Connor's Song

In Which Jer And I Go Out On The Town

2012-01-26T23:30:00.000-08:00

Jer and I just got home from a date!

Jeremy brought home tickets to an ice skating performance (Unforgettable Moments of Love on Ice!) from work, so we got all dressed up and went out on the town. It was lovely to get the chance to go out just the two of us; it's been a while since we've had the opportunity to spend some one-on-one time together. I think the last time we went out was in early December, so we were definitely past due.

The show was pretty awesome-- a number of Olympic medalists and world champion skaters did some amazing routines, and Gladys Knight gave a stellar performance. Kenny G was also there doing his smooth jazz thing, which I'm sure was a fantastic performance if you are a fan of smooth jazz. He actually spent some time out on the ice and was a pretty good sport about the whole thing. I had a really hard time not visualizing the skaters performing in elevators during his numbers, but that's not his fault.

It was a little odd because the performance was being filmed for television; apparently it's going to be on NBC the first Saturday of February (you should check it out because it was a fun performance to watch live. I'd watch it again if I had TV reception-- and not just to see if Jer and I make an appearance on camera). After the show was over they had us keep our seats and they reshot some of the jumps and routines to make sure they got enough good footage. That was actually a lot of fun because the skaters cut loose a bit and joked with the audience while they waited for their cues.

We had VIP passes to the afterparty, so when the performance was over we went upstairs, grabbed some dessert and coffee, and watched from afar as the skaters and Kenny G were completely mobbed by the other guests. I'm sure they're used to it, but it didn't look like a whole lot of fun from our perspective. We figured they had more than enough people to talk to, and we're not really the "meet 'em so we can say we met 'em" types. But I will say that Sasha Cohen is just as pretty in person as she is on the screen. Oh, and I now have a bit of a crush on Ryan Bradley. He has got some serious muscles, ladies.

Also he does a mean back flip.

Anyway, it was a fantastic evening and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was just so great to get the chance to spend some quality time with Jer! The performance was not something we'd normally think of doing if we hadn't received tickets, but we ended up having a great time. Hopefully we'll have the chance to go on more out-of-the-box dates in the future!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Sick And We Resend Some Letters

2012-01-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

So it seems my Internet is only going to cooperate before noon in fifteen minute intervals right now. Expect erratic blogging until things settle back down to normal over here.

Connor's potassium levels came back normal yesterday, thank goodness! So that means he's probably got a GI bug. He did a little bit better yesterday-- only three seizures-- but he's still throwing up all over the place so he stayed home from school again. It's just been one thing after another for the kid this winter. He seems to be feeling better again this morning, so hopefully he'll be back in school tomorrow for the first time in over a week.

We resent Ellen's Christmas and birthday letters to the translator; it looks like she might not have received them originally. No wonder it's taken so long! So I'll either combine Ellen's Christmas and birthday care packages or she'll get two in close proximity. I'm putting together her February care package right now too (Conversation Hearts, anyone?) but I'll send it towards the end of February so we don't overwhelm her with mail. Our adoption agency will be making their annual trip over some time in the next few months, which is always exciting! Our dossier will have been over in Thailand a year in March, and the process for first approval seems to be taking between 18-24 months right now. So the earliest we could expect to hear anything might be around September. We'll just have to see how things go, but it would be fantastic to have her home before she turns fifteen!

~Jess

In Which Connor Creates Laundry And I Am A Bad Mommy

2012-01-23T23:11:00.000-08:00

Hi again!

Our Internet is blinking off and on right now, and it's driving me nuts. I shouldn't complain too much though-- there are still about 50,000 people in the area with no power. A little forced down time with my books isn't going to hurt me any, though I'm not sure I'll ever get caught up on e-mail.

Instead of school this morning, I took Connor in to get his potassium levels checked, as he's become increasingly nauseous and fatigued over the past few days and is now gagging at the drop of a hat. This is not particularly pleasant for any of the parties involved, except maybe the water and power companies.

I've been running my washing machine a lot.

Anyway, it could be that Connor is coming down with yet another GI bug, it could be a side effect of the antibiotic he's on, or it could be that the antibiotic is reacting with one of his heart medications and driving his potassium levels way up. So we went in to rule out the potassium, which is the only one of those that could potentially be really serious. The lab at our doctor's office is still recouping after a week without power, so his sample had to be sent out. We'll find out tomorrow morning what his potassium level looks like.

Connor did not have a particularly good day. Not only did he end up having to be stuck multiple times on both arms before they could get a sample, but he also had five seizures. This makes me lean towards the GI bug theory on why he's throwing up a bunch, but heck, everything lowers this kid's seizure threshold so it's not exactly conclusive evidence. I was persona non grata today due to the Multiple Needle Poking That Mommy Didn't Stop Incident, so instead of napping on me like he usually does after a bunch of seizures he had a meltdown, told me I was a "Bad Mommy" and asked for Jer until he fell asleep on the couch.

Fun times.

I read him a bunch of books after he woke up and he forgave me. He never holds much of a grudge, thank goodness. Otherwise doctor's office visits would be significantly more difficult by this point.

~Jess

In Which We Were Snowed In

2012-01-22T12:22:00.000-08:00

Hi!

I am extremely happy to say that our Internet finally came back on this morning. Our power flickered off and on this week but thankfully mostly stayed on, but our Internet has been down since Thursday. Apparently a tree hit something important.

Trees hit a lot of things in our neighborhood; our house is actually one of the only ones on the street that didn't lose at least one tree to the heavy load of ice and snow. A few pine trees bent and broke in half, but it was the maples and cherry trees that suffered the worst damage-- most of them either lost huge branches or in a few cases, simply fell over. We ended up getting about eight inches of snow, and then we got freezing rain for two days, which formed a thick layer of ice over the snow. If you were careful you could actually walk (or more accurately, skid) along on top of the snow without leaving footprints. It was crazy.

We got off pretty lucky; I'll need to go up and check the roof because some of the neighbors' overhanging trees dumped a massive load of ice and snow on it once temperatures rose and it started melting, but otherwise we didn't have any major issues. We're on high ground, so the flooding currently going on shouldn't affect us either. Connor has been off of school since Tuesday, and Jer ended up home from work most of the week too, so we kind of had a miniature vacation.

The temperatures are back up above freezing and the snow and ice are melting (hence the flooding issues), so the streets are mostly clear now. The biggest issue is the downed trees-- many of them blocked roads and did a lot of damage.

The pets had a bit of an adventure too-- a couple of days ago Jer and I were startled awake by a tremendous crash. At first we thought a tree might have gone through a window. After searching the rest of the house and coming up with nothing, I opened the door to Connor's room.

The gerbil tank was on its side on the floor shattered into several hundred pieces. Loki was balanced on three legs on the plastic frame of the tank. He was using the fourth to fish around in the shavings inside. Apparently he'd snuck into the room when Jer went in to give Connor his medication, managed to wedge himself between the tank and the wall and then shoved the whole thing off the table. He's nothing if not persistent.

I leaned over as far as I could to avoid the broken glass on the floor and grabbed Loki, who was too busy trying to catch a gerbil dinner to try and get away, and deposited him outside of the room. Then I went back to play a fun game of "Stick My Hands In Paper Shavings And Broken Glass" to see if the gerbils had survived their unplanned aerial adventure. Amazingly, when I clicked my tongue at them like I usually do before I feed them, two little heads popped out of the shavings. Cranston had a tiny cut on his heel, but otherwise they were completely unscathed.

Those are some seriously lucky gerbils.

So they spent some quality time together inside their gerbil wheel while I cleaned up the mess and braved the weather to find them a new tank. They're lucky the worst was over by that point, or they would have been stuck in our bathtub or something until we could leave the house again.

Crazy cat.

~Jess

In Which We Have A Snow Day

2012-01-18T23:30:00.000-08:00

More snow today; at its peak we had probably about seven or eight inches on the ground. The teenagers in the neighborhood roared by on their snowmobiles, and the smaller kids brought the sleds out and tobogganed down the middle of the street. The neighborhood park is sporting an army of snowmen.

Jer had the day off work and Connor was of course off of school, and we've already received the call that he'll be off tomorrow as well. I have to admit that I'm getting just a bit stir crazy. The wheelchair won't handle in snow that deep and we don't want to risk the van out on the roads-- especially since our street hasn't been cleared-- so we've spent the last two days holed up inside. It's supposed to rain pretty heavily tonight and tomorrow though, so it will probably clear up pretty quickly. Though it's beautiful, I can't say I'll be sorry to see it go.

It has been lovely having Jer and Connor both home though!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Fitted For Some Wheels And Has A Flair For The Dramatic

2012-01-17T23:50:00.000-08:00

Connor had a pretty busy day today!

We woke up to about three inches of snow on the ground, and we're supposed to have a whole bunch more tomorrow-- up to twelve inches in what could apparently end up being the worst snowstorm here since 1985. Connor's school was canceled this morning, so he got the chance to sleep in.

And yes, I know that for all you hardcore Canadians and Easterners, a foot of snow isn't all that bad. But nobody here is exactly prepared for that amount of snow, so people are completely freaking out about it.

Anyway, we braved the snow this afternoon and drove down to the local hospital, where Connor had measurements done to convert his chair for long sitting (where you sit with your legs straight out from your body) so that he'll be stretching out his hamstrings whenever he sits in it. Then we talked about getting him an adaptive floor sitter too, so he can play down with his friends whenever he has a play date. And then finally it was time to talk about ordering his new adaptive tricycle!

Connor's long outgrown the Radio Flyer trike that we modified for him a couple of years ago-- his knees are all up around his ears if we try to put him on it. Since it's pretty well impossible to find a bigger bike that will adapt well to modification, it's time to switch to a bike made specifically for children with special needs that will grow with Connor as he gets older. It's practically the only physical activity that really motivates the little guy to work hard-- he loves riding and when we tried out a bike at the hospital today he was actually able to start it moving forward by himself! So we'll be ordering him a trike from Rifton. I'll let you know how it handles when it comes.

Shortly after we got home from our appointment I got a phone call from Connor's doctor. The cultures they took of his impetigo came back positive for both a strep and a staph infection, because the little guy doesn't do anything by halves. Also one of the infections cultured as resistant to the antibiotic we've had him on.

Bactrim, the antibiotic that did wipe it out and thus is the one we're switching to, could potentially interact with one of Connor's heart medications and give him hyperkalemia (high potassium levels). Normally that side effect only happens if someone is on the medication for a long period of time, so it's not very likely it will be a problem because Connor only has to take it for ten days. They're being really cautious though, because hyperkalemia can do some really, really nasty things, like, um, stopping your heart.

So when we picked up the Bactrim we also got a baseline potassium level drawn, and while he's on it we'll be checking Connor's pulse rate at least once a day and taking him back in for another test if it starts getting slow or irregular, and also if he starts throwing up a lot or seems really weak or tired. Whee!

Seriously, it's like living with my own miniature soap opera, only with fewer serial killers and alien abductions.

~Jess

In Which It Snows Some More And I Buy A Cat Bus

2012-01-16T22:50:00.000-08:00

More snow today; we've got about two and a half inches on the ground now and we could apparently get six to ten more inches over the next two days. No news yet on whether or not Connor's school will be closed tomorrow; they may be waiting to see just how much snow we get tonight before making the decision. It was closed today because of the holiday, of course, and Jer was off of work too. So we spent most of the day cozied up inside enjoying each other's company. Oh, and cleaning of course. I'll put this house completely to rights if it kills me.

I did manage to make it out of the house to find a new laundry bin; I've been wanting one with casters so I can just roll my laundry back and forth across the house. The one I found has three bins and a mesh shelf underneath, which the cats immediately decided was a little hammock just for them. Loki has been quite happily lying on it and allowing me to push him between the bedroom, where all the interesting people are, and the laundry room, where his food is. Basically instead of getting a rolling laundry hamper I seem to have actually invented a cat bus.

A bus for cats, I mean. Not this kind of cat bus.

But other than providing feline public transportation services today was relatively quiet, which was a nice change. His impetigo has almost completely disappeared, and he was in a cracking good mood so he's obviously feeling a lot more comfortable. He's actually starting to take interest in his toys again and show a bit more initiative, which is something we haven't seen in a while.

It's great to see him feeling so much better!

~Jess

In Which It Snows And I Clean All The Things

2012-01-15T23:40:00.000-08:00

It started snowing yesterday evening, and this morning we woke up to a winter wonderland. We've got just over an inch on the ground now, and over the next two days we should get another two to four inches, which is nothing like last year but still a pretty significant amount of snow for us. I took pictures to send to Ellen-- they don't get a whole lot of snow in Thailand either.

I spent most of the day out and about at various derby activities, so Jer was the one to take Connor out in the snow. The little guy was impressed by the snow falling but not excited about the cold. He tried tasting some snow and apparently reacted like Jeremy was trying to feed him hot lava or something. Connor's final opinion of snow: fun to watch, horrible to interact with. As a result they spent most of the day cozied up inside.

I love the whispery noise a heavy snow makes falling. The birds all stuck to the safety of the trees today, except for the chickadees, who are sturdy little things and stay out in all sorts of weather. They puffed out all their feathers so much that they looked like brown cotton balls hopping about in the snow. All the neighborhood kids brought out their storage bin and garbage can lids and tried sledding on one of the big hills down the street, and when that proved to be unsuccessful switched to pelting each other with snowballs.

Walking down our street this evening a shadow crossed mine and I looked up to see our resident owl ghost through the pine trees under the moonlight. I felt like I'd stumbled into a Robert Frost poem.

What time I didn't spend out I used to start my deep cleaning of the house. After Connor being sick for three straight months I'm sad to say that things have reached an alarming Level 8 on my Household Disaster Magnitude scale*. So with Jer home for a three day weekend and Connor (barring his polka dots) on the mend, it's time for me to put everything to rights.

Also I can't paint my craft room or Ellen's room until we get the millwork for the garage window installed and the temperature rises enough to let the paint set. We could use a space heater, but I get antsy about those running without any supervision. So I'm throwing my energy into the rest of the house instead.

As part of my cleaning I've been going through Connor's closet and it's amazing how much clothing he's actually outgrown. Connor wears the same size clothes for a long, long time-- long enough that he actually manages to wear them out-- but during the course of last year he actually went up an unprecedented three sizes. For the very first time he's actually in a clothing size that corresponds with his age; he's currently in a 5T. That means the next time he goes up in sizes I'll have to go shop in the boy's section instead of the infant/toddler section, the thought of which makes me want to put my fingers in my ears and yell "LA LA LA LA LA" because I am in total denial and I am so not ready for my kid to be that big.

He'll be in first grade next year. He'll be six in April. Six. That's like halfway to puberty, people.

Sheesh.

~Jess

*Household Disaster Magnitude Scale

Level 1: Somebody Else's House Clean
Level 2: House Party Clean
Level 3: Important Guests Clean
Level 4: Pretty Clean
Level 5: Clean
Level 6: A Little Cluttered Dirty
Level 7: Stuff Shoved Under Every Available Piece Of Furniture And All The Closets Dirty
Level 8: Don't Invite Anyone Into The House Because It Is Deeply Embarassing Dirty
Level 9: Did A Bomb Go Off In Here Or Was It A Hurricane Dirty
Level 10: Filming for A&E Hoarders Dirty

In Which Connor Finds Some Polka Dots

2012-01-14T23:30:00.000-08:00

Connor celebrated Ellen's birthday yesterday by having a six and a half minute seizure and then breaking out in blisters all over his face. He'd had a couple of spots show up in the last few days that I assumed were either eczema or a mild allergic reaction to something, but when I woke him up from his three hour post-seizure nap he looked like he was hitting puberty about eight years early. Twenty or thirty red, raised bumps were scattered across his face. His g-tube was also red, crusty and oozing for good measure.

So it was off to the doctor's office we went. We sneaked in a scant hour from closing time in the hopes that we'd be able to get an appointment; otherwise we'd have to go to urgent care. I wasn't sure what was going on with the kid but it was obviously more than eczema, and I didn't want to leave it over the three-day weekend. Luckily they were able to fit us in.

So it turns out the little guy probably picked up impetigo from somewhere. Basically it's a skin infection that is usually caused by either strep or staph bacteria. They took a culture to see exactly what type of bug is causing it, but in the meantime the little guy is now on both oral and topical antibiotics three times daily. Hopefully that will solve the problem.

Of course impetigo is contagious, so now Jer and I are having to do a spot check on each other daily until Connor's condition clears up to make sure he hasn't spread it to us.

Glorious.

~Jess

In Which Ellen Turns Fourteen

2012-01-13T22:31:00.000-08:00

Today was Ellen's birthday; she's fourteen today! Our girl is a full-fledged teenager now. We hope this is the last birthday that she'll celebrate alone.

It's actually not likely she had much, if any of a birthday celebration. In Thailand birthdays are much more low-key than they are here; if anything she'd probably be giving gifts to her friends rather than receiving anything. However, it just so happens that the day after her birthday is the national holiday Children's Day, and the orphanage usually does something special for the kids. So we hope that at least she'll be having a nice time tomorrow.

I'm worried she may think we've forgotten about her; our letter translations have been taking a while-- probably due to the holidays-- and we're actually still waiting on her Christmas letter to come back so we can send her care package for December. So everything has been delayed. If we don't get her letter back within the next week I may just go ahead and send her Christmas package and then send the letter separately when it comes back. I don't want to leave her wondering why we haven't sent our usual package.

Once we have the craft room finished I can really start putting her room together. Right now her closet is full of my craft supplies. I'm struggling to figure out exactly what pieces to get; we want her to feel comfortable in her room and be able to make it her own, but of course we have to buy the large pieces of furniture for it and all of her basic items before she arrives. While it would be easier to paint and do things like curtain arrangements before she gets here, we'll save them until after she's here because that way she'll have a say in what the room looks like.

However, though paint, linens and accessories do go long way towards changing the feel of the room, furniture still sets the tone, and it's hard not to speculate on what she might want. Is she a tomboy, or girly? Will she want neutral, soothing colors or bright, exciting hues? I'm looking forward to finding out, and in the meantime I'm a little nervous about the choices I'm making because I'm afraid they won't be to her tastes. The white metal day bed with porcelain knobs I found for her is almost an exact replica of the one I had as a teenager, and it's rather old fashioned and pretty girly. I hope she likes it.

So anyway, a very happy fourteenth birthday to you, Ellen! I hope it was a good one. And I hope it's the last one we don't get to celebrate with you in person.

~Jess

In Which Connor Has A Sad Day And Is Growing Way Too Fast

2012-01-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

Both cats are sitting on my lap right now, and Cricket is washing Loki's ears. This can only end poorly.

Connor was kind of a sadkin today for some reason; I'm not sure exactly why. He didn't have any seizures or anything; he just seemed to be kind of down in the dumps. After we did his stander time today he actually had a little meltdown, and then he curled up on me and went to sleep. I ended up taking a bit of a nap too. Then he crashed hard when it was bedtime. It could be that he's still recovering from being sick, and that's why he's sleeping so much. Or maybe he's going through another growth spurt. Who knows?

He's definitely grown by leaps and bounds in the past few months; he's actually on the growth chart for both height and weight for the first time ever! He's in the 11th percentile for weight, and the 1.4 percentile for height. Connor's g-tube has made such a difference since he had his surgery two years ago; he's more than proportionate now. And he's got two more loose teeth, to boot. I just can't believe how fast he's growing. Can you believe he'll be six years old in April?

It just doesn't seem possible. I need to tie a brick to that kid's head or something.

And now as expected, the cats have decided to wrestle in my lap. I am not thrilled by this development. I'm trying to suggest they try play-fighting on the floor instead, but they keep flashing all these pointy bits at me when I try and push them off. Glorious.

Crazy cats.

~Jess

In Which Connor Has A Busy Time And Does A Lot Of Standing

2012-01-11T23:40:00.000-08:00

The day started off pretty slow for Connor, but his afternoon was really busy. After his nap we drove over to one of the local hospitals to get the little guy's stander adjusted and to talk about his adaptive equipment. Connor has some muscular and skeletal issues that are slowly starting to become more of a problem as he gets older. Despite his school therapy and the exercises we do with him at home, his scoliosis continues to progress and his hamstrings are starting to tighten up, making it difficult for him to stand upright.

So we want to modify his chair, stander and at-home seating to help stretch him out as much as we can. We worked on his stander today, and on Friday we'll return to work on more of his equipment. We'll also be looking at fitting him for another back brace some time in the near future. A brace won't reverse his scoliosis, but it can slow down the progression of the spinal curve. Connor will probably eventually have to have surgery for his scoliosis, but we want to delay it as long as possible-- ideally until he's stopped growing.

So when we got home I put him in his newly modified and extended stander (he's gotten a lot taller!) and he watched two whole episodes of Fraggle Rock without fussing at all! All in all he spent just over an hour in it today, which is pretty fantastic. We've been keeping the stander mostly at school since he has other equipment at home, but since he's pretty much outgrown those things I think we'll need to start hauling it back and forth again. It's a hassle, but until we have other adaptive equipment to help stretch out his hamstrings and his back it's the best way to do that passively. Then we can focus on other things instead of having to spend all our time trying to stretch him out.

After his stander work he and I changed into our bathing suits and I ran a nice warm bath for him. We've been working on floating in the tub, and he's starting to get the hang of it. He's not panicking any more when I lay him on his back, and he's okay with letting his body just float as long as I'm supporting his head and neck. He's gotten to where he really enjoys bath time at home (as long as we get in after the water is done running-- he's terrified of the faucet) but it's still some major sensory work for him. All the echoes and splashing definitely make it less than a relaxing experience for him, but he's gotten a lot better at tolerating everything. I'm actually able to use a cup to pour water over his hair now without him completely freaking out now! Trust me when I say that's a big step forward for him.

So between the appointment, the standing and the bath all that hard work got to the little guy; he was so tired he fell asleep in the middle of his bedtime story and Jer had to carry him over his shoulder to bed. I think that if it's going to tire him out so much that he actually sleeps at night, more time in his stander at home is definitely in the cards.

He's getting so big!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Better And I Spackle The Universe

2012-01-10T21:36:00.000-08:00

I am the queen of spackle.

Connor woke up laughing this morning with no hint of fever and seemed to be fully over his bug, so I took him to school. Then I went to our local hardware store and bought myself a drywall patching kit and a big ol' tub of spackle.

Guess what I did the entire time Connor was in school?

The wall in the area of the garage I'm converting is about twenty nine feet long, and I ended up using the entire tub of spackle on it. In addition to the one giant hole where it looked like someone had gone through it with a 2x4, there were so many smaller holes, nicks and gouges that I think there might actually be more spackle than paint on the wall now. Of course, I haven't even touched the orange peel texture peeling off of large swaths of the cement foundation. I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to do about that yet, but I'm pretty sure it's a problem no amount of spackle is going to fix.

Connor was trying to fall asleep in his chair on the way home, so I figured he'd go down quickly and while he was napping I could finish frosting the world's biggest cake in my garage (doesn't that stuff look just like royal icing?). Once I put him down, though, he decided he wasn't sleepy after all. So I ended up cutting my spackling short and bringing him out into the living room, where he promptly fell asleep on my lap. Attempts to move him back to his room to finish his nap there proved fruitless, so instead we hung out for several hours on the couch while he happily snored away on my sweater. Yeah, I probably should have put him down anyway because I don't want him to get into the habit of only napping on me, but you know I can't resist Connor when he's a snugglebunny. I figure I should enjoy it while I can because it won't be too many more years before he won't fit on my lap anymore. That'll be a sad day.

Despite his long nap, by bedtime Connor was falling asleep in his wheelchair once again. He was out five minutes after we tucked him in. He didn't have any seizures today though, and seemed to be in really good spirits most of the day. I'm glad he's recovering!

~Jess

In Which We Do Not Have A Particularly Great Day

2012-01-09T23:36:00.000-08:00

Well today was perhaps not the most fun day I've ever had in my entire life.

Connor slept in until almost 11:00 today, so while he was out I spent the morning taking the shelves down on the wall we're painting in the garage. I thought it was only going to take me half an hour or so, but it ended up taking almost two because the fifteen screws were stripped on the eight foot long shelf closest to the ceiling. I don't own a screw extractor either. Balancing on a ladder and removing those was not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Once everything was down then it was time to clean the wall. This wall was incredibly dirty. At one point during the existence of the house there was apparently a wasp infestation, and apparently they'd made the mistake of trying to land on the deserted homes of the eight hundred generations of spiders that once lived there. I thought there were a bunch of thumbtacks up near the ceiling, but instead it turned out to be the dead bodies of about twenty wasps (and one bumblebee) stuck to the wall with old cobwebs.

Ew.

After I did an initial sweep, I dust mopped and vacuumed and washed the whole thing and I would like to tell you that it made a huge difference. It didn't. The wall still looks terrible. However, it's more the "that wall is really banged up and hasn't been painted for ten years" kind of terrible now and less the "that wall is really banged up and hasn't been cleaned for ten years" kind, which I guess is an improvement.

I keep telling myself I'm going to have a craft room after I get all of this stuff out of the way. But it's probably good I was doing this while Connor was asleep, because I'm pretty sure some of the language I was using during the whole unscrewing-shelves-and-dewasping-walls process was not appropriate for tender ears.

After that the little guy started making some "Hey I'm waking up now but I still don't feel so hot" sort of noises, so I stopped work in the garage for today. He wasn't running a fever anymore but he still obviously felt lousy; I had to put his g-tube pump on really low because he kept trying to throw up. He did okay for a couple of hours, and then he had an eight-minute long seizure and I had to use the Diastat and was literally picking up the phone to call the EMTs when he snapped out of it. Then he went back to sleep and spent the next six hours or so completely conked out on my chest.

So that was not the most fun day ever.

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Still Sick And I Play With Sidewalk Chalk

2012-01-08T23:57:00.000-08:00

Connor continued to feel Not So Good today-- he was still running a fever and had six or seven little seizures. He spent most of the day either curled up on the couch or snuggled up in Jer's lap. I think his throat might be hurting again, because he had his fingers in his mouth pretty much all day and he was drooling a lot. We think he might be working on losing another tooth too though, so it's hard to tell. Either way he won't be in school tomorrow, though.

Hopefully this is a simple bug and it will be done in a couple of days. The last thing we need is another five week saga of Connor being sick.

We'd been planning to take the Christmas lights down today, but because since the little guy is feeling poorly we didn't have the chance to do it. We couldn't take him outside, and it takes both of us to get them down since somebody needs to hold the ladder. We did, however, get the Christmas tree taken down and the indoor decorations put away. We moved the armchair back into place in the library and now whenever I walk by I do a double take because it looks weird. I've gotten used to having the Christmas tree there, and I'm a little sad to see it go.

Jer got to play with power tools when he chopped it into pieces small enough for the garbage truck to manage though, so that was okay.

After we'd gotten the tree taken down and Jer went back to playing Watch The Sick Child Breathe, I swept the eight bajillion pine needles out of the garage and then spent a while playing with sidewalk chalk. I wanted to figure out where the furniture would go in my craft space so I can figure out where to hang the shelves. I've drawn it out on paper, but it's easier for me to see what the flow of the space will be if I actually mark everything out on the floor, and since the floor is concrete that's not a problem. I drew all over the walls too for good measure, since we're painting them anyway.

It was great to see how everything will be laid out, and after viewing the space I made some changes in how I'm going to arrange things. Now I have to take down the old shelves and start the fun process of cleaning off the floors and walls. They've got about ten years of grime on them-- I'm pretty sure generations upon generations of spiders have lived out their little spiderly lives in here completely unchallenged-- so I'm not exactly looking forward to it, but it needs to be done. The sooner I get it cleaned up, the sooner I can start painting!

We'll see how much I get done tomorrow with the little guy home, though. I'll probably spend most of the day as a human armchair.

Oh well. I sure hope he feels better soon. It's never fun being sick!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is A Sickikin Again

2012-01-07T23:40:00.000-08:00

Well, Connor lasted all of a week and a half before getting sick again; he started running a fever this morning and by the time he went to bed he'd had four seizures and was throwing up at the drop of a hat. I guess all of his friends brought their holiday bugs to school and shared them with the rest of the class.

So that was fun and exciting. I spent some time at the pharmacy this morning and escaped for a little bit of shopping in the evening after Jer got home from the gym, but otherwise I was pretty much a comfortable pillow for the little guy.

So I passed the time by making another felt pincushion. Because what the heck, you can't have too many pincushions. I used a crème brûlée cup I found at the thrift store for fifty cents as the base, and while there are some things I'd do differently next time I think that overall it turned out pretty cute. It feels really weird for me to do a project that I can actually complete in one day-- I'm used to them dragging on for weeks. Anyway, I have some other little cups and whatnot, so I might experiment with more pincushions sometime if I want to do a short project.

I'm probably going to be doing quite a bit of sitting around over the next few days, so I might as well be productive while I'm at it.

~Jess

In Which I Have A Crafty Sort Of Day

2012-01-06T23:47:00.000-08:00

Today while Connor was at school, I drove downtown to browse the antique stores.

I've started to think about exactly what I want my craft/art studio to look like, and so I'm shopping for some of the things I'll need to make it look like it does in my head. I already have a lot of the things I'll need, like my card catalog (I'm lining the drawers with aromatic cedar and using it to store my felt), some apothecary jars for odds and ends, a large work table, and so on and so forth. I'm still missing quite a few things I'd like to have in my space, though. Because this will be a relatively small space we're carving out and I'll be using it for my creative pursuits, I feel like I should really go all out to make it pretty. That means the plywood shelves held up with huge grey brackets that currently are above and below the window in the space aren't going to cut it.

So my mission today was to find some wrought iron shelf brackets to anchor my shelving in the craft room. I didn't find any, but tucked up behind some other things in an out-of-the-way corner of one of the stores I found this glorious copper boiler, marked down to such a good price I knew it had to be mine. I'll need a gift wrapping and shipping station in my space if I'm going to try and make things to sell, and I figure this will be the perfect container to store my wrapping paper in.

I want to paint the one actual wall of the space (I have grand plans for room dividers made of unbleached canvas paint drop cloths, but we'll be here all night if I get started on those) the same dark gray as our bedroom, and use moss green and copper accents.

Speaking of which-- after Connor went down for bed tonight I decided I could get another quite project out of the way. The walls in the garage are currently painted dingy, ten-year old beige and have matching dingy, ten-year old outlet and light switch covers. I'm a total cheapskate, so I figured that rather than buy new outlet covers I'd just make over the ones already in the room. I had a bunch of copper paint and patina maker left over from my steampunk roller derby costume, so I figured I'd just try a little sanding and painting. These aren't the best pictures and the patina will continue to develop over time, but already they look a ton better than they did before.

After. Not designer, but vastly improved.

Before. Ew.

So anyway, while the first coat of copper paint was drying I figured I'd tackle another quick and easy craft project I've been meaning to do. The cats keep stealing my Makeshift-Scrap-Strip-Of-Felt-With-Needles-Jabbed-In-It pincushion and running around the house with it like it's a toy, which is not exactly good for the health of all parties involved. Something a little more substantial was needed. I dropped a clay cup a few months ago and chipped the rim of it, but thought it was too pretty to throw away. So I put a cardboard base inside it, sewed up a quick ball of felt and presto! One little mossy green pincushion. Jeremy says that with the pins in it "looks like a plant of death," which I'm taking as a compliment.

Ta da! Total work time: five minutes. Now that's my kind of project!

So it felt like a very productive day, even if I didn't really do all that much besides paint stuff and make a felt ball. Oh, and laundry of course. Every day is laundry day in this house the way Connor goes through shirts.

I can't wait to get my craft room up and running!

~Jess

In Which We Throw Off Connor's Groove

2012-01-05T22:57:00.000-08:00

Connor had his neurology appointment today in Seattle, so we spent the first half of the day there. We were interested to hear what Connor's neurologist had to say about his new diagnosis of anhidrosis; apparently one of his seizure medications can cause the condition as a side effect. However, the medication has also seemed to help Connor quite a bit; while on it we haven't seen a single seizure where he stops breathing completely. We're also not sure at all that the medication is what's causing the anhidrosis, as Jer and I haven't ever seen Connor sweat and he's only been on the Zonegran a few months. So it's difficult to know whether or not we should change the little guy's medication regime or not.

Connor's neurologist is going to consult with the head epileptologist and determine what the best game plan is going to be. It might be that we don't change anything, it might be that we try a different medication or that we revisit the possibility of the ketogenic diet. There's not a clear path here as to what the best treatment is going to be, so I'm sure they'll weigh the options very carefully.

After we left the neurologist's office we headed down the street to the giant Barnes and Noble where Connor usually gets his Reward Book. Connor always gets a book after each appointment where he does well (which is all of them, because he's a fantastically well-behaved kid) as part of our Make Sure Our Kid Who Sees Eight Bajillion Specialists Isn't Afraid of The Hospital campaign. We pulled up in the side parking lot of the bookstore, I got Connor out of the car, wheeled him around to the front of the building and stopped dead at the giant sign sitting out in front of the store. "Barnes and Noble Has Closed," it read. "To Purchase Books, Please Visit http://www.barnesandnoble.com." Apparently the bookstore didn't renew its lease.

Connor was not a happy camper, and it wasn't just because of the words his mommy was muttering under her breath. My child is a creature of habit. One of the reasons he does so well at hospital appointments is that we keep the routine the same every single time, and we go over the routine repeatedly before we leave and during the course of the day so that he knows exactly what to expect.

The routine goes:
1) Drive Into Town
2) Check In And Sit In Waiting Room
3) Go To Appointment And See Doctor
4) Get Labs Pulled
6) Leave Hospital And Drive To Bookstore
5) Buy Reward Book
6) Eat Lunch
7) Pick Up Salted Caramels For Daddy (there's a fantastic chocolate shop in the complex as well)
8) Drive Home

There was absolutely no room in this routine for "Stand In Front Of Closed Bookstore And Stare At Sign For Five Minutes While Trying To Figure Out Where Nearest Alternative Bookstore Is As Connor Gets Progressively More Upset." We weren't going to be visiting the bookstore's website; somehow I was pretty sure that showing him an online picture of The Reward Book We Can Buy Online wasn't really going to cut it.

And then Connor proceeded to lose his little mind while I tried to get us back on the rest of the routine as quickly as possible. We ate lunch, or at least I ate lunch as fast as I could and Connor yelled his head off, we stopped in the chocolate store where I bought chocolate and Connor angrily signed "No Don't Like Bad Want Go Bye Bye," and then we got back in the car and drove half an hour down the road to an almost identical Barnes and Noble, where Connor instantly reverted to his usual angelic self.

So we'll be rewriting our hospital visit routine to put the bookstore visit after lunch rather than before lunch, and hopefully if I rehearse it with him enough times we'll avoid a repeat performance of the giant meltdown he had today. That is if they'll quit shutting down my bookstores.

I like getting a Reward Book too.

~Jess

In Which We Watch A Tear-Jerker And I Survey My Shelves

2012-01-04T23:30:00.000-08:00

So today Connor and I watched the 25th anniversary DVD edition of Les Miserables in between loads of laundry. Well, I watched it, anyway-- Les Mis is not the most exciting movie ever for a five year old, though he did enthusiastically participate in some of the musical numbers. It's been a while since I've seen it because my 10th anniversary edition is VHS and we don't have a player for it right now, so I was psyched when I got the DVD for Christmas.

Les Miserables is my favorite musical of all time, despite the fact that it makes me weep uncontrollably for several hours. I've never seen it in person, but the 10th anniversary edition came out on video when I was 13 and I remember having sleepovers with my friends where we'd watch it together, sometimes multiple times a night. We'd all read the book, and we'd sit around and discuss it and the musical with passion most teenagers at the time reserved for the latest episodes of 90210. Nothing like a little 19th century literature to get the girls squealing, right? We were kind of strange kids.

Oh, and also we watched it because we thought the guy who played Marius was totally hot. So maybe we weren't that strange after all.

Anyway, so I was watching while folding laundry and bawling, and I realized that John Valjean, the character the book and musical revolve around, is an adoptive parent. That made me wonder just how many of our movies and books involve characters who are orphans.

Answer: a lot.

Out of curiosity I made up a list of the kids movies we have on our shelves that involve a main character who was either an orphan or a foundling, and here's what I came up with: Lilo and Stitch, The Sword And The Stone, Jungle Book, Tangled, Snow White, Enchanted, Cinderella, The Little Princess, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Anne of Green Gables, Harry Potter, Oliver, Hercules, The Rescuers, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Peter Pan, James And The Giant Peach, Tarzan, Anastasia, The Secret Garden, Stuart Little, and of course, Annie. Whew!

And that's just the movies. Orphans in books-- especially young adult and childrens' books-- are so prevalent that I actually studied the Orphan Archetype in one of my literature classes. If I listed all of the books I have on my shelves that contain orphan protagonists we'd be here all night. And I'm pretty sure it's not just because I have an insane number of books and an eye for fictional characters that are plucky young orphans.

I wonder which of the books and movies Ellen will identify with! Of course I hope she'll enjoy Les Miserables (and there's a chance she will, because the DVD version I have stars one of the Jonas Brothers and I've been informed by the teenage daughter of a friend that he is "like, still totally hot, even though they are so not cool now"). I'm kind of curious now as to just how many kids books and movies are out there that feature a Plucky Young Orphan protagonist. I looked for a list online, but haven't been able to find anything. If one of you knows of a list, will you point me in the right direction?

~Jess

In Which We Go To The Doctor's Office But Not For Connor, Which Was Kind Of Weird Because It Pretty Much Never Happens

2012-01-03T23:12:00.000-08:00

So Connor and I stopped briefly by the house after his school day was over and then hopped back into the car to go visit the doctor. This time we were going for me for a change; my left shoulder has been bothering me for a couple of weeks. I can't remember any specific traumatic incident that started the pain, but I had no doubt it was derby related; slamming into other players and the floor repeatedly on that side probably had something to do with it.

The doctor did a whole bunch of holding my arm in various positions and asking me how much it hurt, testing how strong the shoulder was, etc. and then gave me a diagnosis. Turns out I have shoulder impingement syndrome. Now in my case, it's less likely that it was caused by poor posture, weak muscles or repetitive overhead arm movements and more likely that it's due to the aforementioned slamming into people and/or the floor (rotator cuff injuries seem to be extremely common in roller derby), but the end result is the same. I'll be spending a few weeks icing the bejeezus out of it, using anti-inflammatory topical gel and resting the arm as much as possible so that it doesn't turn into a rotator cuff tear, which would be significantly more nasty.

Whee!

~Jess

In Which I Am Probably High On Paint Fumes But Get Some Stuff Done

2012-01-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

So I took the opportunity today while Connor was at school to start tackling the Hazardous Materials Corner we've had sitting in our garage since we bought the house. These are all the glorious gifts the old owners left us, like the car battery in the hall closet, the half-full container of boat fuel, and various unidentified substances sitting around in unlabeled containers. I've been slowly whittling away at it for a while, but one thing I had yet to do was tackle the old latex paint cans we found scattered throughout the house and garage.

Here's my glorious bounty of paint, people. The oldest can I found was dated 1992. It was, predictably, white. There are fifteen cans of white paint there (look at the lids, not interior of the cans-- that is some old paint), and nearly all of them are the same color: Whisper White. These people really liked Whisper White. Some of them are almost entirely full.

Those cans are from two owners back, and you can tell because they are all lovingly labeled with the date they were mixed, the color of the paint and the room they were intended for. Evidently they believed they needed a new, fresh can of paint for each room. So there are labels like: "Wally's Bathroom, December 1993, Whisper White" and "Kitchen, August 1996, Whisper White," and, in a startling design departure: "Wally's Room, September 1994, Pure White."

Bold move, Wally. Bold move.

Then there are the paint cans from the people we bought the house from. There are two cans of unlabeled white paint that I know are theirs from the date printed on the can, and then there are the only three non-white cans in this whole thing: the extra paint from what is now Connor's room, formally known as the Dartboard Room of Death.

Just back away slowly and make no sudden movements. It can sense your fear.

Apparently they painted this room in 2006, which means they must have liked it because they actually lived with it for three entire years before they sold the house to us. Their designer room ideas seem to have petered out after that though, because I'm pretty sure they didn't touch the rest of the paint in the house; it all looked suspiciously like ten year old Whisper White when we bought the place. This is a good thing though, because Connor's room was one of the smallest in the house. I don't even want to think how much Kilz we would have needed if they'd decided to make over the living room.

So at any rate, with latex paint you just have to let it dry out and then you can throw it away in your regular garbage. I pried open the lids of all of these cans, and I'll probably add some kitty litter or paint hardener to the really full ones to speed up the process. Then we'll haul the whole mess to the dump along with our next load of Dangerous Things The Previous Owners Couldn't Bother To Get Rid Of Themselves.

No, really. This is about half of it.

Fun times!

~Jess

P.S.: Bonus Fact! I've just been informed that apparently the exterior of the White House was, at least in 1989, painted Duron Whisper White. Who knew? Apparently we had the most patriotic house interior on the block, before we ruined it all by painting it mostly Sherwin-Williams Latte instead. Oh well.

In Which Our Landfill Is A Playground

2012-01-01T23:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, so at some point I'll tell you all about our New Year's, which was a lot of fun, but I have to share this story with you first.

Yesterday afternoon Jeremy and I took another load of junk not fit for the thrift store or the recycling bin from our garage to the land fill. Next to us, a man in a truck with a trailer attached pulled in. The first thing I noticed was that he was throwing stuff on the giant mound of garbage while wearing flip flops.

I glanced at the concrete floor, which was covered in a thin sludge with an oily rainbow sheen, and shrugged. Then I heard a high pitched giggle and a couple of shrieks. I looked over again.

This guy had two kids with him-- probably both under the age of seven. And they were playing in the garbage.

They were shrieking and running around on top of the huge, smelly mound of trash, tearing open black garbage bags, pulling things out of the mound to examine, and at one point, pelting each other with bits of unidentifiable rubbish. Something about a dead rat was mentioned. One boy found a small, dented metal trash bin, turned it upside down to tip the garbage out and then wore it as a hat. The boys would drag whatever they'd found over to their dad, who would then throw it back on the pile without comment. They were still at it when we left.

I mean, dumpster diving is one thing, but I draw the line at allowing children to have garbage fights and use unwashed trashcans as headgear. I hope those kids took long, long showers when they got home. Also I hope that they're up to date on their tetanus shots.

Wow.

~Jess

In Which It's 2012, Can You Believe It?

2011-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone!

It's very late, so I'll just have to fill you in on how the day went tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I hope that every one of you had a truly lovely evening.

Sláinte!

~Jess

In Which We Go On A Date And Plan A New Project

2011-12-30T23:55:00.000-08:00

Today Jeremy and I took advantage of our respite care to actually go out and see the second Sherlock Holmes movie. We don't go to the movies very often; I think the last one we probably saw in the theater was the first Sherlock Holmes movie. At any rate we enjoyed ourselves, though we both didn't think it was anything spectacular.

We also spent some time discussing what we'd like to do with the garage over the next few months. We have a two car garage, but we can't keep the van in it because we wouldn't have enough room to get the ramp down. Also our garage has stairs up to the house so we'd end up having to take the little guy up the front walk anyway. Someday we'll put a lift on the garage stairs, but it hasn't been a priority. Actually right now we can't fit any cars in it because it's full of stuff from our remodel and also Ellen's bed, which has yet to be assembled as we haven't gotten rid of the futon currently occupying that space in her room yet. But I digress-- the point is that we have a two car garage and only one car that we can put in it.

So we've decided to devote the other half of the garage space to a craft area for me. My former craft space was Ellen's room, which we are ever so slowly cleaning out. I've been trying to do my sewing on the dining room table instead, but this is proving to be sort of difficult because the cats are also highly interested in my craft projects.

This means that I either have to put absolutely everything away every time I'm going to be away from the table or else resign myself to the fact that my embroidery thread, felt, needles, etc. will need to be retrieved from underneath various pieces of furniture before I can resume work. When I'm in the middle of a project I like being able to pick up immediately where I left off, so this isn't working out well for me. Not to mention the fact that one of these days a cat is going to swallow the wrong thing and we're going to end up with a very expensive vet trip and/or a very dead cat.

We're not going to actually enclose the garage for a number of reasons. First of all, there's no way I want to do that much work. Secondly, we don't want to increase the square footage of our house and have to pay more taxes. Also if we decided sometime years and years down the road that we needed to sell the house for whatever reason, buyers would generally choose to have a two-car garage over a craft room. Luckily we live in an area with a pretty temperate climate. I can heat the garage with a space heater when I'm out there in the winter time, and I can open up the garage door in the summer if I need some air. Our garage actually has a large window and good lighting too, so working out there shouldn't really be a problem.

But even though we're not converting the garage to an enclosed space, there are plenty of things we can do to make it a great crafting studio for me. I'd like to stain and seal the concrete floor, put down a rug and hang some curtains, paint the walls and add some more shelving and storage and a picture or two. The craft space could still be easily converted back to a regular garage in the future if we needed to, but it would make it much more pleasant for me in the meantime. And of course the garage is a cat free zone, so that would solve that problem. While it probably won't be the ideal space, it's certainly better than the dining room table! And I really need an area to exercise my creative pursuits somewhere in my living space; I've pretty much always had a corner somewhere and it would be fantastic to stretch out a bit!

I'll be sure to take some before and after photos and let you all know how it goes!

~Jess

In Which We Take A Post-Holiday Field Trip

2011-12-29T23:30:00.000-08:00

Connor finally crashed at 4:00am last night, but he's actually gone to bed on time tonight! So this will be a short blog post because I intend to take full advantage of the chance to get some sleep.

Connor and I spent a quiet day together slowly putting the house back to rights after the glorious mess that was Christmas, and then as soon as Jer got home we piled into the van and drove to see the Fantasy Lights display at one of our local parks. The Christmas lights are on display in the park until right before New Year's Day, and because we chose to wait to see them until after Christmas there was no wait time and there were only a few cars ahead of us on the path, which was pretty fantastic. Connor brought his Gobo doll along to see the lights too. He's more excited about that doll than I've seen him get about any of his toys for a while, so we like to encourage it when we can. I'm going to need to figure out pretty quickly if Gobo is washable, though, because he is getting drooled and chewed on in a major way. Oh well.

Anyway, Connor seemed to really enjoy the lights, which took us about half an hour to drive through. There were plenty of displays that moved (fish jumped over the car, Santa shot presents out of a cannon, dragons breathed fire, etc.) and they captured his attention pretty well. He was extremely quiet through most of the car ride, which is unusual for him, and then when we got to the end of the park he started making noise again. I'm not sure what his expression looked like because I was driving so I couldn't really look back at him a lot, but Jer said he looked like he was pretty fascinated by the whole affair. And Jer and I enjoyed ourselves too.

I think we'll make this a holiday tradition!

~Jess

In Which Connor Misses The Sleep Train And Not Much Happens

2011-12-28T23:50:00.000-08:00

Well so much for that whole sleeping-through-the-night thing. Connor must be feeling better, because he's resuming his old sleeping habits. It's almost one in the morning right now and he's still going strong. I am not terribly thrilled by this development; I've gotten used to getting a full night's sleep and it's going to be difficult to get back into Connor's usual groove.

Oh well. I guess that's what caffeine is for.

Jeremy was off of work today, so Joanna came over in the morning. Then Jer and I ventured out for a few hours to spend some quality time together. We stopped by the coffee shop, the library, took a load to the local landfill (romantic, I know) and just enjoyed each other's company for a while. I'm seriously spoiled having him home so much right now with the holidays, and I'm going to miss having these sorts of fun outings when his normal work routine resumes.

It's just so nice having him here!

~Jess

In Which Much Gets Done

2011-12-27T23:53:00.000-08:00

So today ended up being relatively productive.

Joanna came over this morning and I did a tiny bit of cleaning and then headed out to run errands and play. Mostly I played. Because hey, it's still technically Christmas vacation, right? Then after she left and Connor had his quiet time we went out to the hair salon and the little guy got his hair cut, thereby instantly rendering him eighty gabillion years older. At least his hair isn't in his eyes anymore, though, and he is no longer dangerously close to sporting a mullet. Here's a ridiculous picture of us post-Connor's haircut so you can see how it looks; me making a crazy, slightly squinty-eyed face, Gobo looking extremely traumatized and Connor looking kind of put-upon and embarrassed for us all.

At least his hair looks good.

I also commissioned a painting today, which I'm pretty excited about. While we have a lot of Asian-influenced artwork in our house we don't have anything that's specifically Thai related. That's something I'd like to change before Ellen gets here. We don't need to cover our house in elephants and Khon masks or anything, but I do think it's important that we show we're proud of Ellen's culture and heritage. And also I think Thai-influenced artwork is beautiful in its own right, so I'd want it in our house anyway. While I'm sure we'll probably pick up some artwork in Thailand when we travel, I'd like a piece or two already up in the house before we go.

In particular I've been looking for portraits of Thai women. I love paintings of strong, interesting women that tell a story, but I hadn't been able to find any I liked that weren't way, way out of my price range.

For that matter, it's kind of difficult to find interesting paintings of Asian women period. Oh, I can find all kinds of paintings depicting the exotic, submissive, delicate-flower stereotype, but that's not exactly the kind of thing I want hanging up in my house, you know? Ellen will have enough problems with that stereotype outside the house: no need to perpetuate it inside our walls. I turned to Etsy, my favorite place in the universe for amazingly affordable, incredibly gorgeous art, to solve my problem.

So the incredibly talented Renee Nault, whose paintings I absolutely adore, will be taking on my commission. I can't wait to see what she comes up with! You should go check out her artwork. Seriously. It's beautiful stuff.

Anyway, I'll continue to slowly build my collection of Thai-influenced artwork over the next few months. It'll give me another way to feel connected to her as we continue our long wait to bring her home!

~Jess

In Which My Child Is Rip Van Winkle And It's Fantastic

2011-12-26T23:30:00.000-08:00

So there's one major advantage to the ridiculous month and a half of Connor's All Diseases, All The Time saga we've been living.

For the first time in literally years, my child has been consistently sleeping through the night.

Not only that, but he's been taking actual naps during the day, too. This is pretty much unprecedented in our household. I mean, yeah, my kid is probably only sleeping because his body is exhausted after combating, over a five week period, strep throat, RSV, a g-tube infection, double pink eye and this latest GI bug, so I'm not sure how long this is going to last, but let me tell you I have been taking full advantage of the situation and will continue to do so as long as I possibly can.

Honestly it feels a little weird, getting a whole eight hours of sleep (or more!) a night, and the occasional nap as well. It's been so long since I've gone a full week without staying up until three or four in the morning that my body clock is all wonky, and the first few nights Connor dropped off right after we put him down I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a long time, trying to fall asleep through sheer willpower and failing miserably. Now I'm getting a full nights rest and actually dreaming again (or remembering my dreams, anyway) for the first time in months: probably because I'm actually getting through a couple of uninterrupted sleep cycles.

I've always had incredibly vivid, multiple-night dream sagas with complicated storylines-- which is probably yet more evidence of just how strange I actually am-- and I've missed them. I can usually pick up where I left off the night before when I go to sleep, and sometimes I can direct what happens in them, though they usually contain bits and pieces of my day mixed up in them. My dreams have been heavy on velociraptors and bears recently; probably because Jeremy is home and keeps singing songs about their epic battles to Connor. Oh well. It's just nice to have dreams again.

Oh, and another major side effect of getting enough sleep is that I'm not having to slather on the concealer so that my Giant Under-Eye Circles Of Doom aren't the main feature of my face. Also I'm not needing massive amounts of caffeine just to function normally. That's kind of nice too.

So while I'm hoping that the little guy will get better soon and quit playing Pass The Germs with everyone he meets, I wouldn't mind if he made a habit out of the going-to-bed-on-time thing! I could really get used to this sleep stuff. Velociraptors and all.

~Jess

In Which We Wish You A Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T23:45:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Best wishes to you all!

~Jess

In Which Christmas Is Upon Us And In The Case Of One Family Member Is Already Here

2011-12-24T23:45:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas Eve, and Santa has come and gone, leaving the stockings filled and brunch laid out for Connor to discover tomorrow morning. The little guy has been asleep for hours; ten seizures today left him wrung out and cut short our plans for a walk in the park and for viewing the neighborhood Christmas lights. He's picked up some sort of GI bug that's making him miserable right now. Of course he still had the energy to snuggle up to Jer and I and give us some little giggles and smiles in between seizures today, because that's how our brave sunshiney boy is. Hopefully things will be better for him when he wakes up on Christmas morning.

It's already Christmas morning for Ellen; there's about a fifteen hour time difference between Puyallup and where she lives in Thailand. Christmas is not widely celebrated in Thailand, so it may be a day just like any other for her. We're looking forward to introducing her to all of our holiday traditions next year if she's home.

Of course I wish she was here to celebrate with us now! Our dossier has now been in Thailand about nine and a half months, which is how long Ellen has known about us. If our wait is hard, I can't imagine what hers is like. She's an extremely brave girl to be open to starting over in a new country with a family of strangers. I'm not sure that in the same situation I'd have that kind of fortitude. I haven't even met her yet and I'm already proud of her.

I think she and her brother already have a lot in common.

~Jess

In Which We'll Be Home For Christmas

2011-12-23T23:40:00.000-08:00

Connor had six seizures today, which wasn't exactly encouraging. He spent most of the day sleeping or snuggling with one of us. It's hard to see him so exhausted.

He's got an appointment with neurology next week, and we'll see if they want to adjust his medications in any way. Connor had such a hard year health-wise, and I'm hoping that maybe next year will be a little better for him. Right now there's not a whole lot more we can do for him when he gets in a seizure cycle like this other than keep him comfortable and let him know that we're there for him. It's extremely frustrating as a parent that I can't just wave a magic wand and fix this.

So we'll be spending Christmas quietly at home this year. Normally we travel to Texas for Christmas, but this year we'd decided to stay here because we're saving up for our eventual trip to Thailand for our adoption. I think it's probably best that we've stayed here this year, though; Connor would have a very difficult time with travel right now. He's never had a seizure on a plane, and I think we'd like to keep that track record for as long as we can.

It looks like Christmas in our house; the presents are piled high up under the tree, our stockings hang from the mantle and our entryway table is covered with cards from family and friends wishing us well in the holiday season. Still it feels a little lonely to me.

In the nearly eleven years that Jeremy and I have been in a relationship, this will make only the third year that we haven't traveled to be with our large extended family for Christmas. I grew up with Christmas time as an impromptu family reunion every year; my parents' house overflowed with relatives and Christmas morning was a noisy, joyous affair where we had so many people crammed in the living room to open presents that the children ended up sitting on the floor. While I love living up here in the Pacific Northwest, I find myself keenly missing that sort of hustle and bustle right now.

Still there's something nice about having a laid-back, quiet Christmas. Certainly that's what's best for the little guy right now. And maybe next year we'll be able to get down that way. Or alternatively, we'll manage to convince all of our relatives to move up here from Texas. I'm pretty sure the house next door will be up for sale soon.

I'll just wait until July and start constantly talking about our 70 degree summer weather. Pretty sure that'll do the trick.

~Jess

In Which We Go To The Doctor

2011-12-22T23:56:00.000-08:00

Connor had his GI doctor's appointment this morning.

It went really well! Connor's g-tube site looks fantastic, and there's no need for him to go up a size in tubes yet. The doctor was a little surprised that Connor hasn't ever had to go up a size since the tube was installed about two years ago. I pointed out that the kid has only gained two pounds since we saw the GI department last year. The doctor said that normally he'd be concerned, but that Connor looks proportional and has "a healthy layer of subcutaneous fat," by which he probably meant that the kid has a bit of pudge around his middle. So he's not worried that Connor is small. Also I totally want to use that expression in public. "I have a healthy layer of subcutaneous fat" sounds way more sophisticated than "I've been eating too much ice cream recently and I'm kinda pudgy."

So Connor's clear for another year as far as GI goes, which is pretty fantastic. I love it when appointments go quickly and smoothly. I wish it would happen more often!

The little guy seemed to feel a little better today, and his fever was down so hopefully whatever it was that was driving his temperature up is passing. We think he might have had a bit of a stomach bug. Since we were on post around lunch time for his doctor's appointment, we met up with Jeremy for lunch. Then afterwards we went shopping for the last of the Christmas presents I needed to get, because procrastination is pretty much my middle name this year. They are all wrapped and sitting under the tree now. Or at least they were wrapped for a while this afternoon, before the cats discovered there were tasty new presents to chew on down there. We'll see how long it takes before they shred the wrapping paper.

Some people are probably going to be getting their presents after Christmas but in my defense it's been sort of a crazy month. I'm just hoping that Connor's health will hold for a while and we can get back into a normal routine.

The kid deserves a break!

~Jess

In Which We Are Fingerprinted And I Receive An Unusual Compliment

2011-12-21T23:50:00.000-08:00

So this morning we went in to get our fingerprints redone. It wasn't nearly as crowded as the last time we went in; I don't know if we just got lucky or if fewer people have fingerprinting appointments during the holidays. At any rate, we were in and out this time within twenty minutes.

They use a digital machine these days-- none of that ink-and-paper business. The lady who did my fingerprints was very quiet until she put my first finger on the scanner, which is when her whole face lit up. "You have beautiful fingerprints!" she gushed. "They are perfect. So easy to take. It is a pleasure to work with fingerprints like yours."

Now that's not a compliment you hear very often.

This woman sees hundreds of fingerprints every day, so of course mine must be truly exceptional if they made her exclaim over them. So now I'm thinking maybe I should look into a career as a fingerprint model. I'm sure there's a huge demand for that sort of thing, for crime shows and mystery book covers and whatnot. I'll be waiting to hear from an agent. The deals should be rolling in soon.

As we were walking back to the car, I accosted Jeremy. "Why don't you ever compliment me about my fingerprints?" I asked him. "Why do I have to hear about them from someone else?"

Men. Really.

So anyway, now we've got that finished again and hopefully we won't have to redo it before Ellen comes home. It would be fantastic if we could travel sometime in 2012! I guess we'll just have to see what the new year brings.

Besides me starting a glove collection, of course. I have to protect my best feature from wear and tear!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Sick Again

2011-12-20T23:52:00.000-08:00

The good news is that Connor's eyes (yes, he ended up with pink eye in both eyes) look about 800% better after a day and a half of eye drops. Those things work fast! The bad news is that he's once again running a mystery fever. He spent about two thirds of the day asleep today and crashed hard when it was time for bed. So it looks like he's picking up a new bug. Again. Fun times.

Jer and I have to leave him with Joanna tomorrow morning despite him feeling punky, though, because we've got our fingerprinting appointment for our adoption USCIS update. I'm a little unsure of why they have to take our fingerprints again; I wouldn't think they would have changed all that much. Oh well. At any rate, once we get this taken care of and they prove that we haven't morphed into different people in the past year we should be cleared for Ellen's adoption until early 2013. I'm hoping that this is the only time we'll have to update our immigration paperwork and that she'll be home before then!

~Jess

2011-12-19T23:27:00.000-08:00

My monthly blog for Hopeful Parents is up! You can find it over here.

In Which Connor Is Full Of Germs Yet Again

2011-12-18T23:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, now Connor seems to have an eye infection going. Either that or he managed to scratch his right eye at some point during the day, because we noticed this evening that it's all red, crusty and weepy. It seemed fine this morning. Whee!

Look, I swear I bathe my kid and everything. While sometimes the sink fills up with dishes and our laundry sits longer than it should, our house does not look like it should be featured on "Hoarders." I have no idea why all of the sudden he seems to be trying to break some sort of record for as many ailments as possible within the shortest amount of time. While I'm always proud of my son's achievements, I'm not particularly thrilled with this one.

So I'll be calling the doctor's office again tomorrow to get him an appointment set up before he, I don't know, catches the bubonic plague or something.

What the heck is up with my child's immune system?

~Jess

In Which I Bout Banked And Loki Has An Adventure Of His Own

2011-12-17T23:59:00.000-08:00

I survived the banked track! And I didn't break anything! And also it was a ton of fun!

So the bout ended up being pretty close-- the final score was Killer Bs 184, Dockyard 150. I'm not entirely sure how many lead changes there were, but we seesawed back and forth quite a bit, so it was probably a pretty exciting bout to watch. It certainly was exciting to play! I'll have some new bruises, but didn't end up with any major trauma.

Jer wasn't able to make it to this bout because we didn't have respite care for the little guy and the bout was over an hour away, making it a pretty long trip for Connor. So he took advantage of the lovely day and drove down to a local park for a long walk, just the two of them. They weren't the only ones who wanted to enjoy a day outdoors, though-- Loki ran outside as Jer was bringing the wheelchair back into the house, and Jeremy was preoccupied with maneuvering the chair over the threshold and didn't notice.

So I got home around 11:00pm from the bout and was in the kitchen eating dinner when I started hearing this really pathetic meow. It sounded like Loki was stuck somewhere, which happens pretty often as he likes to dart into closets right before the door closes and manages to trap himself inside our Lazy Susan at least once a week. I started wandering around the house looking for him and finally realized that the sound was coming from outside our front door. I opened it up and there on the porch was a thoroughly miserable and very cold cat. He'd apparently spent about seven hours out there, doing who knows what. Given the sheer destructive tendencies he exhibits we're probably lucky there wasn't an international incident or something. This is the Cat That Could Topple Nations, which is one of the reasons we don't let him outside.

At any rate, Loki is now running around the house on a complete tear, making sure that every single thing in the entire house is in the exact same place where he left it. Cricket, who is convinced that Loki disappeared and was replaced by a Stranger Cat, is slinking around after him, hissing whenever he gets within three feet of her and trying to prevent him from, I don't know, making off with the silver or something. After venturing outdoors he is obviously a cat who is Not To Be Trusted.

So all sorts of new adventures happened in this house today!

Crazy cat.

~Jess

In Which We All Take A Pajama Day

2011-12-16T23:51:00.000-08:00

I spent a good portion of today sleeping-- I slept through all of Connor's school time. Jer came home just as I was walking out the door to pick up Connor from school, and then when the little guy actually went down for a nap the two of us crashed and the whole family slept until about two in the afternoon. So all in all I slept for about five hours today. I'm pretty sure we all badly needed the sleep. Connor is officially on Christmas vacation now so I won't be taking any more naps while he's at school for a while, but I'm feeling greatly recovered already so hopefully it will be a moot point. I'm really tired of being sick.

Tomorrow is my bout on the banked track, which I'm looking forward to and nervous about all at the same time. It should be a whole lot of fun! Banked track derby is a whole different animal from the flat track variety, so hopefully I'll manage to pull this off without breaking any vital body parts. I'll let you all know how it goes. Since I'm still at only about two-thirds of my usual lung capacity, it will be an exercise in endurance for sure.

Wish me luck!

~Jess

In Which I Go To Bed Right This Very Second

2011-12-15T23:50:00.000-08:00

This is going to be pretty much the shortest blog in the world. I just got back late from a derby scrimmage, (scrimmaging with no lung capacity is a great endurance workout, by the way) sleep is calling me and, believe it or not, Connor is actually down tonight so I can go to bed when I want to and everything! So here, instead of me writing a blog and being all responsible or whatever, you can look at a picture of that Chinese dragon stocking I did. The photo was taken by the talented Jeff Bischoff, so I'm not even going to be responsible for that. Oh well.

And that's about all the effort I'm going to put into this thing tonight. My bed is calling me.

Yay for Chinese dragons! And sleep! Not necessarily in that order!

~Jess

In Which Jer Stays Home And I Nap And Nap Some More

2011-12-14T23:49:00.000-08:00

Today Jer was feeling so lousy that he actually stayed home from work, which is an unprecedented thing around here. Those of you who know Jer personally are probably aware of his legendary cast-iron immune system, so for him to not only get sick but to be so sick that he actually has to visit a doctor is pretty crazy. We took turns taking care of Connor, who was off of school today, while the other person mostly napped.

I did have to leave the house briefly to take back our library books, though. They were due shortly after Connor started getting really sick, so they were, um, a little late. Since I was already downtown I popped by Pioneer Bakery and picked up some of their homemade chicken soup for dinner. That stuff is amazing-- they make their own noodles and everything-- and it's the perfect I'm Sick And Don't Want To Cook Anything food. Oh, and then I stopped by the cheese store. Also the little tiny bookstore. And then I went home for a nap, because I was all tuckered out.

I'm not normally a napper-- I usually wind up groggy for the rest of the day if I take one. But since I'm pretty much groggy all the time right now it doesn't really matter, so I'm napping while I can.

Apparently this RSV stuff normally lasts one to two weeks, which I am totally completely thrilled with as you might guess. I figure I'm just going to have to start dragging myself out of the house to get things done, because dang it, Christmas is about a week and a half away and if I wait until I'm well to finish all the things I need to do than everyone will get their presents around New Year's or so.

But probably I'm not going to get them done tomorrow. It's a school day for Connor tomorrow, and I already have plans for the time he'll be gone.

I'm taking a nap.

~Jess

In Which I'm Really Tired Of Blogging About Illness So Can We Just Be Well Around Here Already

2011-12-13T23:31:00.000-08:00

I had a whole lot of plans for today; I was going to mail all the packages I have to go out, get the house cleaned up and catch up on my correspondence-- the number of e-mails I have yet to answer is fast reaching critical levels. But instead I spent the entire time Connor was at school sitting on the couch drinking a cup of tea very, very slowly and staring off into space. Jeremy even came home early, and instead of being all industrious I used the opportunity to fall asleep fully clothed face down on our bed. Methinks this cold has me kind of wiped.

Well, and the fact that Connor stayed up until three in the morning. That didn't help matters.

So I didn't get much done. The cats thought it was pretty great though; as far as they were concerned I was a giant heating pad just for their convenience, and they spent most of the day draped over me putting various body parts to sleep and giving me extremely wounded looks every time I tried to move.

I'm getting really tired about blogging about various people being sick around here, though. For Pete's sake, can we move on to something else in this household?

~Jess

In Which Connor And I Switch Places And I Try A Sewing Experiment

2011-12-12T23:53:00.000-08:00

I feel kind of like death warmed over right now, and Jeremy is about the same. Connor is back to his usual cheerful (if slightly more snotty) self. This is making for Fun Times in our household right now. Things are kind of backwards; usually it's us pushing Connor to do a bunch of stuff that he doesn't want to do. Right now he's screamy, happy and ready for play time, and the only thing I want to do is see whether or not it's possible to pile all of the blankets in the house on top of my body without suffocating.

That might be a slight exaggeration-- I'm not quite that sick yet. I snuck off to the coffee shop (where I was extra careful not to cough on anyone) and everything. But I'm moving kind of slowly, that's for sure.

So I set Connor up with some switch toys he could play with himself and did more sewing today, as it was something I could accomplish while moving as little as possible. I finished up the dragon stocking and began work on the next one in my queue. This one will be a butterfly stocking. I've only just started it and it should have quite a bit of detail work (along with the dreaded metallic embroidery thread), so we'll see how quickly it goes.

I'm going to try using two layers of felt for the wings, decorating each visible side and then attaching them to the stocking only at the body of the butterfly, hopefully making them three dimensional. It's an experiment-- if it doesn't work out it won't take much work to just go back to one layer and not have them stand out from the stocking. It makes for a lot more sewing, but I think it will look pretty cool if I can pull off what it looks like in my head. I don't need to have this one done by Christmas, so the deadline isn't quite so urgent.

We'll see what happens!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Back To His Usual Antics

2011-12-11T23:50:00.000-08:00

It's pretty late right now and I'm tired, so this is going to be a short blog post. Not that I'll actually be going to bed; Connor feels well enough now that he's decided to resume his glorious sleeping habits, so he's currently singing to himself in his room. He's also making what we call his "Silent Raptor Of Doom" noise. Basically it's an airy hiss-- kind of like if a velociraptor was roaring at you very, very quietly. It's one of his favorite noises to make.

Anyway, we'll see what he looks like tomorrow, but I'm fairly sure I'll be sending him back to school, which I'm sure he will be pretty excited about. Connor absolutely loves school, so he always gets antsy when he's on the mend and still isn't allowed to go. Of course winter break is coming up really quickly, but at least we're going to get him back in for more than one day between Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Speaking of the holidays-- at some point this week we plan to take Connor out to view the drive-through light park near our town. It's the largest Christmas light show in the Pacific Northwest, with two miles worth of lights, and Connor goes absolutely nuts over it. It's one of his favorite things to do during the season. We try and go on a weekday because the wait to get into the park on the weekends is pretty insane. I'll let you all know how it goes.

So I'm going to go sit in bed now and telepathically will my child to sleep. I've tried just about everything else, so it can't hurt, right?

~Jess

In Which I Indulge In Some Giving Therapy

2011-12-10T22:29:00.001-08:00

I was feeling a little out of sorts today, so I dropped by our local grocery store where a food drive was going on.

I had to go to the grocery store anyway because we needed some cough drops; it looks like Jeremy and I are both coming down with something. I'm assuming it's either strep throat or RSV. My bet is on RSV, because I'm pretty sure we're both out of the incubation period window for contracting Connor's strep throat. The good news is that Connor sounded significantly better today, and I think he's probably out of the woods as far as the possibility of pneumonia or bronchitis are concerned. With any lucky he'll actually be able to go to school on Monday. Whoo hoo!

But anyway, back to the food drive. When I'm down in the dumps I like to indulge in what I call "giving therapy." Basically it's like retail therapy, only instead of buying things for me I'm giving something to somebody else-- in this case, goods for the food bank. It doesn't have to be something with monetary value; doing something nice for somebody else just makes me feel better. It always reminds me of that old poem by an unknown author:

How To Be Happy

                                         Are you almost disgusted with life, little lad?
                                              I'll tell you a wonderful trick.
                                         That will bring you contentment, if anything can,
                                              Do something for somebody, quick!

                                        Are you awfully tired of play, little girl?
                                              Wearied, discouraged and sick--
                                        I'll tell you the loveliest game in the world,
                                              Do something for somebody, quick!

                                        Though it rains, like the rain of the flood, little man,
                                             And the clouds are forbidding and thick,
                                        You can make the sun shine in your soul, little man,
                                             Do something for somebody, quick!

Though the stars are like brass overhead, little girl,

And the walks like a well-heated brick,

And our earthly affairs in a terrible whirl,

Do something for somebody, quick!

Only in my head, it's recited by Boris Badenov and is modified to "Do something to somebody, quick!" I blame it on my Rocky-And-Bullwinkle-heavy childhood. And also on the fact that I'm weird.

Anyway, apparently by helping other people (note-- actually helping, not helping the Boris Badenov way) I'm doing myself a favor too-- science backs me up on this one. Turns out that helping people can not only make you feel better, but it can actually make you live longer too! Crazy, huh? Plus I'm not much of one for retail therapy-- I don't really need more stuff.

Besides chocolate of course. I can always use more chocolate.

~Jess

In Which Things Are Finally Looking Up

2011-12-09T23:48:00.000-08:00

Today was about eight hundred bazillion times better, I'm glad to say. Not only does Connor seem to be finally on the mend, but Jeremy is home. He went to San Diego for a few days, which is part of the reason why things have been so crazy around here. I just didn't mention it before because, you know, Internet Safety and all. Anyway, so Jeremy is home and I actually got to leave the house today for some place other than the doctor's office, pharmacy or hospital! You know, social type things!

Oh, and also we are now fully restocked on chocolate. Crisis averted.

So this little venture in Really Sicky Sick Time While Daddy Is Away taught me a couple of important lessons. The first lesson is that I should probably start practicing asking for help when I need it. I'm not very good at asking people to do things for me, so I probably need to go ahead and work out who I'm going to call when, for whatever reason, I'm restricted to the house and Jer is gone. I really need somebody to do things like go to the grocery store for me so I don't run out of food. Either that or I need to figure out which grocery stores in the area offer a delivery service. Also the cats would probably appreciate being fed while I'm at the hospital with Connor. You know-- little stuff like that.

Oh and heck, just for the social time. I'm not the most extroverted person in the world, but I do need the occasional face-to-face interaction with other adults to keep me from going absolutely insane. Or any more insane than I already am, anyway.

The second lesson is that I'm going to need to be more organized. When Connor goes into Sleep Deprivation mode and I get a little punch drunk (like now) from lack of shut-eye, if I don't write it down it doesn't happen. At some point in the future we're going to have two kids with twice the amount of things to coordinate, and so I'd better figure out a more efficient system so I don't start dropping balls when I've had no sleep and no one around to let me catch up on it during the weekends.

So anyway, hopefully Connor is on the mend and it will be a long, long time before we see the inside of a hospital again for anything other than a routine appointment. And I'm going to take advantage of the fact that Jeremy is home again and take a nice, long nap tomorrow. And then I will eat a whole lot of chocolate to help me recover from the ordeal this week has been.

What could be better?

~Jess

In Which Connor Doesn't Work Up A Sweat

2011-12-08T23:01:00.001-08:00

Today we discovered a fun new medical diagnosis to add to Connor's long, long list of really rare stuff that I get to freak out about all the time. This morning I packed my still-miserable child in the car and drove him down to the hospital for a sweat test we've had scheduled for a while.

See, I've mentioned on here a few times that so far as we know, Connor doesn't sweat. We've certainly never seen him do it. But we didn't have an official diagnosis, and for a variety of reasons it was important for us to know whether or not he does in fact sweat. To tell you the truth, I figured he probably did, my "momtuition" was wrong, and he just hadn't been doing a whole lot of things that would make him sweat. I mean, it's not like the kid hits the gym on a regular basis or anything.

So anyway, they normally do this sweat test to check for cystic fibrosis (apparently people with cystic fibrosis have a higher level of salt in their sweat than typical people). We wouldn't be doing the actual measuring-the-salinity-of-the-sweat part of the test since Connor already has a genetic diagnosis and doesn't need any more, thank you very much, so we were only doing the collection part of the test.

The tech attached a couple of electrodes with a gel on them that stimulates sweating to the underside of Connor's arm. Then he ran a low electrical current through Connor's arm to draw the gel into his skin and start the sweating process. Finally he strapped on what looked sort of like a little clear plastic bottle top to the area where one of the electrodes had been to collect the sweat. He did the same thing for the other arm. I bundled Connor up in a blanket and we sat out in the waiting room for thirty minutes.

What I think was supposed to happen is that the sweat would evaporate upwards, go through a little one-way valve and then condense inside the collection chamber. What actually happened was absolutely nothing. The collection chamber was bone dry.

My momtuition was right-- not only is Connor not sweating as much as other people, he's not sweating at all. While there are perks to this (my friend Julia pointed out that Connor won't have to wear deodorant at all when he's a teenager) it's actually a pretty serious issue. Because Connor doesn't sweat, he's not releasing heat the way he should, which can drive his temperature up very quickly. And of course, when Connor's temperature goes up he has seizures. It's likely I might have even induced some seizures by bundling him up too much during cold weather.

And of course that doesn't make me feel guilty or anything. We probably should have had this test done ages ago.

Also he's much more likely to get heat stroke. We'll need to limit his time outside on warm days and make sure that we wait until the very last minute to put his jacket on when we go out in the fall and winter months. An air conditioner for our home has suddenly become an absolutely medically essential item before summer rolls around again. And good thing we were already planning not to take him to Thailand with us when we go, because he sure as heck won't be visiting now.

So Connor's new diagnosis is anhidrosis, which basically means "lack of sweating." One of the medications Connor is taking could potentially cause it, but we suspect he's had the problem since before he started taking the Zonegran, as he's only been taking that for a few months and we've suspected he wasn't sweating for a long time. We'll consult with Connor's neurologist in our January appointment to see whether or not we should switch to a different medication, but my momtuition says Connor's anhidrosis probably has more to do with his autonomic nervous system issues or his genetic condition than it does with any medications he's taking.

It doesn't really matter what's causing it though; it just matters that we know about, have an official diagnosis and a general idea about risk factors for the little guy. We don't have any plans to add a dermatologist to the list of doctors Connor sees right now, but we can always do so in the future if we need to as he grows older.

So yeah, new diagnoses are not particularly fun. But think of all the money I'll save on deodorant!

~Jess

In Which Connor Has ALL The Germs

2011-12-07T23:10:00.001-08:00

Connor's doctor called today with the news that the results of the cultures done at her office on Monday had come in.

So yeah, he's got strep throat. But he also has a yeast infection around his g-tube and RSV. No wonder the kid's been so sick! He's been fighting three infections all at once. I should have known-- nobody does anything by halves in this household.

So avoid my house like the plague, people. I seemed to have somehow dodged both the strep and RSV bullets, which is nothing short of a miracle considering how contagious that stuff is, but I may just not be showing symptoms of the RSV yet.

Anyway, now I'm putting a topical cream on his g-tube site a couple of times a day and watching the little guy like a hawk to make sure his horrible upper respiratory infection doesn't progress to bronchitis or pneumonia. RSV is not a particularly fun viral infection for a medically fragile kid to have. If need be, we'll go back to the hospital. Again. I'm just hoping to avoid that since it's probably where he picked up the RSV in the first place. Hospital waiting rooms are always an infection risk for the little guy. I kind of want to make him a nice bubble to fit around his wheelchair for when we have to go, but there's this little thing called air circulation that he kind of needs so I don't know how well that would work.

But seriously-- strep throat and a yeast infection and RSV? What's next, malaria or something? I swear we haven't been dipping our kid in a vat of germs or anything.

So yeah. Right now he's absolutely miserable. He keeps coughing so hard it's making him throw up, which can't be pleasant with the sore throat. He once again spent most of the day sleeping, but he kept snoring so loud he woke himself up.

Poor little guy. I hope he feels better soon.

~Jess

In Which Connor Is A Sickykin

2011-12-06T23:00:00.001-08:00

Connor had yet another Not Particularly Fun day. At least this one was at home and not at the hospital where he could play Pass The Disease with the other people in the waiting room. Connor is already germy enough at the moment, thank you very much. Thankfully his temperature has stayed on the high side of normal (100.2 was the highest I clocked him at today) so no tours of various medical facilities were needed today.

The little guy woke up this morning with his nose completely crusted over, which is never a great way to start the day. I declared it a Pajama Day and evidently he took this very seriously, as he proceeded to take about six naps. Basically today was one long nap with little snippets of awake time in between. He's also picked up a glorious cough, which makes him sound either like he's been sneaking out back to smoke several packs of cigarettes a day, or like he's spent about fifteen years working in a coal mine.

All those naps didn't stop him from crashing at bedtime. He's currently passed out smack dab in the center of my bed. It's amazing how much space a kid that small can take up. Between him and the cats I'll have about six inches of space at the foot of the bed to cram into.

While I'm tempted to just let him sleep in here tonight, I'm afraid it might get a bit too warm for him. And of course, when he overheats he has seizures. Also he's been throwing up quite a bit and I'm down to my last pair of clean sheets. So maybe I'll move him to his room in a little bit. He's still got a few pairs left.

Not to mention that he's snoring to beat the band right now.

Oh well.

~Jess

In Which We Go To The Hospital Again

2011-12-06T07:47:00.001-08:00

Well, it was another fun-filled day at the hospital yesterday. Connor continued to run a fever despite being on heavy-duty antibiotics for three days, so evidently there was something else going on. I thought that maybe he'd caught a cold on top of the strep, as he started getting pretty congested on Sunday. I tried taking him off the Tylenol early in the day and his temperature began to rise. Then he had a couple of quick seizures, so I put him back on the stuff and we were off to the doctor's office again.

Connor's doctor wanted some more tests run to see what could be going on as the little guy has had a fever off and on since November 22nd or so, but they couldn't do the tests in the office. So she sent us to the ER yet again-- this time the on-post hospital. I like to avoid going there unless I absolutely have to because of the long waiting times, and yesterday was no exception. We waited for about four hours before going back to see a doctor. Connor snoozed on my chest.

So they did another urinalysis, took a chest x-ray, tested him for mono, checked his temperature, which had come down, and announced that they didn't know what the issue was and we could go home. We got back to the house around midnight. Fun times.

I'm still thinking that the back-to-back-to-back fevers were coincidence and that the little guy just has a viral infection on top of the strep. We'll see what the doctor wants to do today; hopefully his temperature will stay down today and that will be the end of it. I'm getting kind of tired of the hospital.

Blegh.

~Jess

In Which I'm Loopy From Sleep Deprivation

2011-12-04T22:08:00.001-08:00

Not a whole heck of a lot to say tonight-- I'm entering that delirious state of mind where I stare at familiar words and convince myself that I'm misspelling them and/or that they've lost all meaning. Tonight is the third night in a row I'll be waking up every four hours around the clock to dose Connor with Tylenol to keep him from seizing while the antibiotics do their work. We tried taking him off it today and his temperature started rising, so back on it he went. Theoretically he shouldn't be contagious anymore as we're doing the equivalent of nuking his strep throat with the strength of antibiotics he's on, but evidently his body is still fighting the infection. Either that or he's got something else going on. Whee!

So at any rate, I am kind of ridiculously tired right now, and I'm going to go to bed now so I can get as much sleep as possible before I have to wake up again to dose the little guy.

Good night.

~Jess

In Which Connor Takes A Sick Day And I Turn Hypochondriac

2011-12-03T23:51:00.000-08:00

Connor was understandably still feeling under the weather today, so we spent a quiet day at home. He watched a movie with his daddy and spent some quality time snuggled up against me snoozing while I sewed. I'm about two thirds of the way through the front piece for the Chinese dragon stocking now, and the hardest parts (the sequining and beading) are all done so it should go pretty quickly from here. Luckily those pieces were all pretty skinny, so I didn't get super burned out on sequining and really tempted to just use a glue gun on the thing or something. So the worst is over and I'm working on his head right now. I think he's going to turn out well.

I had a tiny bit of a scratchy throat today, but I can't decide if it's just my annual the-heater-is-on-and-dries-out-everything scratchiness or if I'm coming down with the dreaded bug too. It's kind of like when they send those notes home from school saying that someone in your kid's class has lice, and then you spend the rest of the day scratching your head and freaking out.

Okay, well maybe that's just me.

But at rate, I'll be super paranoid for a few days until I'm out of the danger zone as far as Connor being contagious goes. The last thing we need is for Jer and I to get sick too!

~Jess

In Which We Head To The Hospital And Get Some Answers

2011-12-02T23:44:00.001-08:00

So today didn't go particularly well. But at least we have an explanation for what's been going on recently with the little guy!

So I got a call from Connor's school this morning around 10:30 to come and pick him up. He'd had a couple of seizures and just wasn't recovering very well, so we figured he'd better sleep it off at home. Shortly after we got back to the house he had two more in rapid succession. I took his temperature and it read 101.3 degrees.

The mysterious fever was back.

Four seizures in two hours was not a good sign. I gave him a dose of Tylenol and then started weighing my options. After trying and failing to get an immediate appointment with his pediatrician, I left a message on the triage nurse's machine about what was going on and that if I didn't hear back pretty quickly we'd be headed to the ER. She called me back shortly thereafter and told me to go ahead and take him to the hospital to get him checked out.

So off to the emergency room we went.

Connor had a tiny, five-second or so seizure just as we walked in the door. Then he fell asleep in my lap in the waiting room. After we were shown back to our room in the ER, the doc ordered blood work, took a look in Connor's ears and mouth and then took a throat swab. The verdict came back twenty minutes later. The little guy had a nasty case of strep throat.

Problem found.

They said his white blood cell count was through the roof, so he'd either had it a while or just had a really nasty case of it. Of course I felt horribly guilty that I had no idea; I'm sure he hasn't been feeling good for a while, and he might have been spiking fevers all week that I just didn't catch. Poor little boo-- no wonder he's been clingy in the past few days.

So we stayed in the hospital for a while as they figured out what his treatment plan was going to be. While we were waiting his Tylenol started to wear off and he had another seizure, so they gave him another dose along with a solid helping of Ativan. Then they gave him a shot of an drug called Rocephin, which is a seriously heavy-duty antibiotic. They sent us home with a ten-day prescription for Omnicef, which is another antibiotic. Hopefully those two drugs will do the trick.

So while I wasn't excited about spending the whole day in the hospital and I'm sorry that Connor is sick, I am glad that the doctors found a simple problem that was easily fixable. That doesn't happen very often in our household; usually we're the Medical Mystery Clan around here. Of course, I did spend the rest of the day completely paranoid about how my throat was feeling because strep is one of those lovely contagious sort of bugs, but that's okay. At least if I do end up with strep, we'll know what it is right away and won't end up waiting a week or two before figuring it out.

After we were discharged and came home little guy pretty much conked out. I hope all the sleep is healing for him and he's feeling better soon!

~Jess

In Which Connor Would Be Better Off Having Pink Eye

2011-12-01T22:58:00.001-08:00

Another seizure-filled day. His mornings seem to go all right, and then he starts seizing in the afternoon. He had four today, and once again spent most of his time sleeping. It's not a pattern I like.

The seizures are once again taking their toll on his body. I've though for the past few days that Connor might be getting pink eye because his left eye was all bloodshot. His eye hasn't been gunky at all, though, and then I noticed that after every seizure it gets a little bit worse. So I did some homework, and while I'm no doctor I'm pretty sure that what's happening is something called petechial hemorrhaging. Basically the lack of oxygen to his head during the seizures is causing the capillaries on the surface of his eye to break. It's a harmless, though dramatic looking, side effect of the significantly less-harmless asphyxiation he's probably experiencing during these things.

Fun fact: apparently they use petechial hemorrhaging in forensic science to identify strangling victims. Glorious.

So I'll be calling and making yet another appointment with the neurologist in very near future. We'll also see Connor's pediatrician just in case my Doctor Mom diagnosis isn't the correct one and there's something else going on that's causing the issue. Better safe than sorry-- I don't really want to mess around with this sort of thing.

But dang it, I kind of wish he had pink eye.

~Jess

In Which More Seizures Happen

2011-11-30T23:52:00.000-08:00

Another day of seizures-- Connor had three today. He slept in this morning, woke up briefly, had a seizure and then went right back to sleep. That set the pattern for the day; he dozed on and off throughout the afternoon, and finally perked up later in the evening.

He spent part of that time with his respite care worker while I drove up to Seattle and ran errands I needed to get done. I feel guilty about leaving the house knowing that he will probably have more seizures while I'm away, but I know she can handle them just as competently as I can. Unfortunately it's gotten to the point that if I canceled respite care every time he was having seizures, I would never go anywhere.

Not that I really want to go anywhere right now; it's just below thirty degrees outside at the moment, though it should heat up into the forties tomorrow. I'm planning on spending a lot of time sitting next to the fire sipping a cup of hot tea and sewing-- it feels like it's going to be one of those days. Especially since the little guy slept all day today, and has now decided as a result to be up all night.

Oh well.

~Jess

In Which I Start Making The Meeting Rounds And Do Some Seizure Sewing

2011-11-29T23:37:00.001-08:00

Today was a day of meetings. It's the time of year when Connor's annual appointments for everything start coming due, so I end up doing a lot of coordinating to make sure everything happens when it should. Today was an EFMP meeting day. EFMP, or the Exceptional Family Member Program, is a military program that provides a lot of the services Connor needs, such as our respite care and determining where we're allowed to travel as a family. We spent most of the afternoon after Connor came home from school on post getting things squared away for the upcoming year.

For Connor, it was a day of seizures. The kid had three today-- just before and after our trip to post-- and was in a generally grumpy mood as a result. Who can blame him? Seizures are no fun. As soon as we got home he crashed on the couch until I finally moved him to his room, so once again I had plenty of sewing time.

I like sewing time. But I like Connor not having seizures better. I'll have to give him a stern lecture on the topic. No more seizures, big boy!

I finished the front piece of the polar bear stocking today, and then I set it aside and made a little poinsettia throw pillow to sit in the armchair next to the Christmas tree. That chair really needed a little seasonal pillow to make the festive scene complete, and heck if I was going to buy one when I could just as easily make one with a little bit of time and leftover fabric from another project. It only took me about half an hour, and I think it came out pretty cute.

Connor did perk up a little this evening after his daddy got home, and I'm hoping he'll have a better day tomorrow . I'm headed up to Pike Place to hopefully complete my Christmas shopping, which I am determined not to procrastinate on this year. I've got way, way too many other things going on to leave it 'till the last minute.

So it was a busy day today, and it will probably be a busy day tomorrow. I feel like I got a lot accomplished though, so that's a good thing. There's a lot to do this time of year!

~Jess

In Which Connor's Day Goes Downhill And We Get A Letter

2011-11-28T23:57:00.001-08:00

We received a letter in the mail today from USCIS, saying that they'd received our application for renewal of our adoption approval and would be processing it over the next several weeks. So we're one step closer to being approved by US Immigration for another year to adopt Ellen. Our current approval expires in December.

So sometime over the next few weeks we'll be getting another letter requesting that we go and get fingerprinted again. Then once we receive our new approval we should be good for another year. We're hoping that this will be the only time we have to get our approval renewed. No news on that front, though.

Connor had a rough day today; he stayed up until nearly three in the morning and of course had to get up for school. He was not particularly excited about me waking him up, but apparently he had a pretty good day in school anyway. He had his first seizure shortly after he got up from his quiet time, and then two more over the course of the day. He's not running a fever and doesn't seem to be sick this time, so we're probably just headed into another seizure cycle, which is never fun.

I hope he has a better day tomorrow.

~Jess

In Which Our Vacation Is Over

2011-11-27T23:54:00.000-08:00

Connor has decided once again that it's Stay Up All Night time. It's currently about 1:45 in the morning, and he's still going strong.

I'm pretty tired; I had my second banked track practice this morning, and I'm using a lot of muscles that don't necessarily get all that much exercise with the flat track derby. I felt much steadier on the track today, though-- about a third of the way through the practice I really started to feel like I'd finally found my balance and wasn't just going to fall off the track the whole time. I think the bout is going to be a whole lot of fun!

Today was Jeremy's last day of vacation; he's back to work tomorrow. I really enjoyed having him home, and I think he enjoyed getting the chance to really relax and spend time with Connor and me, even if we didn't go out and do anything big this time.

Connor's vacation is also up; between being sick and the Thanksgiving holiday he was off from school a full week. So I'm sure he'll be happy to get back in the classroom, though I'm not sure how thrilled he'll be about it tomorrow, depending on how late he stays up. Oh well-- hopefully they'll wear him out and we won't have a repeat of this tomorrow night.

So it's back to the grindstone!

~Jess

In Which I Go Banked

2011-11-26T23:52:00.000-08:00

Today was a day of new experiences!

In December, I'm playing a my first ever banked track bout with a mixed group of ladies from our four different league teams. So today I climbed up under the rail for my first ever banked track practice!

Normally I play what is called flat track roller derby. This means just what it sounds like-- along with about 98% of roller derby leagues out there, we skate on a flat, level track. But there are still a few banked track leagues alive and well today, and one of them, the Tilted Thunder Rail Birds, just so happens to call Seattle home.

I felt like a beginning skater all over again; skating on the banked track is very, very different from skating on the flat track. The lowest point of the track is about an inch and a half off the ground, and the highest point is about four and a half feet. At the apex of the track it's a pretty steep angle, and skating with my feet on an uneven surface definitely took some getting used to. I imagine that once I figure out how to actually skate on the track I'd be able to use centrifugal force to go much, much faster than the speeds I'm able to hit on the flat track.

It was a little intimidating at first, and I'm pretty sure I did more falling today without anyone hitting me than I've done in a long, long time. But overall I had a blast, and I think it's going to be a great bout!

~Jess

In Which It's Looking Kind Of Festive In Here

2011-11-25T23:55:00.000-08:00

The day after Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year.

Not because it's Black Friday-- I'm not a huge fan of shopping trips in general, and trust me when I say that getting up at three in the morning so that I can fight the crowds for the privilege of spending a bunch of money is not the way I like to spend my time. No, I like the day after Thanksgiving because that's traditionally the day in my family when it's time to start putting the Christmas decorations up.

When I was growing up, Christmas was by far the biggest holiday of the year, and I'm pretty sure that's a tradition I'll be passing down to my kids. The past few years we've generally traveled to Texas for Christmas, with the exception of 2009, when we weren't exactly in a position to be doing a whole lot of traveling or, for that matter, decorating. So this is the first year in a long while that we've pulled out the boxes of Christmas decorations, and I got pretty excited about decorating our house for the very first time!

So first thing this morning I got out the long ladder and started to put up our Christmas lights. I got about halfway through and realized that I'd greatly underestimated how many we would need, which meant that I had to run down to the store halfway through to get some more. I was not exactly thrilled about this, but I wasn't about to leave the Christmas lights halfway strung on the house either, so off I went.

It was horrible, but I survived. Barely.

Anyway, so after I returned home from the Great Retail Mauling, I finished up the lights and was getting ready to retrieve the rest of the decorations when Joanna arrived to watch Connor. So Jer and I stopped by the storage unit together and then were off to pick out a tree!

I'm not a huge fan of artificial trees. Part of this is because I like the whole experience of picking out the perfect tree every year, and the other part is because Loki shreds all greenery in our home whether it is real or artificial, so at least if he strips all the needles off the lower half of our real tree we just get a new one the next year instead of me having to try and glue all the needles back on or something. Plus we're in the Pacific Northwest, where it seems a little silly to have an artificial tree since we pretty much live in a forest of the real thing.

So off we went!

While picking out a Christmas tree is typically a family affair, we didn't bring Connor for a couple of reasons. The first was that we didn't want to try and put the tree on top of our wheelchair van, and that meant we wouldn't be able to take the little guy's wheelchair with us. He's kind of heavy to carry around these days. The second reason was that we were planning on decorating the tree tonight, and we knew that would be more than enough stimulation for Connor. The excitement of picking out the tree and then decorating it too would probably have been way too much for him. And also he was still taking a nap. So Jer and I went just the two of us to find our tree and bring it home.

Connor's been so adamant about wanting one of the giant trees in the mall that we knew we needed to get a spectacular tree for the house. None of those measly little eight-footers would do for us; we have a twelve-foot high ceiling in our living room and we intended to use every inch of that to get as close to Connor's Dream Tree as possible. So we drove about ten minutes away from our house and passed around eight tree farms (I'm not exaggerating-- we have a lot of Christmas tree farms here) before we decided on one, because it was the first one we didn't have to make a left hand turn across traffic to get to.

They had four different types of trees, and a very helpful woman listed the pros and cons of each and then handed us a saw so we could go find our own. We walked about three feet to the left, handed the saw back to her and picked out an eleven foot tall Noble Fir that was already cut. They stuck the tree in what looked like a giant paint mixer to shake out any excess needles, drilled a hole in the bottom for the tree stand and then fed it through a tube that put netting on it to make it easier to get it into the house. It was pretty cool to watch. Then Jeremy and I somehow managed to wrestle this giant tree on top of our car, and we were off!

This is by far the biggest Christmas tree I have ever had in my entire life, and I absolutely love it. And even if it isn't a Giant Mall Tree of Doom, Connor seems to think it's pretty great too! We set it up and put the lights on this afternoon, and then this evening we put on some Christmas music, turned on the fireplace and trimmed the tree. Connor didn't really want to touch the tree, but he was very interested in the individual ornaments. The whole process really wore him out though; he was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow tonight.

So Connor got his big Christmas wish, or the closest to it we could come, and I'm sure he'll spent many happy hours over the next month just staring at the tree and smiling. The whole house smells wonderfully fragrant, there's a fresh wreath on the front door and the stockings are hung on the mantle.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

~Jess

In Which We Celebrate Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T22:53:00.001-08:00

Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

This year was the first in a long while that I wasn't cooking a ridiculous amount of food for just the three of us. Instead, I made mashed potatoes and we carried them down to the home of our neighbors, who had graciously invited us to their family Thanksgiving. There were enough folks to need two tables, which with my large extended family felt just like the holiday I remember growing up. The food tasted fantastic, the hosts were gracious and the company just lovely. Jeremy and I had a fantastic time.

Connor also seemed to really enjoy himself after he finished his nap. He snoozed for a while before dinner in my arms and later then in an easy chair. I could have done with a bit of a nap too. The little stinker literally did not go to sleep last night; he had a 7:30am bedtime and slept until just after 10:00am. I guess Santa and that giant Christmas tree were just too exciting!

After he finished up his nap, he perked up and turned on the charm, especially after he discovered a new favorite food: glazed sweet potatoes. Or rather, just the brown sugar glaze-- he sucked it off the potato pieces and then spit out the sweet potato.

Oh well. I ate enough for three Connors, so that probably makes up for it.

So anyway, it's been a hard year for the little guy, but I'm just so thankful to see him still smiling and that cheery personality once again really shining through. And I'm so grateful to have Jeremy by my side through it all. Here's to family, good friends and neighbors, and all those people who make the world just a little bit sweeter.

Like you, dear readers. A very happy Thanksgiving to you all!

~Jess

In Which Connor Meets Santa

2011-11-23T23:59:00.000-08:00

Connor made Santa Claus cry today.

The little guy woke up feeling pretty chipper and with zero fever, much to my relief. So we decided that if the morning went well we'd take him down to the South Hill mall to see the giant Christmas trees and to get his picture taken with the Big Man In The Red Suit.

Yes, I know it's not even past Thanksgiving yet, so it's awfully early to be taking Christmas photos and whatnot. But we have a reason for doing it this way; no one is at the mall taking pictures with Santa on the day before Thanksgiving. That way we miss the crazy holiday crowds which are overwhelming for me and Jeremy, let alone Connor with his sensory issues. Plus we don't have to wait in a huge line, and we can spend a bit more time making the little guy comfortable with the idea of sitting in some stranger's lap while another stranger snaps pictures of him.

The plan worked out perfectly. We dressed the little guy up in his nice Christmas outfit, parked him in front of the giant tree for a while and he stared at it in utter fascination before declaring, just like last year, that he wanted one for his very own. We took a couple of pictures in front of the tree; isn't he cute in his Christmas outfit? Then we headed across the practically deserted mall to visit Santa Claus.

When we got there only one family was ahead of us. It ended up working out perfectly because Connor got to see those kids get their picture taken and we could talk him through what was happening so he knew what to expect. Then it was Connor's turn.

He behaved just beautifully; he snuggled right into Santa's arm and turned on the charm. The guy playing Santa was fantastic, and the photographer kept snapping away until he was sure he'd gotten at least one or two really good ones. By the time we were finished, a line of waiting children was forming, but Santa stopped me anyway as we were leaving to tell me how touched he was by Connor and what an amazing kid he is, and that's when Mr. Claus teared up a bit. We didn't tell Santa anything about the little guy's story, but I guess we didn't have to because Connor's such a sweet-natured kid anyone can see how special he is.

So yep, Connor made Santa cry. He tends to have that effect on people.

The photographer got a couple of great shots-- one of Connor and Santa reading a story together, and even one of those rare, glorious shots of Connor smiling! I don't have digital copies of the photos, but trust me when I say that they're absolutely adorable. While Jer and I picked out which pictures we wanted to buy, Santa and the photographer took a little break and spoke with the assistant handling the picture sales. Then when we went to the counter with our selections, we were told that our pictures were free of charge, which is when I teared up a little too.

So I know it's a little early, but today we discovered the spirit of Christmas is alive and well.

Thanks, Santa.

~Jess

In Which Connor Uses Passive Resistance And I Set Off The Sequin Apocalypse

2011-11-22T23:59:00.000-08:00

The fever and sewing saga continues.

I drove Connor down to the clinic for his doctor's appointment this morning to see if we could figure out what was going on. We have yet another new Primary Care Manager because they switched us over to the Puyallup clinic-- I believe this is the third new PCM in four months. Whee! Anyway, the doctor checked out the still-feverish little guy, listened to his chest (clear), looked in his ears (normal) and then presented us with one of those glorious little baggies that you stick, to use a traditional southern term, where the sun don't shine, to collect a sample to check for a UTI.

Connor was a good sport overall about the bag thing and didn't protest it-- he's much more into passive rather than active resistance. He simply decided that he was never, ever going to pee ever again. Other than a short trip home for Connor's noon medication, we spent our waiting time wandering around the Target nearby the clinic. We were there for nearly four hours before he finally gave in and produced a sample.

Four hours in Target is a long, long time. There are only so many times I can walk down the Lego aisle before even I begin to lose interest.

I had to check on the, um, proceedings every fifteen minutes or so because there's a time limit on getting the sample back to the clinic. So four times an hour I'd take Connor down to the restroom. After our fifth trip I started getting some weird looks from the clerks. Around our eighth trip the security guard began subtly following us around the store.

After the twelfth trip she approached us and we ended up having to explain the situation. There's nothing like discussing your five year old's bodily functions with a guard who suspects you are shoplifting to liven up the day. Good times.

Anyway, finally Connor cooperated and we got to turn in the sample and go home, where I put the little guy down for a nap and spent some time working on the Chinese dragon stocking, which will be known from now on as the Sequin Apocalypse.

I'm not entirely sure just how many sequins I'll be using on this stocking, but I don't really want to know because it's probably some really depressing number. The dragon is starting to take shape now, and I think he's going to look pretty neat when he's finished, even though he'll probably doom us all to sparkly, sparkly Armageddon.

Anyway, Connor's doctor called while I was working on the stocking. Apparently preliminary results weren't indicative of a UTI, but they'll do a culture to double check. In the meantime, we should keep a close eye on him and if he's still running a fever on Friday they want us to bring him back in.

So I'm glad that it's looking like a UTI is not the problem; hopefully it's just a little virus of some sort and it will clear up soon!

~Jess

In Which Connor Keeps The Heat On And It's Really Cold In Here

2011-11-21T23:39:00.001-08:00

Connor had another feverish, seizure-filled day today, though thankfully it was a lot better than yesterday on both counts because his fever didn't have a chance to climb very high at all before we were throwing medication at it. The highest temperature I clocked on him today was 101.7.

He had six seizures and slept a good portion of the day, (which meant another ten hours sitting on the couch sewing for me), but towards the evening he perked up a little bit and even sat up on his daddy's lap for an hour or two before bedtime.

Because of all the sitting and sewing I've now almost finished the stocking I'm working on. I've done everything on the front except for the polar bear, and I'm waiting on the felt for that to arrive in the mail. So depending on when that gets there I might actually have the project finished by Thanksgiving. Crazy.

Another reason Connor's fever probably stayed lower today was that it's so darn cold in our house; the furnace decided to go out on us. So we've got the furnace guy coming tomorrow too. Right now I've got the gas fireplace going and we're all bundled up. Connor's sleeping in our room tonight because his little room is pretty tiny and has a giant window, which means that it's freezing in there. I've got a blanket over the gerbils' cage and they're buried down in their bedding; hopefully they'll be all right.

Look how mistreated they are.

Cricket demonstrated her feelings on the general temperature in the house by sitting down literally three inches away from the fireplace and refusing to move. Every once in a while she'd shoot me a wounded look because obviously she was just freezing in her nice thick fur coat. I finally put a blanket down in front of the fireplace for her, and she and Loki called a truce and spent the entire day curled up by the fire. As far as they're concerned, I've turned the fireplace on specifically for their benefit.

Anyway, I'm taking the little guy in tomorrow morning to the doctor's office, so we'll see whether or not he has some sort of an infection going. We're still not seeing any coughing or congestion at all. For a typical kid, having a fever like this wouldn't be a big deal, but with Connor it can quickly cause some major issues so we need to have him seen. I tried to get an appointment for today, but they didn't have any so it was either wait until tomorrow or take him to the Emergency Room today where he could sit for a while and marinate in everyone else's germs.

Whee!

~Jess

In Which Connor Visits Seizure City

2011-11-20T23:53:00.000-08:00

Well, this was not a particularly fun day.

It started out well enough; I popped down to the coffee shop to do a little bit of sewing before Joanna came; she was watching Connor for a little while today so Jer and I could go do a bit of Christmas shopping and grab some lunch. I was doing quite a bit of sequin work today, and I usually try and do that outside the house as the cats are more than happy to help me with it.

Anyway, by the time I got back to the house Connor had already had two seizures and Jer gave him a dose of Lorazepam. By the time we got back from lunch he'd had two more. After seizure number six we gave him a second dose of Lorazepam and I checked his temperature. He was running at 102.4.

Seizure mystery solved.

So we gave him a dose of Tylenol to start bringing his temperature down. An hour (and two more seizures) later I checked his temperature again. Now he was at 102.9. That wasn't exactly the direction we wanted to be moving in.

We tried giving him a sponge bath. That brought his temperature down three tenths of a degree-- not enough to make him stop having seizures. I went down to the store and bought some children's ibuprofen. Normally we don't use it on Connor because of the possible side effects and the fact that he's on an aspirin regime, but he'd just had seizure number nine and it was either that or the hospital. We checked his temperature again after an hour and it was down to 101.2.

And it kept going down. And down, and down some more until he started shivering uncontrollably. When I checked his temperature he clocked in at 96.4. Apparently this isn't uncommon; the body overcompensates a bit sometimes after a fever breaks. So we bundled him up for half an hour or so until his temperature evened out, and then put him back to bed with his regular covers.

So we're not sure what the heck that was all about-- he didn't have any symptoms other than the fever and of course, the many, many seizures. The little guy doesn't even have a stuffy nose. If he's still having issues tomorrow I'll be taking him in to the doctor to make sure he doesn't have a UTI or some other sort of infection. He won't be going to school tomorrow obviously, as he has to be fever-free for at least 24 hours before he's allowed to return to class.

Also I'm guessing he might be kind of wiped out tomorrow. He certainly had a rough day today.

~Jess

In Which Connor Has A Down Day

2011-11-19T23:59:00.000-08:00

Little guy had a rough day today; he had five seizures and spent quite a bit of time napping on the couch while I sewed away and watched him sleep. He crashed around 7:30 and has been out like a light ever since.

Recently it's been hard to plan what we do with our days because we never know how little guy is going to be when he wakes up that morning. Some days he's feeling great and we can go out and about, and other days he's completely wiped. It's impossible to predict which it will be when he opens his eyes. So I've learned to be really flexible in my daily planning, because I never know when he'll have a day like today and I'll be spending twelve hours sitting on the couch with a sad snuggle bunny.

Of course, Jeremy was home so I didn't have to do that today; we could split the snuggles so I could get some other things done. It's been fantastic having him home-- we don't even have to do anything except enjoy each other's company. I'll be sad when he goes back to work, though thankfully that won't be for another week.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy it while I can. Hooray for vacations-- even if they're spent on the couch!

~Jess

In Which Connor Feels Better And I Go On A Crafting Road Trip

2011-11-18T23:10:00.001-08:00

Connor woke up at midnight last night and proceeded to yell and play in his bed until 5:30 in the morning. That wasn't really surprising, considering he went to bed at four in the afternoon the night before. He tried to fall asleep on me repeatedly over the course of the afternoon, but I kept him awake because I am an evil mom and also because I don't really want to get up at the witching hour again tonight.

So Connor's making up for it now by refusing to go to bed. It's already past 11:00 and he's currently lying in bed, warbling to himself contentedly. Oh well. Jeremy took him to school and let me sleep in since I stayed up on Seizure Patrol until the wee hours. Jer's pretty great like that.

Even though his sleep schedule is totally screwed up right now, at least the little guy didn't have a single seizure today! He hung out with his daddy while I drove up to Seattle to pick up the felt I need for my next few projects.

Since they closed my beloved Pacific Fabrics store in Puyallup, whenever I need project materials I have to drive 45 minutes one way to their Seattle location. It's the nearest store I've found in the area that carries felt in the colors and quality I need to make my stockings and other fun things. The twelve inch squares that the vast majority of fabric and craft stores carry are too thin and small for most of my projects. The local Hancock fabrics carries a few colors on bolts, but the selection is pretty limited.

Even if they did have the colors in felt I needed, they carry only a couple of colors of sequins. If there's one thing I need for my ridiculously complicated projects, it's sequins, which Pacific has in abundance. So I made the long drive today and stocked up on the supplies I need for the next three projects I'm doing. That way I shouldn't have to make the trek again for a while.

It's a hassle, but that's what I get for picking a weird hobby I guess. I haven't run into too many other people who do large felt appliqué projects. Oh well!

~Jess

In Which Connor Has A Check Up And I Plan Well In Advance

2011-11-17T23:44:00.001-08:00

Connor's day went a little bit better than yesterday; he only had three seizures. However I think his body decided he needed to be in recovery mode, because he went to bed at four in the afternoon and has been down ever since. He had a cardiology appointment today, and he actually fell asleep in my arms in the examining room while we were waiting for the doctor to come in! Then he fell asleep again in the car on the way home. The little guy almost never sleeps in the car, so that's an indication that he was just plumb worn out.

Other than the impromptu nap, the cardiology appointment went really well. Apparently Connor's heart condition looks really good; it hasn't changed since the last time they looked at it, and everything is within normal limits. So we don't need to change his current dose of heart medication, and we won't need a cardiology appointment again for another year! I'm glad that Connor's heart is doing so well-- that's one less thing we have to worry about.
I finally got around to photoshopping a picture of Ellen's stocking to remove her real name so I could show you a picture of what it looks like now that it's all finished! I think it turned out pretty well.

While Connor snoozed away today I got to work planning out my next few sewing projects. I still have a couple that I'm finishing up right now, but I like to work on designs way in advance so that I have plenty of time to figure out how they'll work logistically.

When I'm creating a pattern I have to figure out now only how to break the design into pieces, but how to layer the pieces to create the proper effect. It takes a lot of figuring out! This way while I'm working on the stuff I already know how to do my brain can be busy thinking about the next project. Since I take a ridiculous amount of time to finish up projects, I usually have quite a bit of time for thinking!

A really, really rough draft.

So I sketched and finished out the next stocking I'll be doing, which is a polar bear sleeping under a Christmas tree. Then I roughed in the very first draft of the stocking that I'll be doing after that, which will be a Chinese dragon holding a Christmas wreath. This was a relatively quick sketch figuring out the layout, so there's still a lot I have to change-- like the fact that I gave the dragon horns when he's in fact supposed to have antlers. Whoops. That's what rough drafts are for, right?

Both of these stockings are gifts, though thankfully not for this Christmas. The polar bear will have a lot of sequins, but it should be fairly straightforward and I don't anticipate a lot of issues. The Chinese dragon is going to be one of those projects I end up hating-- I can already tell. It just screams out for lots and lots of beading and sequins and-- Heaven help me-- metallic gold embroidery thread. But I'm going to do it anyway, dang it!

I just hope it turns out as lovely as the picture I have in my head.

~Jess

In Which Connor Shakes Things Up

2011-11-16T22:47:00.001-08:00

Well, Connor has once again demonstrated his ability to keep me on my toes. He had five seizures today, and a couple of them were of a kind I'm not used to seeing. Basically he starts breathing really quickly, and then he starts shaking like he's got hypothermia. Then for the last ten or fifteen seconds of the seizure he just. . . stops. No moving, no breathing, eyes completely fixed and pupils totally dilated-- he looks a bit like a wax model of my child. Then he snaps out of it.

Whee! This kid certainly likes to keep me on my toes. I still prefer these to the completely-non-breathing-through-the-whole-thing kind of seizures, but now I'm going to start freaking out every time the kid is just cold.

Oh well. Guess I'll be keeping him extra warm and cozy until I can tell the difference.

So needless to say he had a quiet, low-key day today. Our respite care worker came over this afternoon, and Connor spent most of the rest of the day snuggling with her and watching Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin.

Mary Martin happens to be one of my favorite actresses of all time, not because she's necessarily that skilled of an actress (though she was, and also her voice was amazingl) but because she always seemed to be having so much fun when she was doing it. Also she was a pretty classy lady. So If you've never seen the 1960 version of Peter Pan, you're missing out. Now I'm happy to say that it's become one of Connor's all time favorites too!

It's really nice to be able to pass down something like that.

~Jess

In Which It's Getting Cold And Connor's Seizure Cycle Restarts

2011-11-15T23:41:00.001-08:00

Connor had two seizures today; the first just before school started and the second late in the afternoon. Both involved a whole lot of violent twitching, but he actually breathed pretty easily through them for once, which was nice. I hate to see the little guy having any seizures, but as far as seizures go these weren't bad, even though they both lasted over three minutes.

I finished up the front of Ellen's stocking today! Jer and I decided on the English spelling of her Thai name today, and I went ahead and sewed that on. Now I just have to line it and sew the two halves together, and then it will be ready to hang up just in time for the Christmas season. I think it will look really nice up there with the rest of the family stockings.

The weather is really starting to get cold; we're starting to dip down into freezing temperatures and apparently there's actually a chance of snow this weekend, which is about the same time that our first snow happened last year. While I doubt we'll get as much as we did last year, I look forward to once again watching Loki bounce around like a maniac all over our front yard. Somehow I doubt he learned his lesson last year.

Crazy cat!

~Jess

In Which Connor Goes Back To School And Jer Is On Vacation

2011-11-14T23:30:00.001-08:00

Connor woke up feeling pretty good this morning, so he went back to school today. By all reports he had a lovely day, so evidently it was the right decision on our parts. He got to play on the scooter board during gym, which is apparently one of his favorite things to do there. A scooter board actually might be a pretty fantastic main Christmas present for Connor, who is one of the hardest kids to shop for ever. Jer and I have already gotten him a couple of little things, but this should be just right for his big gift. Plus I'm pretty sure Jer and I would have some fun with it too. We have a long main hallway and laminate floors.

What could go wrong? I'm sure this will end well.

Anyway, we're slowly starting to get Ellen's room ready for when she comes, so her Christmas present from us will be one of the big items we need for her room, like a mattress or her desk. We're not really able to send her any big presents through the mail right now, as she doesn't have anywhere to put them. Watching her room slowly come together (though all the decorating will wait until she's come and can help pick things out!) gives me a way to feel connected to her through the holiday season. Well, that and working on her stocking, of course. I finished up the feathers today, and there's a good chance that I'll actually have the whole front of the stockng done tomorrow! It should move a lot faster now that I'm not using that darn gold metallic thread. Jer caught a shot of me working away at the kitchen table during Connor's Quiet Time when I should have been doing other things, like putting the groceries away (or actually brushing my hair for once). When I get close to the end of a project like this, it's pretty tough for me to put it down.

Today was Jeremy's first official day of vacation! He's still getting over his cold, but I think he's looking forward to the break. He got to sleep in until almost ten in the morning today, and then he joined me down at our local coffee shop hangout where I'd taken over a table and was busy sewing away. We stayed until it was time to go pick up Connor from school. I'm really loving getting the chance to spend so much time with him. Hopefully we'll have the chance to go on some fun family outings too once everyone is completely over this bug.

Speaking of which, this is the first time in a long time that Connor has gotten sick and not had any seizures. Now that's something to celebrate!

In Which We Are Feeling Better And I Work On A Peacock

2011-11-13T23:56:00.000-08:00

We had another quiet day here; I'm happy to say that everyone was feeling a bit better. Looks like we're on the mend! I'm hoping Connor will be well enough to go to school tomorrow-- it probably depends on how stuffy he is. Here he is right before bedtime hanging out in his moose pajamas. Because moose pajamas are awesome.

I ventured out and did just a little bit of shopping today; there were a number of essentials we'd run out of that I needed to pick up, and I also picked up a few odds and ends for Christmas stocking stuffers.

Thinking about Christmas stockings made me realize that I'd really like to finish Ellen's and hang it up this year, so I pulled it out the long-neglected project when I got home and got back to work on it. I set it aside a few months ago and worked on other things because I got burned out on gold metallic thread, but I'm happy to say that I'm on the downhill slope now and things are moving along well. I finished four or five layers of feathers today, so I got quite a bit of work done. I also drew and cut out the last tracing paper patterns for the feathers and name plate and pinned them on to get an idea of how the stocking will look when finished. I have to say that I'm pretty proud of the way it's turning out; I can't wait to get it all put together and see how it turns out!

I haven't figured out exactly what I'm going to do as far as Ellen's name on the stocking yet; we can spell her formal Thai name many different ways in English and we don't know yet what spelling will be on her American visa. I guess I'll figure that out when I get to that point; in the meantime I have a few more layers of feathers to do before I have to worry about it.

I hope our daughter likes it!

~Jess

In Which We Are All Sickykins

2011-11-12T23:58:00.000-08:00

Well it was day two of Glorious Sicky-Family Bonding Time around here, and it was not particularly fun. I don't get sick very often and Jer catches bugs even less than I do, so it's pretty unusual for us both to be under the weather. Connor catches absolutely everything that comes down the line, so I'm not really surprised that he's sick. Oh well; hopefully this means that we'll all recover at the same time, too. There's nothing more exhausting than being sick and having a kid who is completely over the illness and just brimming full of health and energy. I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

So anyway we took it easy today; I made us some dark, extra-spicy gingerbread with lemon whipped cream and we spent the day munching on that and drinking lots and lots of soothing hot beverages. I did make a small start on getting the backyard cleaned up for winter, but the rain drove me indoors pretty quickly. I spent the rest of the day balled up on the couch watching the roller derby championships, sometimes with a little guy on my lap.

Connor basically went from one cuddle session to another today, with a brief interlude for a bath with Daddy after he threw up all over the place. Luckily he crashed tonight, so hopefully he's getting some healing sleep. He's snoring like you wouldn't believe either, but it can't really be helped. The poor little guy is pretty stuffy right now.

I hope we feel better tomorrow!

~Jess

In Which We All Feel Under The Weather And Winter Is Coming

2011-11-11T23:55:00.000-08:00

Jer, Connor and I spent a quiet Veteran's Day at home today. The little guy was off from school, but the weather was pretty gloomy and rainy outside and everyone in the house is feeling a little under the weather, so we figured a laid back day was the way to go. I was pretty sure that Connor and I just had some mild allergies and I actually felt pretty good today, but around bedtime my throat started getting sore and Jeremy began coughing.

That man has a cast iron immune system, so if he feels like he's coming down with something than I'm sure the rest of us already have it. We're supposed to have respite care tomorrow, but we may have to cancel depending on how we're feeling.

So I'll pop in the store tomorrow and grab some lemons; any time I'm feeling sick I mix up a quick batch of honey lemon tisane and sip on it all day. There's nothing like it for soothing a sore throat. Sometimes I'll add a little ginger for an extra kick or a bit of vanilla sugar to smooth it out, but most of the time I keep it simple. Or if I'm too sick to go to the store for lemons, I'll just eat honey with a spoon. It's the best tasting cough medicine ever.

We did do a bit of work today-- we're slowly getting the house ready for the winter season, so we changed out the heating filter, replaced a lot of light bulbs and started raking up the leaves, which is quite the job in the Pacific Northwest. I'll be cleaning out the gutters and winter-proofing our hose connections this weekend. The nights are starting to dip pretty close to freezing, so it's about that time. It doesn't seem possible that winter is coming up so soon!

~Jess

In Which We Do A Whole Bunch Of Stuff And Jer Takes A Vacation

2011-11-10T23:00:00.001-08:00

Well that was a busy day!

I'm happy to say that little guy slept quite a bit better last night! We made it all the way until around four in the morning, when he woke up with a stuffy nose (pretty sure he's got some allergies going) which made him cry. This of course, made him more stuffy, which made him cry more, and then we spiraled down into a vicious, snotty, crying cycle that ended with me sitting on the floor of our guest bathroom rocking the little guy with the door closed, the shower on as hot as it would go and the vent off. Thankfully the steam did the trick and he was able to go back to bed around a quarter to five, though it's not a remedy I'd like to try often as I enjoy having paint on my bathroom walls.

Anyway, so after I got up again-- this time for good-- and took Connor to school I spent an hour or so with Jeremy making the house look spic and span for the visit from our social worker today. Our I-800A paperwork, which allows Ellen to immigrate to the United States, expires in December. So we needed a homestudy update to be able to extend our I-800A. As usual I completely freaked out and cleaned the house from top to bottom, just in case she decided that we would be unfit parents for Ellen because our mantle wasn't dusted or something. I'm pretty sure every adopting couple (or in our case, half the couple) freaks out about social worker home visits. It's an adoptive parent rite of passage.

Anyway, so the home visit went swimmingly, which is to say that she stayed on the living room couch and didn't so much as glance at the inside of my closets or the state of my mantle. Since our house had already been inspected to make sure it was suitable last year and we hadn't made any major changes to it, she didn't need to go over that part of things. So the meeting was pretty quick and painless. Our paperwork should hopefully be submitted next week and then once we redo our fingerprints (yes, we have to redo those too, though as Jeremy pointed out it's not likely they've changed) we shouldn't have to renew our paperwork again until June of 2013, and we're hoping we'll have our girl home before that. We'll just have to see!

Jeremy, by the way, wasn't just off work for the home visit. He's on vacation! He's built up so much leave time that he was about to lose some of it, so he's taking a couple of weeks off. We have big plans to spend a bunch of quality family time together, and I'm excited about having him home!

So after our home visit was over and we picked Connor up from school, Jeremy spent some time doing yard work outside while Connor and I ran errands and then headed up to Pike Place Market for a little pre-holiday rush Christmas shopping. Unfortunately when we got there we discovered that a large chunk of the market is under renovation right now, and the stores that I wanted to buy specific presents at were closed. Oh well; we've still got plenty of time to go back before things get super crowded. I'm just going to keep telling myself that.

I realized about halfway home that I'd overdone it today. I'm still feeling under the weather, though it's less a definable illness and more a distinct feeling of malaise, which makes me unsure of whether or not it's being caused by an actual illness or if it's the ridiculously small amount of sleep I've been getting lately that's the culprit. At any rate, I had to stop for coffee on the way home and resort to calling various friends and relatives to keep myself awake behind the wheel. Falling asleep while driving on the highway would have put a serious damper on Connor and my afternoon. Luckily the caffeine and conversation did the trick and I didn't have to pull over at a rest stop and nap in the van or anything.

So I took the rest of the day easy, and now I'm off to bed. It was a pretty busy day!

~Jess

In Which I Am Going To Bed Right This Very Second

2011-11-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

Once again, Connor decided to stay up way, way too late, which meant that I also stayed up way, way too late. Also I think I'm probably coming down with something. Thankfully, it sounds like the little guy actually is asleep now! You have no idea just how excited I am about this.

Good night.

~Jess

In Which We Get Some Good News And Connor Never Sleeps

2011-11-08T23:55:00.000-08:00

It's nearly 1:00am, and since I've had six hours of sleep in the past two days (guess who went to bed at 3:30am yesterday?) I would really like to go to bed now. Really. But my darling child is still awake. This does not bode well for my sanity and/or higher brain function tomorrow.

In other news, we received some good news today; it looks like the flood waters have finally started to recede in the area that Ellen's orphanage is located! This is fantastic news, and hopefully means that the worst of the danger is over for the children. I'm hoping that this is the last monsoon season she will spend in Thailand.

I've been putting together November's Thanksgiving-themed care package for our girl. We're trying to keep them small and filled with things she can share with her friends. Not only does she not have a lot of space to keep her possessions, but we want to be sensitive to the fact that she is probably one of very few children at her orphanage receiving care packages. If we send elaborate or expensive gifts to Ellen, we could possibly not only make the other children feel bad, but also cause our daughter to be ostracized or bullied due to her peers' resentment and jealousy. We figure for Christmas and her birthday (which is coming up in January-- she'll be fourteen!) we'll purchase her essentials for when she comes home, like bedding, furniture, etc. and keep her care packages small with only one or two personal items.

And that's about all the brain function I have to write tonight. Get some sleep for me, okay?

~Jess

In Which Connor Goes On Strike Again

2011-11-07T23:50:00.000-08:00

Forgive me if I'm a little incoherent tonight; Connor stayed up until nearly 5:30 in the morning yesterday, and as it's now nearly midnight and he's still yodeling at the top of his lungs in his room, things aren't looking so hot for tonight either. I kept Connor home from school, but I probably should have just sent him because he seemed totally unaffected by his two hours total of sleep. I was not quite so lucky.

I turned into the most absentminded person in the world. I dialed phone numbers and forgot who I was calling before they picked up. I went to roller derby practice without my wrist guards, which I left sitting on the couch next to where my skate bag had been. I went to grocery store and came back without half of the groceries I'd intended to get. Today was not a day for making life-changing decisions or for anything involving higher math, and I strongly suspect tomorrow will be more of the same.

Case in point; there were a number of other things I'd meant to tell you all today, but I can't currently remember what any of them are. For some reason this particular run of sleepless nights is hitting me particularly hard-- especially when you consider that Saturday night I was away in Oregon and actually got a full eight hours of sleep. I think the road trip was actually part of the problem; I love going on them but for whatever reason they are exhausting for me, so coming straight off of one into No Sleep Land is pretty rough.

Oh well. Looks like I'll be hitting the caffeine pretty hard tomorrow!

~Jess

In Which I'm Home And Chocolate Mustaches Abound

2011-11-06T23:57:00.000-08:00

I'm back home!

After a leisurely breakfast, I spent the first half of the day driving back up to Puyallup. It was a pleasant trip; the company was lovely, traffic was light and the weather cooperated, making for a pretty easy ride. Connor gave me a huge smile and one of his rare hugs when I got home; he seemed excited to see me back, which doesn't happen very often! Usually the little guy is so excited about his Daddy Time that he doesn't seem to even notice my absence. At any rate, he apparently had a quiet (and thankfully seizure-free) weekend, which was probably just what he needed after last week's seizure excitement.

I did find out late last night that one of my teammates who took a bad fall at yesterday's bout broke her ankle and will need surgery, which was some rough news. Hopefully she'll have a quick recovery and be back on her skates soon; it's so hard to see one of my ladies hurt and in roller derby it happens more often than I'd like.

My sister posted up her lovely pictures from her trip to Seattle on her photography website. You can check them out here. Connor looks extremely dapper sporting a chocolate mustache. I look rather disturbingly like my father.

I miss Mary already. Sister, come back soon!

~Jess

In Which I'm In Oregon

2011-11-05T23:40:00.000-07:00

I'm down here in Albany, Oregon after skating in tonight's bout-- we just got to our billeting from the after party! We're staying at another skater's house tonight, which is my favorite way to work things when we go on road trips.

I felt like I had a slow start but skated a lot better in the second half. We lost, but we still had a ton of fun so our mission was accomplished. I got up way earlier in the morning than I'm used to because it was a long drive down and we were actually stopping at another bout first; some of my team mates actually skated two bouts today! At any rate, I'm pretty exhausted now, probably because of a combination of things. I usually actually get better sleep at our away bouts than I do at home because the little guy isn't there to keep me awake, so I'm going to take advantage of that and get as much sleep as I can tonight!

We'll be heading back to Puyallup tomorrow, but it was nice to get away for a little while with my team mates and have a good time!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Back To His Old Self And I Prepare For A Road Trip

2011-11-04T23:11:00.000-07:00

This will be a short post, because I've got to get to bed. I need to be up bright and early tomorrow morning for yet another road trip! I'm headed back down to Oregon for another bout; the third in as many weeks. This time my roller derby team, the Trampires, is making the trip to Albany to face off against the Sick Town Derby Dames. It's going to be so much fun!

I feel comfortable leaving the little guy because Connor thankfully had a grand total of zero seizures today, and was back to his old sprightly self. I'm so relieved! Hopefully Jer and the little guy will have a quiet weekend while I'm away. This will be my last bout that's out of town for a while, so after this my schedule won't be quite so crazy.

I'm going to try to blog after the bout tomorrow night, but if I don't get the chance to I hope all of you have a fantastic Saturday!

~Jess

In Which Connor Has A Better Day

2011-11-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

Today was much, much better than yesterday; looks like the little guy is on the mend! He only had three seizures total today, and seemed to be in much better spirits. So he went back to school today, and we were able to venture out of the house and run a few errands.

One of those errands was a trip to the post office to mail our latest care package to Ellen. We're not sure exactly when she'll get it because we don't know if the postal system is running over there right now or not due to the flooding, which is expected to remain an emergency situation for several more weeks. Over 400 deaths in Thailand have now been attributed to the flooding, and the hazards won't stop once the water recedes. So far as we know our daughter is still safe, but please continue to keep our girl and the thousands of other children like her throughout the country in your thoughts and prayers.

My leg feels a whole heck of a lot better today; I went over to Joanna's house this evening and she gave me a massage, which really helped. Apparently I'd also somehow subluxed my left shoulder, which was, um, felt less than pleasant when she worked on it. But it feels much better now too, so that's good. I think I need to go get a massage more often; I'm falling to pieces!

~Jess

In Which Connor Has More Seizures And I Discover The Perils Of A Sedentary Lifestyle

2011-11-02T23:51:00.000-07:00

Well it was another glorious day over here in seizure land. Connor had nine today, which is four less than yesterday but still about nine more than I'd like him to be having. That brings the grand total of seizures in the past three days to a daunting twenty-five. I'm hoping we're on the down slope of this particular trend; he didn't run a fever at all today and seemed to be in better spirits during the periods of the day he was conscious.

Since he was doing a bit better and was okay with me not holding him every second of the day today, I left the little guy with Jeremy this evening and took off for roller derby practice. Unfortunately, I had to pack it in early as this did not go particularly well either.

A word to the wise: sitting on a couch in one place with a nearly 40 pound child on your lap for twelve hours a day, two days in a row is not the best way to warm up for an exercise regime. Especially an exercise regime which is in a new practice space with floors that are way, way stickier than you are used to when you forgot to change out your super grippy wheels for a pair that will not make it feel like you are skating through three inches of wet cement.

Also eating a diet consisting largely of leftover Halloween candy, hummus and crackers, and whatever I could find in the back of the pantry that I didn't need to cook probably didn't help.

At any rate, my right calf declared war on me in the first five minutes of practice, and by the time we were half an hour in I was stretched out on the carpet while a teammate massaged my right calf and shin as my left leg tried to decide whether or not it was going to get into the act and start cramping too.

So that was the end of practice for me. I drove home, drank a bunch of water, ate a banana, took some ibuprofen and a hot bath, and now I'm calling it a night. It stinks because derby is my stress relief, and I've had just a wee bit of stress in the past couple of days. But I'll listen to my body and give it a rest until our bout on Saturday.

So yeah, not a particularly great day!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Sick And Has A Whole Bunch Of Seizures

2011-11-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

Well I'm kind of glad today is over, because it was not terribly fun.

Connor's fever went down a little bit at a time throughout the day, and by the evening was completely gone, which was good. What wasn't so good was that he had a horrible thirteen seizures. Also we're pretty sure he had a migraine at the end of the day, which wasn't too surprising given the number of times he'd had the oxygen supply to his brain cut off. He slept about eight hours total during the day.

So it was not a particularly great day for either one of us; basically he clung to me the whole day and got upset any time he woke up and I was out of immediate eye shot. He only calmed down right before his bedtime after Jer got home and figured out the little guy was in the middle of a migraine. We dosed him up with Tylenol and he perked up a bit before falling asleep on our bed.

I still have no idea what caused his fever, but he doesn't have school tomorrow so that will give him another day of rest-- and hopefully recovery, as I would rather not have tomorrow look anything like today did.

Blegh.

~Jess

In Which It Is Halloween And Connor Gets Sick

2011-10-31T23:51:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Well, I spoke too soon yesterday on the seizure front, I'm afraid. Connor had a pretty good morning, and then late in the afternoon he had his first seizure in two weeks, which is when I discovered he was running a 101 degree temperature. He had two more seizures before the Tylenol brought his fever down enough to get them stopped. Other than the temperature and saying that he was tired he didn't seem out of sorts, though. He spent a good portion of the afternoon sleeping, so maybe his body is coping with the fever that way. I'll keep an eye on him tomorrow and make sure his temperature doesn't get any higher. Since he doesn't have any other symptoms right now, I'm wondering if maybe he's got a bit of an infection going-- maybe a UTI. We'll just have to see.

Once the Tylenol kicked in he seemed to perk up, and by the time Jeremy got home he was feeling pretty good, so Jer took the little guy out for just a bit of trick-or-treating. Connor was a yeti again this year; he got so excited about that costume when I took it out that I figured he could just wear it again this year. So while the boys were out I stayed home and passed out candy. We had a slim crop of trick-or-treaters this year, possibly because it was pretty cold outside. There were quite a few teenagers who came to the door; I'm hoping that next year Ellen will be home and able to try out trick-or-treating for the first time!

My sister left today and I miss her already. It was lovely having her here; I wish we had the chance to get together more often. While I absolutely love living up here in the Pacific Northwest, it is difficult having most of our family 2100 miles away in Texas. I guess I just have to convince them all to move up this way!

Anyway, hopefully the little guy will be feeling better tomorrow. I'll be spending that day helping him out with the vast majority of his Halloween candy, which he can't eat. It's a horrible job, but somebody's got to do it.

Yum!

~Jess

In Which Connor Looks Great And My Sister And I Grow Facial Hair

2011-10-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

It was yet another fun-filled day of sisterly shenanigans over here, as Mary and I decided to go check out The Sock Monster (thank you, astute reader "rbn" for that lovely suggestion) up in Seattle. But first we had to stop by Adamos and pose with chocolate mustaches. For Science!

Anyway, so we took the lovely scenic drive up to Seattle to go buy many, many socks, which The Sock Monster luckily had in abundance. Mary and I both found several pair, and I also got a couple pair for Connor. Since he wears his braces for most of the day his socks are on display a lot of the time, and so I like for him to have stylish tootsies. I have a feeling I'll be visiting that store on a fairly regular basis.

After that we ate some gelato, because it is physically impossible for me to pass a gelato shop without going in and eating some. Then we drove over to the shopping center Jer and I frequent when the little guy is staying up at the hospital in Seattle (something that thankfully hasn't happened for a while) and did some browsing around the various shops there.

We mostly window shopped, and found a whole lot of cute things in various stores that we decided we could make fairly easily ourselves in all of the spare time (ha!) we have. We also had to look at, touch and comment on every single thing in every single store we went into, because we are the most annoying customers in the world. Oh well. All in all it was a pretty great day!

Oh, and Connor had yet another fantastic day too. Tomorrow marks two whole weeks without a single seizure! I believe the last time that happened was somewhere around July, which is kind of crazy. Here are a couple of pictures from yesterday that Joanna took. In one he's decked out in all of his Yeti glory with his best friend baby C, who as usual is annoying the bejeezus out of him. I'm pretty sure he secretly likes it though, because he gets pretty excited when I tell him that she's coming over. In the second one he's painting his pumpkin. Doesn't he just look great?

That's my big boy!

~Jess

In Which I Have A Bout And Connor Visits The Pumpkin Patch!

2011-10-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

So today was bout day for me; my roller derby team, the Trampires, played the Terrormedixxx up in Bremerton. This was the first bout my sister had ever seen me play in, so I was hoping it would go well.

Bout day takes up way more time than just showing up shortly before play time; our team lunch today was at 2:00 in the afternoon, which meant we left the house just before 1:00pm to get there. We ate at this little tiny Filipino place that had an interesting choice in decor-- it was lined on both sides with full size broken refrigerators. Seriously-- there must have been at least eight fridges in a space slightly larger than my laundry room. It was very, very strange and more than a little creepy. Oh well.

While we were eating at the Filipino Lumpia And Broken Refrigerator Emporium, Connor was off with his respite care worker and her family at the pumpkin patch! First they stopped by to trick-or-treat at Joanna's mom's house though, and he received a giant package of pudding which was apparently the most exciting thing he'd ever seen in his entire life. He wore his yeti costume again because what the heck-- he likes it and it still fits.

Then they were off to the pumpkin patch, where Connor was forced to do all sorts of horrible things, like sit in a pile of corn and touch pumpkins and stuff. Horrors. He also painted a pumpkin today, which is currently sitting on my kitchen island. It is very cute, and I'll be putting it out on the porch tomorrow so the whole neighborhood can see what a fantastic budding artist we have in the house!

So the bout was really fun and I felt like I played well, which is always nice. We lost by quite a bit, but we still had a great time! A lot of people were dressed up in all sorts of crazy costumes (including some absolutely adorable kids) so I had fun checking out all of the creative get-ups people were wearing. Jeremy and Mary both got to come, so that was pretty fun too! I'm glad things worked out to where Mary was able to see me play; I love getting the chance to share the sport I enjoy so much with family.

And now it's way past my bedtime, so I should probably go to sleep!

~Jess

In Which My Sister And I Go Out On The Town

2011-10-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

Today my sister and I went out and did a whole lot of sister-type stuff!

While Connor was in school we played around in the local area. First we went out for coffee, and then we drove over to the mall and shopped for a little while. I found a lovely winter coat which I'm pretty sure is going to be my new best friend now that winter is coming on. Mary ogled all of the awesome socks in the stores here. Mary loves socks even more than I do, if that is possible. Particularly argyle socks. She owns a ridiculous number of argyle socks. Also tights.

Anyway, so after we picked Connor back up from school (the little guy had another great day, by the way) Joanna came over to watch him so Mary and I could go play further afield. We decided to drive down to Olympia and do some more shopping, because shopping is awesome. Since the rain was still holding off though, we made a side trip to the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, where Mary took many pictures and accused me of having secretly manufactured all of the fallen maple leaves, as they were way, way too big to actually exist in real life. Many of them were about the size of my head. Also she declared all of our vine maples to be fake too, because there was no way that trees could really have leaves that red. In her defense, I think all the trees in Texas went directly from green to dead this year thanks to the drought, so I indulged her and admitted stapling all the fake red leaves to the trees before she got here so she would feel better about the Dallas area's less-than-glorious display.

The things we do for family, huh?

Anyway, so it started sprinkling halfway down the trail, and by the time we got back to the van the rain was really coming down. We drove the rest of the way to Olympia and ducked into one of my favorite restaurants to eat a late lunch. After that we visited the neat toy store downtown, where I picked up some stickers for Ellen, a Christmas present for Connor (a stuffed Gobo doll from Fraggle Rock!), and Mary and I drooled over the giant selection of Playmobil toys and argued over who owns* the large collection currently sitting in storage until Ellen comes home.

Anyway, so then we drove back to the house, met up with Jeremy and went out to dinner at our favorite Greek restaurant, which was lovely as always. My entire fridge is full of delicious leftovers right now, which is not really a problem as far as I'm concerned.

It's so great having my sister here!

~Jess

*Hint: it's me.

In Which My Sister Comes To Visit

2011-10-27T23:37:00.000-07:00

My sister Mary is in town!

My sister looks like a younger, thinner, possibly evil carbon copy of me. There is absolutely no way we can possibly deny each other ever. So good thing we like each other! Otherwise she could totally rob a bank or something and pin it on me.

We are also both extremely sarcastic, and we feed off of each other. So if you see us together, be prepared.

So I swung by the airport to pick up Mary directly after I got Connor from school. Connor was not particularly excited by this routine change; normally he goes down for Quiet Time directly after school is over. So he was a little perturbed by the fact that we were instead driving across town. He was even less excited by the fact that after we collected his aunt we proceeded to go, not home for Quiet Time like we should have been doing if all was right with the world, but instead out to lunch. So he spent the entire time we were out either ignoring us completely, bending his fingers back on his teeth (which he knows he's not supposed to do) making an angry face or shrieking at the top of his lungs. Lovely. As soon as we got home and he had his thirty minutes or so of quiet time he instantly reverted to the sweet, snuggly child I'm used to.

He has me well trained.

Anyway, so I'm really excited about having my sister here (no matter what Connor's opinion is) and I can't wait to spend some time with her! It's always lovely having family in town. Who knows what evil plotting we'll get up to?

~Jess

In Which I Witness A Comedy Of Errors

2011-10-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

Seriously, this sleep thing is growing on me. And nine whole days without a single seizure-- how long has it been since that last happened? I have no idea what is causing this trend, but I'm really liking it. Keep it up, little guy!

I spent most of today either cleaning or sewing, which Connor was not particularly thrilled about. I'm way behind on my housework, so when I'm catching up he tends to get pretty bored. So I'd clean for about twenty minutes, play with him twenty minutes, clean another twenty minutes; you get the drift. It doesn't really make for very efficient cleaning.

Also I did a whole lot of sewing. This is because the birthday present I'd made for my sister was destroyed yesterday in a ridiculous Stooge-worthy comedy of errors. I'd modified a lovely green messenger bag for her by covering it in poppies, and just before I was going to wrap it I held it up to show Connor. He promptly threw up all over it.

Apparently Connor doesn't like poppies.

So I freaked out, because that bag represented an obscene number of hours of sewing and the messenger bag was made of leather, felt and beads, which I can't exactly throw in the washing machine. I set it down on the floor next to the couch and ran for the paper towels, which proved to be my second mistake.

Now, Loki is a very tidy sort of cat. He doesn't like messes, and if he finds one somewhere he will do his part to get rid of it by burying it. So when I jogged back, paper towels in hand, it was to discover that my cat was standing on top of the bag, claws extended, burying the poppies for all he was worth. By the time I managed to yank it out from under him (he gave me a very wounded look, as clearly he was just doing his job) he was surrounded by a ring of Pediasure, gold and black beads and shredded felt.

Yeah.

So anyway, now I'm throwing together another messenger bag, which I will be keeping far, far away from both the cats and Connor. I had to start over completely because leather is not forgiving as far as sewing holes go, and I would have had to have deconstructed the bag entirely as I'd added a lining, so I figured I might as well save myself some time and start from scratch. This time I'm doing a sugar skull theme, because I figure Connor is less likely to throw up on a death-themed bag. And also sugar skulls are easy and fast to do.

Oh well.

~Jess

In Which Connor Goes To The Doctor

2011-10-25T23:56:00.000-07:00

Three! Three whole nights of sleep! My body has no idea what to do with that kind of rest anymore. Connor's asleep again, so what the heck-- I'll go for four nights!

I could totally get used to this sleeping thing.

So Connor had yet another fantastic day at school, and then after a short quiet time we were off to a pediatrician's appointment. The little guy needs a referral for a new stander, as he has outgrown his old one. He weighs 37 pounds now, which is five pounds up from the last time he was weighed! He is actually on the growth chart right now (in the bottom 5%, but still on it!)-- isn't that crazy? The next time he goes up a size in clothing I'll have to shop for him in the Boys section, which kind of freaks me out a little.

We also needed new referrals for a few of his doctors, and I went ahead and got him his flu shot while we were there. Connor was not particularly appreciative of this. Otherwise the appointment went well, and I like this new pediatrician; our old one deployed so we were switched to a new provider. I think this is pediatrician number five or six for Connor, but I've kind of lost count so I'm not really sure.

Anyway, after we were finished at the hospital we stopped by the bookstore to pick up Connor's Good Boy At The Doctor's Office celebratory book, and of course I had to browse for me too. And then we came home because the flu shot was making the little guy a bit sleepy, and also I had to get some dinner going before it was time to go to derby practice. I made beef stew. It was delicious.

Hooray for another good day!

~Jess

In Which I Get To Sleep A Whole Lot And Connor Is Fantastic

2011-10-24T23:04:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to bed at 9:00 at night, telling Jer that he could wake me up if Connor stayed up past when he went to sleep, since he had to work the next morning. Well luckily Connor conked out before Jer came to bed, and I got to sleep through the entire night. This means I actually had more than six hours of sleep two whole nights in a row!

It was amazing, people. I can not express just how awesome it was. Connor is actually asleep right now, so as soon as I'm done blogging I'm going to go for an unprecedented three nights in a row. I'm a little awestruck just reading that sentence. I'm pretty sure the last time that happened, Connor wasn't born yet.

Anyway, the little guy had another fantastic day! We stopped by the park today after his nap as it was a lovely crisp-but-sunny afternoon, but Connor declared it too cold for swinging so we just took a walk around the trail and then went back home. The fact that he was actually telling me that he was uncomfortable and wanted to go home was fantastic to see and a major sign that he's feeling great. Yet again we didn't see a single seizure, and he was engaged, happy, vocal (actually I didn't really miss the shrieking directly into my ear, but that's okay) and just generally feeling really good. Today marked a full week without any seizures, and it's not just me-- they've also noticed a huge difference at school in his behavior and attention to his surroundings.

I'm liking this trend!

~Jess

In Which I Return Home

2011-10-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

I'm back home!

I was mobbed by the cats at the door, and they frolicked around me, the glorious Giver of Food, for about five minutes before they got distracted by a squirrel outside and abandoned me for the windows. Connor gave me a little smile before he realized that he was supposed to be mad at me for leaving, and then he put on his best Angry Face and kept it on for a good portion of the afternoon.

It's good to be missed.

I'm happy to say that Connor enjoyed his Daddy time; he didn't have any seizures and seemed cheery, though he didn't really want to sleep last night. Apparently they stuck close to the house, though they did take a walk or two around the block.

I really enjoyed the trip, but even though I got more sleep last night than I probably have in the past several weeks, somehow I'm exhausted anyway. It was probably a combination of all the driving I did today and the large amount of socializing I did over the weekend. I'm an introvert at heart, and while I enjoy going to parties I don't usually stay for long, and they always leave me completely worn out afterwards.

So I have about a week to recover before we're off to another bout-- this time in Bremerton. We've got a crazy schedule in the next month or so!

~Jess

In Which I Have A Bout!

2011-10-22T23:52:00.001-07:00

So I'm down here in Salem, Oregon, after our first bout of the season! We had a ton of fun, though we ended up losing by quite a bit. It's always great to get the chance to visit a new town and meet a bunch of skaters I might not otherwise have the chance to play with.

But now I'm sitting in the kitchen surrounded by my derby buddies, so it's time to go! I just wanted to check in and let you all know that I'm having a fantastic time here. More tomorrow!

~Jess

In Which Our Daughter Is Safe And I Prepare For A Road Trip

2011-10-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

Today I'm so happy to tell you that we received information on the conditions at Ellen's orphanage, and they are high and dry! The children's home she lives in, as well as the surrounding orphanages, have not experienced any flooding or water damage. While they aren't out of the woods yet, hopefully the worst is over as the water begins to drain through Bangkok and they will not see the flood levels rise any more in her area. We're so thankful and relieved to know that she and the other children are safe! Please continue to keep them in your thoughts and prayers as the situation continues to develop.

Bright and early tomorrow morning I'll be kissing Jer and Connor goodbye and heading down towards Salem, Oregon to play in a roller derby bout. So there may or may not be a blog tomorrow, depending on my Internet access. I'm excited about the road trip, and I haven't visited Salem before so it will be fun to see a bit of the city, even if I won't really have time for any major sightseeing. Wish me luck!

Connor seemed a bit sleepy and lethargic again today; I'm wondering if the return to dark, rainy weather is affecting him a bit. I know I always tend to want to hibernate when the weather turns gloomy here. He didn't have any seizures, though, and hopefully he'll sleep well tonight. Last night I'm pretty sure he had some nightmares; the little guy woke up several times obviously terrified, and he sobbed into my shoulder for a while before going back to sleep. It was pretty heartbreaking. I always wonder what it is that he dreams about. Thankfully his dreams seem to mostly be happy; oftentimes we'll hear him laughing in his sleep. So far this evening he's been sleeping peacefully, so maybe he'll be in a better mood tomorrow when he has his Daddy Day with Jeremy. He always enjoys spending time with his daddy!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is A Sleepy Boy

2011-10-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

Connor had another good day today, though this afternoon he was in a super sleepy mood. He didn't nap during his quiet time, but when it was over and I brought him out into the living room, ten minutes later he was slumped over the arm of the couch, fast asleep. I lay him down and covered him with a blanket, and he spent the next two hours snoozing away.

Surprisingly, he actually went to sleep tonight, too. So this will be a short blog as I'm going to take advantage of it. I have an away bout with my roller derby team down in Salem, Oregon this weekend, so I want to get some sleep!

In other news, we scheduled our homestudy update visit today, and we'll be meeting with our social worker in early November as the last step of renewing our immigration paperwork for Ellen. December will mark one year since we filed our immigration paperwork, and so we need to renew it before it expires and we have to repeat the process. We're really hoping that this will be the only time we'll need to renew her paperwork and that we'll be bringing her home some time in 2012, but we don't have any news and unfortunately the current flooding in Thailand is likely to stretch out the wait times even longer as the government struggles to cope with the disaster. In mid-November, our dossier will have been in Thailand nine months. The earliest we could possibly hear anything would be around next March, but it's more likely we'll get word closer to the two year mark than the one year.

So in the meantime we'll be filling up the waiting by sending her care packages; we have another one ready to go right now, but we're delaying sending it for another week or so because the postal service to her area is apparently currently shut down. I was planning on baking some pumpkin bread for this package, but I think I'll hold off and stick to non-perishable items because I'm not sure how long the package may be sitting.

Hope our girl is doing okay!

~Jess

In Which I Worry About My Daughter

2011-10-19T23:48:00.000-07:00

So Connor has actually had a couple of fantastic days! Not only have we seen zero seizures, but he's been feeling much more like his cheery, happy self than in recent weeks. So that's been pretty fantastic!

Of course, now I'm worried about my daughter.

As many of you may already know, Thailand is currently experiencing its worst flooding in the past 50 years. The death toll currently sits at about 320 people and continues to rise. Unfortunately, about 80% of the province that Ellen's orphanage is located in is currently underwater, and portions of her district have been evacuated, as the water in some areas is as deep as chest high. Officials are expecting the water to continue to rise over the next few days. Thankfully, so far as I know the water has not currently flooded the orphanage.

Ellen and the other higher functioning children, along with the staff of the orphanage, have been working hard constructing and distributing sand bags to fortify the orphanage and the surrounding village, and they have stocked up on food and supplies. The district is now almost completely cut off due to water flooding the surrounding highways.

So please keep Ellen and the other approximately 2,000 disabled children in the large orphanage complex in your thoughts and prayers as the situation over there continues to develop. I'm sure they'll keep the children safe, but that doesn't mean it's not driving me crazy to be sitting over here on the other side of the world, relying on the orphanage website and news reports to piece together what's going on.

I'm really hoping that this will be the last monsoon season Ellen will experience in Thailand!

~Jess

2011-10-19T10:58:00.003-07:00

My monthly blog for Hopeful Parents is up-- you can find it over here.

In Which Connor Is Asleep So There Is No Blog

2011-10-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

I just got home from derby-related activities, and wonder upon wonders-- Connor is asleep! So consider this a blog placeholder, because I am planning on squeezing every second of sleep out of tonight that I can.

Good night!

~Jess

In Which My Creative Brain Keelhauls My Logic Center And Suddenly I'm Making Another Hugely Impractical Costume

2011-10-17T23:58:00.000-07:00

So I'm taking a break in my sewing to write this blog post.

Yes, sewing-- my brain wore me down through sheer persistence. Last night before I went to sleep I couldn't get my mind to shut up about all the amazing costumes I could make. After I went to sleep, it kept throwing things at me, so by the time I woke up I had a glorious idea for an autumn dryad-themed costume and exactly how I could make it.

Not that I need an autumn dryad-themed costume, or have any idea where the heck one would wear such an outfit to. Do you think my brain cares? Oh no. Logic is not its strong point. Nagging is its strong point, because I just could not get it to shut up about this highly impractical dress.

So it nudged me over and over and over again until somehow I found myself in sitting in front of the fabric store despite having intended when I got into the van to go to the grocery store. Clearly my brain was going to allow me to do absolutely nothing else until I at least started on this project.

So I gave up, went in and bought everything I need for the overskirt, which is now about halfway done. Oh well. At least my brain is happy, which means it's shut up about the darn thing and I can actually focus.

I had plenty of time to work on the project because Connor slept way, way too much today. He took a nap at school after he had a seizure in the morning as I was dropping him off. When he got home he took a second nap during his usual time. Then despite my best efforts to keep him awake, he crashed again in his wheelchair late in the afternoon (shortly after seizure number three of the day) and slept for another two hours. I spent a good portion of his nap time sewing.

So of course he has zero interest in going to bed now. Looks like more sewing time for me!

~Jess

In Which I Need To Turn Off My Brain

2011-10-16T22:14:00.000-07:00

So today was a super lazy day for us around here, as we recouped from our Steamcon expedition of yesterday and Connor continued to feel under the weather. He seems to be in the middle of a seizure cycle right now; he had five seizures today and was kind of droopy. By the time bedtime rolled around he was having real trouble staying awake, and when we put him down he crashed immediately. Hopefully that means that his body will get the sleep it needs to recover, and he'll have a better day tomorrow.

I spent a good portion of today thinking up all kinds of crazy costumes that I'd like to do just because. This is an ominous sign, people. I have nowhere to wear random crazy Victorian costumes to, and it's not like I don't have other things I should be doing. Somehow this isn't convincing my brain, though, which continues to throw out ideas at a rather alarming rate. Next year's Steamcon theme is "Victorian Monsters," and I keep finding myself doodling harpies and unicorns and sprites all over margins of other stuff I'm working on.

Because if there's one thing I need, it's another hobby.

~Jess