Friday, November 25, 2011

So what's going on these days....

So what's going on these days....
Autumn has been consumed with getting everyone back into the routine of school... including me, and I'm not a morning person... So getting everyone up including myself has been tough.  It all starts with the evening routine... dinner, bath, both girls to bed, and then I'm so relieved to lay in bed and watch a show, that I totally give up on the idea of packing lunches and getting everyone ready the night before.  So this leads to stress in the morning... backpacks, finding lost shoes, packing lunches, making supplemental drinks for breakfast, constantly pushing Sadie to drink her drink, changing a poopy diaper, getting her fully dressed (she is unable to dress herself), and finally out to the bus in time.  All the while, Shelbi needs to got potty, I need to get the tissue that is stored up on a shelf (so Sadie won't unroll and play with it), putting a show on and meet Shelbi's needs too.  Once Sadie gets on the bus, the hustle to get Shelbi off to preschool, and flash. three hours of preschool fly by... Sadie gets of the bus a few hours later, and puff... it all starts over.  I'm pooped.
Medically, Sadie's been fine, I've been making larger supplemental milkshakes for her and she's been feeding herself a little better these days.  She looks healthy and even has a little belly and I can pinch a little inch on her hip.  She's lost 2 top baby teeth and 2 bottom baby teeth.  One top adult tooth and one bottom adult tooth have come in filling the gap that was once filled with 2 teeth.  Her bottom six-year molars have come in with a defect called hypoplasia (http://www.identalhub.com/article_enamel-hypoplasia-370.aspx) essentially meaning they came in missing enamel. Since she won't still still during a dental cleaning, we are forced to put her under anesthesia to have both teeth crowned.  Her dentist is also going to pull 4 baby teeth in a series of pre-orthodontic pulls to give her adult teeth room to grow in.  So in a few more years, she will have 4 more baby teeth pulled to give room for the next set of adult teeth to grow-in straight, which might prevent her need for braces, I can't even imagine how on earth we would be able to get in her mouth to do that.  Since she hasn't had a cardiology appointment in nearly 2 years, our local children's hospital is coordinating with the dentist to have an ultrasound on her heart before her dental work at the same time she is under anesthesia, so that she will only need to be under anesthesia once. You can read more about this from my post nearly 2 years ago when she had a sedated ultrasound on her heart then... (http://sadie8p23point3.blogspot.com/2010/02/echo-under-anesthesia.html)
missing 2 top front teeth and one on the bottom
Behaviorally, she's been just as happy as always, smiling, snuggling, sweet as can be, making the best eye contact, and she has the best sense of humor, just giggling when you smile at her.  She even has a little mischievous side... she will walk over to something she knows she can't have and quickly grab it, laugh, and run away.  She still empties out every cup she can get her hands on and loves to watch her water pour out of her straw-sippy cup.  We are always avoiding drinks being left out.  In fact, she just grabbed Shelbi's crayon/marker bucket and emptied it out in a pile on the floor.  She grabbed several markers and is marking on the bottom of her feet and belly button.  It is so hard to keep things out of her reach and also attempting to teach her appropriate behavior at the same time.  I focus on altering and modifying her environment so that we avoid taking from her all the time and also the stress of keeping one eye on her at all times.  I know she gets very frustrated when I'm constantly telling her no and grabbing, so my motto for her is out-of-sight-out-of-mind.  I've been Sadie-proofing our house again, adding another gate to the kitchen for safety and adding magnetic locks to some of our cabinets, since she can now reach her arm into the crack of the door with the other child locks and she can still pull things out.  Our neighbor was kind enough to cut her bedroom door in half, unfortunately, I'm afraid she will get up in the middle of the night and get hurt, so we can at least close the bottom half of her door so she is safe in her room during the night.  Of course, we still have a baby monitor in her room too.  I'm so thankful that she is such an amazing sleeper and goes down to bed so easily.  I think she is so happy to have her space in her room, that she just falls asleep so quickly.  I just worry about her waking randomly and figuring out how to get out of our house.
She was great at Thanksgiving dinner last night. I'm thankful she is sitting still for a few minutes and even watching TV for a few minutes.   She didn't try to flip any plates over, and she loved the spinach dip and crackers.  She happily grabbed handfuls of dip.
She's doing great in school, even though her inclusive time with typical developing peers is VERY limited, we are happy that she loves school and gets excited to get on the bus every morning.



Time is a Thief

I don't remember the first time I heard the sentiment, "time is a thief." Recently it is heavy on my mind. I haven't post...