she could play. As opposed to the living room and the family room, where there are toys aplenty? My mom said that they needed to get tough on Norah while they were here because she was so curious. But before we left she was relatively fine - I had to keep an eye on her, but she was fine. So they had to get tough because they weren't tough on her before? What's up with that? What did my mom and dad do to my child?
Still, they enjoyed taking care of her. Everyone, of course, falls instantly in love with the children. They enjoyed it so much that my mom had to go out to dinner a few times, enlisting the aid of babysitters. Mia's occupational therapist watched the kids a few times, and did such a good job Krys and I actually went out this past Saturday night. Krys has gotten over her "Only I can put the children to bed" thing that characterized her early months of motherhood, so we can actually leave before they're in bed! Good times.
So that's a quick update on the children. I'll be back soon with more. In the meantime, check out my other blog for long, rambling posts about our adventures in Egypt punctuated by many pictures!
posted by Greg at
11:17 AM
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