Happy Leap Year!!

Look what we found sitting on our back fence a couple Saturday's ago!



Brigham and his "Potato Volcano" with corn lava.




Mosey trying to entertain himself with tape, while cooped up at home with me all day.




The cool Solumedrol delivery system. The medicine is in this sort of balloon type thing inside the container (a little hard to see), and kind of squeezes the medicine out as it deflates. Much more convenient that lugging around an IV pole!!




Yes, our tortoise actually eats! He is so clandestine in his eating, we've never actually seen him do it! We've seen him drinking water, and he's stayed alive for 2 months, so we figured he must be eating, although not much. There's always plenty left over in his food dish that just gets dried out under the heat lamp. But yesterday he ate CARROTS! Tons of them! Right out of our hands!!


Happy Leap Year everyone!!

Warning, long somewhat venting message enclosed. Feel free to skim.

So I called my doctor and got started back on a 5-day course of Solumedrol on Wednesday. Just from home, thank goodness. Today is day 3, and I'm already seeing improvement, so that is good. The nurse put the IV in my hand this time which is a lot easier to handle than in my forearm, for some reason, although a little more painful during the infusion. I'm actually up walking about the house a little, so maybe we can put the wheelchair back in the garage for a while!

Joseph was VIP for his class this week! It has been fun for him. We made a poster with a bunch of pictures of him growing up, and some of his favorite things (pets, vacations, family, etc.). He helped me pick out the pictures and then I stayed way up way too late matting the pictures and laying them out. But it looked nice. He could bring in things all this week, so one day we made mini blueberry muffins (blueberries are his favorite fruit), one day he brought in some of the Harry Potter audio CD's, and today he got to do an experiment in class. I was worried the school had a no-homemade-food policy (like our last school), but I included a list of ingredients, and it was fine. We made one batch with a mix, but even though I followed the instructions exactly for mini muffins, and even took them out of the oven 2 minutes earlier than the minimum time stated on the box, they still burned. Ugh. So I ended up making a batch from scratch with frozen blueberries, and they were soooo much better. I'll never bother using a box for muffins again, these were so much better, and not much harder.

Joseph decided to do "Mayow's Experiment" showing how the air is composed of 20% water. You secure a candle to the bottom of a glass pie dish (just melted it on with some wax), and then fill up the pie dish partway with colored water (easier to see with colored water). Then light the candle, and carefully lower a glass jar or cup over the candle. It will burn for a few seconds until all the oxygen is consumed, and then it will go out. Water is then drawn up into the glass, equal to the volume of oxygen that had been consumed. It is pretty cool, and the kids really enjoyed seeing it. Joseph was able to explain it pretty well, and invited his classmates up 5 at a time to see the experiment closely.

I worry a little that I've embarrassed Joseph. I've gone into his classroom a few times with my cane, and invariably a couple of kids will ask what's wrong. I'm just tell them my legs don't work very well and I use a cane to keep my balance and help me walk. Well today I came in with my cane AND with an IV sticking out of my hand. I could hear little voices saying, "Look at her hand!" and "Oh wow, she has another owie, she broke her hand!" I debated telling the whole class before we started the experiment that I was getting medicine through and IV in my hand to help my legs, just to defuse all the conjecture, but it felt awkward, so we just went on with the experiment. One little girl did ask me what it was, and I told her it was for getting medicine to help with my legs. I figure Joseph is pretty equipped to explain to his friends what is going on. But now I'm second-guessing myself. Poor Joseph; 6 years old is pretty young to have to explain stuff like that to kids that find anything "different" a potential point for mockery. Maybe I'll email his teacher and ask if any of the kids seemed worried about it, and then tell her to feel free to tell the class it was just an IV for getting medicine. Or maybe I'm making much ado about nothing.

Joseph made me laugh a couple days ago. He was playing with his tortoise, talking to it and pretending to be some sort of larger scary animal. He said in this growly, scary voice, "Friendly! I am a CREDITOR, and I'm coming to eat you up!!!" I had to laugh at that word choice!! Sadly appropriate.

Mosey made me laugh, too. A few days ago we were in the backyard, and he had poured some water on the cement patio. As he was watching it evaporate in the sun, he said, "Look, mom, the water is disapparating!" Think we've been listening to a bit too much Harry Potter around here?!

Ben's car started acting up again this week. It had been stalling on him a few weeks ago, so he took it in to get the fuel filter changed, and the transmission fluid replaced, and it seemed good as new. Then it started doing the same thing, and failing to downshift, and some other stuff. So he was thinking maybe the Sonata is reaching it's lifespan (almost 10 years old, 150,000 miles on it), and he started researching a replacement car. He took it in to be diagnosed, and it turned out only to be a faulty sensor that was replaced for $170. Phew!! I think Ben might be secretly a tad bit disappointed, but I'm relieved. That Sonata has given us so little trouble, it has been amazing. What a great car. It definitely looks 10 years old, and like it's survived 3 little kids, but it's been so reliable and cheap to maintain.

Ok, now a confession and then I'll try to end on a positive note. Tuesday, Mosey and I went to Walmart for a short grocery run. Tuesday was a very bad day for my legs. Just getting from the handicapped spot into the entrance of Walmart where the ride-on carts are kept was a colossal effort. It's hard to describe how it feels to try to walk when you feel like your legs weigh 150 lbs each and you can only move them by swinging them from your hips. It is so incredibly difficult and scary just getting across the parking lot road. And then the shopping trip, getting Mosey on and off my lap to get things for me, trying to get the groceries into my car (Walmart is cheap, and you get what you pay for in terms of service), then attempting to get the groceries from the car into the house. Simple tasks you take for granted take on these enormous proportions. The main reason we went was because we were out of lunch meat, which is a staple for Mosey around here, since he asks for a "meat and cheese sandwich" at least once, maybe twice a day. Well, I managed to get the groceries into the house, but then I absolutely could not walk another step, so they stayed on the counter for a while. Long enough for Mister to smell the meat, grab the package, take it outside, rip it open, and eat about half of it. The boys saw him outside with it, and I just freaked out. I really just totally flipped. I HATE IT WHEN MISTER STEALS FOOD FROM THE COUNTER AND TABLE. And he knows it. He'll never do it unless he thinks we're not looking. It makes me so furious, unreasonably so. But this time was the straw that broke the camel's back. It wasn't just the meat or the money (only $3 or something), it was mostly just what the meat represented. All the enormous effort and energy expenditure and a whole morning and entire day's worth of energy totally wasted in about 30 seconds. And it meant I'd have to undertake another colossally difficult excursion to replace it. I was so mad, I dragged myself onto the back patio and just screamed at him. He came over, his tail between his legs, his head down, the picture of shame, but I just screamed and screamed at him and hit him really hard once on the back. Then I realized I was out of control and really being a horrible, scary example to my kids, so I went inside and tried to calm down. It scared me. It was scary to see how much rage could come out, that I didn't even know was there. I tried to stay calm for the rest of the afternoon, but inside I was still seething with frustration. Not just at Mister, but at everything. The house was messy, not overly so, it would normally take me maybe 10 minutes to pick up, but for me at that time, I wouldn't have even been able to pick it up in 10 hours. The boys are so good about helping out, but even having them help is just so difficult. It is so hard to explain to them exactly what they need to do, exactly where things go. It takes so long and makes me and them so frustrated. So I waited until Ben got home and then told him I was at my breaking point. He told me to go lie down and read a book and he'd take care of things, which he did.

Thankfully the next day I started on my Solumedrol, so I should start to feel a lot more in control over the next couple of weeks. It just makes me realize how very much I hope this transplant will work. It is hard to really imagine living the rest of my life with that level of frustration and feelings of loss of control.

And it really cemented in my mind the fact that my standards of house-cleaning are not really dependent on the actual state of the house, but on how much effort I anticipate it taking me to clean it up. Before MS, my standards were way lower, because I knew I could get it picked up and cleaned with reasonable time and effort. Now, even a few things out of place is completely intolerable to me, because I just don't know how I'll ever be able to clean it up myself. Weird, huh?

No news from insurance yet. I called and left a message for the transplant nurse at UHC. I hope she calls back on Monday.

The weather here has been nice. Leaves are coming out on the trees, and I saw some trees starting to blossom. It's been a nice, mild winter. The crickets woke up from their hibernation last week and now we can have the windows open at night with the cool breeze and the sound of crickets. Well, some of the windows, anyway. We're still trying to find the screens to some of them! :-)

There's a lot to be happy about. The boys both got their book reports done this month. Joseph had an incredibly good attitude about the book reports, which have sometimes been a bone of contention between us. He was happy and cooperative and good-humored. He made a flag at school (they're studying flags, and each child made their own flag with personal symbols), and he made a rectangle with 5 stars for him and his four best friends. And Brigham was one of them. :-) He only had one difficult day, which was Tuesday (also my difficult day). I finally told him to go upstairs and lie down for a while, which he did at about 5:00 PM, and didn't wake up again until 6:15 the next morning. I think he was tired! He finally seems to be beating this cough that's been wearing him down for several weeks. And he's been such a pleasant, helpful, kind, happy boy the rest of the week. I think about how worried I was about him a year ago, having such a tough transition moving from Florida, and I'm just so proud of how far he's come. He's doing really well in Tae Kwon Do, he's got his Do Son (spelling I'm sure totally mangled) pattern memorized, and is on his way to getting his senior green belt pretty soon. They've been working on "extreme kicks" in the black-belt club, and it's pretty cute and funny to watch them.

Mosey is loving reading. He's on lesson 56 in our reading book (Teach your Child to read in 100 easy lessons), so if the book starts at pre-K level and ends at second grade level, I figure he's at a 1st grade reading level! He's not too far behind his brothers. His teachers are going to kill me when he finally goes to school in 2009. Sorry for the brag there. I know it's annoying. But I do want to record it for posterity's sake, you know! :-) His grandkids are sure to care, a lot. He also made a huge leap this week with drawing and writing. He hasn't been very interested (well, at all interested) in drawing actual things, and then suddenly this week he's drawing cats and flowers and trees and suns and octopuses and all kinds of stuff! And he wrote his first words, sounded out by himself. We read these little stories on the starfall.com website, and after the story there's sometimes these sheets you can print out that ask you to draw pictures and describe what happened after the story. He read a story about a dog, and on the printed sheet he wrote, "Mo Mo" on the top (writing the S really gets him, so Mo Mo is easier for him than Mosey at this point), and at the bottom he wrote, "wut hapind he jumt!" (What happened is he jumped!). I was so proud of him!

Brigham has been a good boy, sweet and helpful. And very talkative! :-) And he is the VIP for his class next week, so it will be fun to work with him on his picture collage and everything else. He brought home his first clay creation from school. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but he's proud of it. And he brought home a very good drawing of an iguana. He also was picked to be the main character in a little class play they are doing! (The Brave Little Tailor). He told me the girl who is playing the Princess, whom he marries at the end, told him they were going to kiss at the end. And then he was quick to assure me that it was only going to be a fake kiss. We had baked potatoes the other night and he made a potato volcano with corn coming out of the top like lava, and then asked me to take a picture of it so he could remember his creation after eating it up. He had class pictures this week, and asked me to cut his hair the day before, and then on the day of, he planned out his outfit-- his nice grey school pants, a short-sleeved button down blue shirt, a very nice coodinating blue tie, and then his suit coat! Boy, did he look spiffy! I told him maybe his teacher would want him to take off his jacket for the class picture, so all the kids would look uniform, but she let him wear it, and he was so proud of himself, he wore that suit jacket all day, even on the playground. They also got individual shots done, and they'll send home the proofs so you can decide if you want to order any. I'm excited to see them. I think Brigham's eagerness to get all dressed up is so endearing. AND, we found his long-lost Sunday shoes (well, Ben found them while cleaning the house after my nervous breakdown on Tuesday), so Brigham is one happy camper.

They are all three such sweet boys, I couldn't be more blessed. And I'm feeling better and calmer and altogether things are looking up!