Temporary Blog Pause!

Good morning!

We have a tsunami of Spawn-related appointments this month.  He's currently in the middle of being transitioned from Early On (which is an early-intervention program for kids at risk of developmental delays) to Special Education.  Normally, this would be accomplished in a few minutes because most counties have the same group of early childhood therapists who do both Early On and home-based Special Education prior to age 3 by signing a few papers.

Not for us!

We happen to live in a quirky spot where we live in one county for human services like Early On - but the public school district is a part of another county.   This means that Spawn has to transfer from one county to another which means that the receiving county needs to evaluate Spawn for speech, cognitive, gross and fine motor skills prior to having another meeting to discuss which services he needs and then starting up services.   Spawn is an awesome kid - but he's still a two-year old so he can only handle one of these tests per day since each requires 45 minutes to 90 minutes of cooperation from a toddler.  That's four appointments in a month.

To make things more crazy, his yearly IEP - which is called something else for the under-3 year crowd - is due in the middle of all of this so we have one more meeting to sign paperwork that will be substantially revised within two weeks.   For anyone who has not worked in public education, human services or government, you are probably wondering if we can push the IEP off.  The long and short answer is no.  That's a fifth appointment.

Months ago, we scheduled a neurodevelopment appointment that lined up with one of his PT appointments since they are in the same building.  That's a sixth appointment.

Spawn has four PT appointments a month which takes us to ten appointments this month. 

But wait!  We're not done!

Spawn has been highly compliant with his glasses.  He loves them; he'd grumble and try to sign "glasses" if we forgot to put them back on in the morning or after a nap.   Suddenly, he started taking them off.  When we put them on, he'd wiggle them around like he was trying to get them in the right spot to focus, then take them off.  Eventually, he started trying to hide the glasses - and I don't want to play "where's Spawn's glasses?" with a toddler who doesn't want to wear them.  His opthamologist agreed that Spawn's eyes have probably changed enough after his surgery that he needs a new prescription for his glasses.   Thankfully, they fit him into their schedule in two weeks.  So that's eleven appointments.

Oh, then the night before my yearly physical, I found a lump in my breast.  My doctor is pretty confident that the lump is benign since it is located under a healing bruise from an injury.  The Spawn was using me to climb onto the couch when he set his knee on my breast, shifted his weight onto that knee then pivoted which ground his knee into my breast.  Wow, did that hurt!  I grabbed his hips and tossed him over my shoulder onto the couch; he thought that was great!   I had a huge swollen knot there by my evening shower followed by a black-blue bruise that is still healing a month later.  To be on the safe side, I've got a diagnostic mammogram scheduled for Monday.  I also got blood work done this morning.  Which takes us to fourteen appointments that I remember.

Oh, wait!  There was a fifthteenth!  I have a conditional job offer from a big-box home improvement store to work in their paint department (assuming I passed a drug screen and a background check😀).  I love subbing - but it is a job that overlaps with the times that Spawn's appointments are.  Working evenings and weekends will hopefully make my life a little easier.  And honestly, subbing pays the same (or less) an hour so I may well end up ahead financially.

We've also had a lot of wind.  This broke the nearest tower for our internet provider which means we have intermittent service at best and no service for up to 24 hours at a time.  That's making composing posts tricky since everything I do is cloud-based. 

I apologize that my posting schedule is going to be wonky.  I will be back soon - and with some fun posts on "Joyfully At Home", Maxwellian crazy, and Babblings of the Botkin!