In Which We're Here

Sorry for the sporadic updates; I know you all are anxious to hear how we are doing.

And we're doing well!  I'm just tired.  Very, very tired.  Even though our new daughter is fourteen (almost fifteen), in many ways it's like having a newborn in the house.  I say that not because she's crying all the time and getting me up every four hours, because she absolutely isn't.  That's one of the major advantages of adopting a teenager instead of an infant.

It's more that our whole lives are in the process of rearranging to welcome this new person into our family, and so while I'm not doing anything exhausting on a physical level, mentally I'm doing some pretty spectacular gymnastics right now.  When I have a bit of idle time, instead of blogging I end up doing something like falling asleep in a chair in the library with an open book on my lap.  I'm not being terribly productive in the writing department at the moment.

But eventually our lives will settle down a bit, and I'll be able to actually form coherent sentences at the end of the day.  So rest assured that while I may not be blogging every single day right now, I'll get back to it eventually.  I will not abandon you, dear readers. 

Anyway, Connor had several seizure free days, and then he started up again last night.  He was extremely tired yesterday, which makes me wonder if he's getting sick.  I'm not really ready to tackle the whole "one child sick and one child well" thing logistically yet, so I'm hoping that's not the case. 

He's been working with a walker at physical therapy, and we're starting to see him have a lot more awareness of his feet and leg muscles, which is pretty cool.  He's not taking steps or lifting his feet off the ground in the walker yet, but he is shifting his weight around and swiveling his feet back and forth, which is pretty cool.  In his wheelchair, he's started amusing himself by kicking the footrest, as it makes a lovely clattering noise when he's got his ankle-foot orthotics on. On the one hand, this is great as it means he's learning how those muscles work.  On the other hand, it gets really annoying after he's done it for twenty straight minutes in the car.  Oh well!

Ellen is loving school-- she especially likes her English Language Learning teacher, which is a very good thing.  After testing her English reading and writing skills and determining that they're pretty basic, they've decided to remove her from choir and put her in some one-on-one tutoring with the ELL teacher for the whole period.  I think that will really help her with her language skills.

She's got a photographic memory for streets, which is pretty cool-- after walking a new route with her teacher once she could tell me how to drive the route backwards while in a car.  I guess that would come in handy during the days when she was taking a motorcycle taxi to her swimming class in Thailand.  She's also been adventurous about trying new foods, which is nice.  We've added peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, goldfish crackers, green bean casserole and spicy chicken sandwiches to the list of things she'll eat in the last few days.

So overall we're doing well.  It's just a matter of readjusting and settling in!

~Jess