Calm before the storm

or maybe it’s the calm after the storm? Well either way, the past few weeks with Enzo has been very, very trying.  The last week has esp been really testing my last nerves! haha ok so I can sort of giggle about it now but if you could have seen (or heard) our household, you’d wanna taser someone.

Well yesterday Enzo woke up and decided he was done with his ‘tornado’.  The house has been peaceful and fairly quiet except for the occasional sibling rivalry.

Hopefully its here to stay for a while at least.  Then again, we’ve had one less child the last 2 days because Ethan has been at a friends house.  I pick him up in an hour or so, so we’ll see how it goes…

He is Mi and I am Yu

Since we’ve been  nurse-less quite often lately, we actually get to rent and watch movies quite often.  There’s one scene in particular that just cracks us up over and over again. And yes we seem to watch it over and over again thanks to YouTube!

* Viewer discretion is advised.  Ok, so maybe not so much but they do throw in a couple of curse words in there…

To my Ninongs, Ninangs, Lolo Ibok, and Papas (Ed & Jim)

Happy Friday!

Hope you have a great weekend!  And if you get super bored, stop by anytime, we’ll be up all night!  We’ll show you boring…

Just for Toots

I thought about you this morning and this still cracks me up (it’s been almost 2 yrs now huh??)

Dropped like a hot potato

I just got a call a few minutes ago from our nursing agency, and they have to drop our case because they can’t staff it.  Right now we have nursing 3 days a week and they can’t find nursing for the other 4 days.  So they said they hate to drop cases but they really can’t do much since they aren’t able to staff us.

So where does that leave us?  We have to find a new nursing agency that can staff our case.  Most agencies take AT LEAST 2 weeks to staff case. Oh goodness…

Hooked on Phonics

Five-year old students are learning to read.

Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said, 

‘Look at this!  It’s a frickin’ elephant!’

The teacher took a deep breath, then asked…’What did you call it?’

‘It’s a frickin’ elephant! It says so on the picture!’

And so it does…

As the bell rings

We’ve always homeschooled Ethan so we’ve never had to work with a school system let alone an IEP for special needs.  So many things to consider.  To start at least Elicia will be mainstreamed in a regular Kindergarten classroom since she’s a medical/physical needs vs other types of special needs.

However, because of her trach there are 2 main things that we have to focus on:

1. She’s trach dependent (meaning if that trach ever dislodges or plugs, she isn’t not breathing) so it is critical that there is always at least 1 person with her that is VERY knowledgeable and VERY comfortable dealing with a trach (not just suctioning but also changing it out)

2. She’s non-verbal, meaning while her language skills are perfectly normal, her vocal speech is extremely affected.  She clicks, quacks, makes sounds and even talks but none of it is considered really “speech or verbal” because she doesn’t use her vocal chords at all.  The doctor told me yesterday that while all trach patients can ‘quack’ like elicia, she’s the ony one they’ve ever dealt with that doesn’t make ‘vocal’ sounds at all.

Other than those two issues, her pulmonologist isn’t putting any kind of limitations on her.  They said to let her run, play, go to school all day because she will self-regulate just like we do.  She’ll tell us when she’s had enough (or at least I hope she does because she LOVES to run around with Enzo)

As much as I want to homeschool Elicia, for the first year or so, we think she would benefit more from going to a traditional school setting.  Kind of scary to think about but how would I teach a non-verbal child to read?  I need her to at least get the basics.

Plus with her being so premature, living in a medical foster home, and being in a special ed class last year, she needs the extra stimulation of being with ‘normal’ kids her age. Ok, so normal is probably not the word to use, but yeah…

So here we are, with not quite 6 weeks left till school starts….So much to do to make sure things are in place for her with so little time.  Seems like doctors, nurses, and school ppl are saying that 6 weeks left with so many gaps to bridge is really tight….

3 movies in 2 weeks!

We haven’t had a family movie night in ages, much less go to the movie theaters to catch any of the new movies out.  So it has definitely been a treat for the entire family to waatch 3 movies in 2 weeks!

When Ethan gets excited he always starts gagging.  He doesn’t throw up, but he just gags out of excitement.  It’s funny!  So he’s done that quite a bit lately esp since we’ve been springing it up on them.

It’s so hard to go to the movie theatre with Enzo because he is so young and gets so bored too quick, we have to be pretty picky about what movie to watch with him.

So a couple of Saturday’s ago we started our movie marathon with…

That movie was so funny!  We all loved it!  Esp Enzo…and he’s so hard to please when it comes to giving his undivided attention…

Almost once a month since Ethan was old enough to sit through a movie, Toots has always tried to go on an ‘Ethan-Daddy Date’ as they like to call it.  So while Ethan was at children’s camp, we decided Enzo really needed to have time with Daddy esp since Toots has been such a rule enforcer lately (that’s another post for another day).

So Toots took him to see…

Of course it had to have something to do with cars, I don’t think Enzo would have gone with Daddy without me, much less sit through the movie! I guess he liked the movie, but he’s not fixated on it like he is with the Disney Cars Movie.  Then again maybe it’s because he was more intrigued about the popcorn than the movie!?  But he was so excited to get to go on a date with Daddy since he’s had to watch Kuya and Daddy go without him!

I can’t wait for Elicia to go on a date with her Daddy!  She’s not ready yet tho.  We’ll have to wait till she’s ready to go off anywhere without Enzo.  (Toots tried to take her one night to buy milk at the store, he had to bring her back before they even drove off the driveway because she was crying huge alligator tears)

Last night, we decided to take advantage of not having a nurse since it also meant we didn’t have to be home by a certain time!

That was such a cute movie!  Although it’s not really a little kid movie because the first half doesn’t have any dialogue.  Elicia and Enzo were fine tho because they were too busy with their popcorn to notice.

Elicia sounds like Wall-E when she talks.  It’s hilarious because since she saw the trailer, she keeps repeating ‘Wall-E’…and ever since we’ve been visiting with her, if something startles her in the car she yells out ‘Whoa whoa whoa!’  Wall-E says that in the movie and it sounds just like her….too funny!

It’s been really nice to get to go out as a family of 5 and be normal even for a short time without workers and nurses….

Thumbsucking

ack! ‘E’ is so hooked on her thumb when it’s bedtime!  Don’t give me the ‘aww poor girl she needs her thumb to soothe herself’ because I was talking to Enzo’s speech therapist/pathologist (he’ll be working with ‘E’ too) and he says that she’s been aggressively sucking her thumb for so long that it will definitely affect her speech.

He pointed out how the top of her mouth/teeth has the shape of her thumb! We’re not even looking at it from the orthodontics point of view.  It’s bad enough that she faces quite a bit of speech therapy anyway because of her trach, but her thumbsucking isn’t helping!

I scared the lights outta her one morning after the nurse left.  We’ve been putting socks on her hands to keep her from getting her thumb, and she slipped her thumb out of it to suck on it.  She makes this weird clicking sound when she sucks on it, and I caught her so I jumped a little too quick and yanked her thumb out.  Ooops she jumped so high, she had tears in her eyes not because of her thumb but because I startled her!

Yeah yeah I felt like the worst mom ever, but then I remembered her thumb and her mouth so I got over it pretty quick!

Besides, every time she sucks her thumb, it causes her apnea monitor to go off!  I keep telling her that the machine tattles on her!

How do I get her to quit???  Socks sort of help but she’s sneaky and they do fall off once in a while.  They’ve tried the stuff you put on the thumbs that make it taste bitter and even hot sauce, but they said that it never worked for her.  (I wouldn’t know where to get that anyway)

I looked around on the internet and they have thumb guards (kinda pricey) and they suggested vinegar too.  I’m thinking about trying vinegar because I know she hates the taste of that!

Don’t get crazy ideas!  We had filipino sausage the other night and Toots likes to dip his in vinegar.  Well ‘E’ kept insisting that she likes it too, so we let her try it.  Let’s just say she won’t be asking to try that again!