In Which We Do All The Things

I'm going to start trying to get up a bit early so I can blog.  I have the unfortunate problem that I like to be alone to write so I can do it uninterrupted, which is why I used to do it right before bed.  Now, however, I have a kid who won't go to bed until I do.  She knows when I go to bed because she's currently sleeping in mine.  This makes for a lot of early nights.  So if I want alone time right now, I have to sneak out while she's asleep. 

Ellen isn't a big fan of spending any time by herself right now, which is understandable.  This is a kid who had literally never been by herself before leaving Thailand, and so going from a large orphanage to our tiny household and having to spend some of that time alone is a big deal for her.  And of course, since I need to be eyes-on with Connor whenever he's awake, I'm used to having very little time to myself.  I didn't realize just how much I crave and need that bit of alone time in the evening to center myself (and do things like blog) until I didn't have it any more.

So I'm going to be making an effort to shift my blogging and sleeping habits and get up a bit early to write and have some time to myself.  Right now while the kids are in school that time is pretty easy to find.  It's when the summer gets here that I'll need to get creative!  With Jer in school full-time, the kiddos will be spending pretty much all of their waking hours with me.  Hopefully I can establish some habits that will allow me to have that time to myself, so that I can sit down, drink a quiet cup of tea and catch you all up on what's going on around here.

For the most part things are going well!  On Tuesday, Ellen is going to what will probably be her last appointment for a little while, to the eye doctor.  Apparently she saw an eye doctor when she was four years old and was given glasses, but when she outgrew them she didn't get any more.  The nurse at her school shot me an e-mail the other day telling me that Ellen's eyesight on their low-tech screening was about 30/50.  We suspect she has a bit of strabismus in her left eye too, which is really common among kids with her type of cerebral palsy.  So she'll be going in to get her eyes checked.  She says that if she needs to wear something she wants contacts.

She'll also be getting an ankle foot orthotic (AFO) for her left foot, which rolls in quite a bit when she walks.  She comes down pretty hard on that foot because her left leg is shorter than her right, and so the problem is slowly getting worse.  Thankfully, an AFO should be able to help correct those issues quite a bit.  She wasn't enthusiastic about the idea of an AFO, which I'm not surprised by at all once she described the ones she wore as a kid, which were those heavy metal over-the-knee braces that I'm pretty sure they stopped making after about the 70s.  Once she learned, though, that the AFO would be similar to Connor's and would help prevent her from needing surgery later she was much more okay with the idea.

Connor is doing well; the new seizure medication seems to be helping.  He had a nasty round of seizures a few days ago that seemed to correspond with a short stomach bug, but then he was fine.  We've managed to miss the big norovirus outbreak up here so far, which I am extremely thankful for!  I'm not ready to figure out the One Child Sick And One Child Well situation yet, let alone navigate the whole glorious Mom Is Sick And Everyone Else Is Fine thing.  I've included an only moderately blurry picture of him in a colorful outfit and his leg extension braces to make up for not blogging in a while.  As you can see, he got a haircut and is rapidly advancing to the Handsome Not-So-Little Boy stage of proceedings.  Sigh.  Oh, and here's a picture of a moose.  Because you know, it's a moose.

We've done a TON of other stuff this week that I'm not going to blog about because it would take way too long, which is what happens when I don't blog every day. Ellen picked out an American name she wants to legally change her name to, we cooked a meal together in the kitchen for the first time, Connor is going to be in a drumming performance, we took a trip to Northwest Trek (hence the moose), Ellen tried out Girl Scouts. . . the list goes on.  Things are decidedly not dull around here.  But if I tried to blog about all of it now, this thing would be 80 bajillion pages long.  I hate that I'm not writing all of this down so I can remember it later.  So that's motivation for me to get back to writing!

~Jess