To Know Or Not To Know...

Do I really want to know?  This is the question that I have been wrestling with for the past week and a half.  It has made me cranky, irritable, emotional, & it has been interfering with my sleep.

What is it that I'm not sure if I want to know?  Tomorrow morning, we're going to load the kids in the car and drive down to Children's Memorial.  From there we are going to walk to the geneticist's office. 

Geneticist.  Genes.  I was fascinated with this when I was in college, and I enjoy teaching about it, but now it's going to apply to real life, our life.   

Do I want to know what, if any, disorders we have passed onto our daughter and son?  Thinking about it makes me want to throw up.  On the other hand, what if this gives us answers as to why our daughter doesn't like to eat and isn't growing? 

I am torn.   Do I want to know or do I not want to know?  Good question.

The Chili Dawg...

Back in 2003, we had to put our first dog, Goliath to sleep.  I'm pretty sure that Goliath is now sitting on Satan's lap helping him rule Hell.  A co-worker of Ryan's knew of a family who had a Golden Retriever that they didn't want anymore and were giving him away for free.  Ryan emailed me a picture of him and I said "yes" immediately, so Ryan set up a meeting.  I fell in love with Chipper (who names a dog that?) as soon as I saw him.  I had been going through a bad bout of depression following my brain injury, and this dog brought me out of it. 

We changed his name to Chili Dawg, and got him fixed up at the vet (he had all sorts of infections going on).  Every day I'd take him for long walks and just pet him.  Chili thinks he's a lap dog, and he will climb right up into your lap, lay his head on your chest with the rest of his body spanning the length of yours.  He knows he's a beautiful dog, and if he were a human, he'd have an entourage of people to follow him around telling him that and grooming him.  One of his favorite things to do is to sit with his face in the wind and let it blow his fur.  He also likes to lay on his back when he sleeps, it's the funniest thing.  He has helped me through a lot.  He knows when I'm upset and just need something to cry into at night.  He lets Juliana use him as a step to climb up, and I'm sure it hurts his arthritis but he has never growled or snapped at her.  Both kids went through the hair, ears, and tail pulling stages and he put up with it.  He's a good and faithful dog.

Well, it's 2011, and my best friend is getting old.  His muzzle is grey.  He has arthritis and walks with a limp.  He has a hard time climbing up into your lap nowadays but he still makes an effort.  He still greets me and the kids at the door everyday with a wagging tail when we get home.  He still sits with his face in the wind, being beautiful.  He doesn't wrestle with his Boxer brother as much anymore, and he has slowed down when he's running in the back yard.  He's still my crying blanket, even more so these past couple years as the stresses have added up.  I know that eventually he will no longer be with us, but I hope that day is long in coming because I don't know what I would do without him.  People say that they're just animals, but I don't think they understand that some animals can change your life.

A Boy and His Dinosaur...

Noah has a special stuffed animal.  A stegosaurus to be exact.  His name is Steggy- Noah named him (his real name is Morris Stegosaurus from Dinosaur Train, but try telling Noah that and see where it gets you).  Steggy goes everywhere with Noah, day care, church, swim lessons, doctor's appointments, preschool, etc.

Thursday night everything that could go wrong did.  Ryan's car barely got him home from work before it broke down.  Then, Juliana projectiled at the dinner table for the first time in about a month (everyone still remembered the clean up drill though, so that was good).  As I was getting ready to wash Juliana's hair, I noticed something and said, "Noah, why did you bring Steggy into the bathtub?"  Noah immediately realized his mistake- Steggy is a stuffed animal and not a bathtub toy and started to cry.  I told him it was going to be alright.  I took Steggy to the sink and started to ring him out, but he was really wet.  I looked at his tag, and it said do not put in dryer- who makes a kiddie toy that you can't put in the dryer?!?  I put Steggy in front of a fan and turned the fan on high in hopes that Steggy would be dry by Noah's bed time. 

I finished their baths and got them into their pj's.  Noah went and stood by the fan and told Steggy how sorry he was that he got him wet and that it would be okay.  Since Ryan was out at the car parts store, I was going to put Juliana to bed and I could see that Noah was worried about Steggy, so I tried to distract him with a tv show, but that didn't work; he wanted to stay with Steggy.

At Noah's bedtime, I read him his stories and then it came time to get into bed.  He asked me for Steggy.  Steggy was still pretty wet, so Noah laid a blanket down next to his bed for Steggy to sleep on.  He climbed into his bed and I started to cover him up.  He was trying so hard to be brave, but I could hear him whimpering.  I went into the closet and grabbed 2 of Noah's old baby blankets and wrapped Steggy in them.  Then I handed Steggy to Noah who grabbed him and tucked him under his blankets.  "Thanks Mom!  You're the best Mom ever!"  And they fell asleep, just a boy and his dinosaur.

Things Taken For Granted...

I know you're not supposed to compare your children, and I realized that pretty quickly on after having Juliana.  Juliana and Noah are very different.  Noah was an easy baby.  He loved to eat, was fairly easy going, content, and once he learned to talk it was "word vomit".  Juliana has been one trial after another, and I wouldn't trade her for anything.  She has taught us perserverance and she has most definitely strengthened my daily prayer life.

There are days at work when I grow tired of hearing, "Mrs. Mahlberg...", "Hey, Mahlberg...", "Mrs. M...", etc.  Some days I even say, "she's not here right now, but if you leave a message after the beep, she'll be happy to get back to you. Beep."  My students look at me like I'm crazy, but most of them leave me a message after the beep.  There have even been times when I have gotten tired of Noah saying, "Mom" or "Hey Mom".  Let me clarify that one and say that it's when it's the whiney "mom" days.

Last week while I was reading through Juliana's EI paperwork, I started thinking of the different words that she says (she has about 12 words in her arsenal).  The two words that she uses the most right now are "up" and "doggie".  Then I got to thinking, when was the last time she called me Momma?  I can't remember.  It has to be well over a month ago.  When was the last time she called Ryan, Daddy?  I can't remember that either. 

There's nothing I would love more than to hear the word Momma come out of my daughter's mouth.  For the rest of the week and weekend, I kept asking her to say Momma.  If you know Juliana, though, you know that that's not how she operates.  She did give Ryan a Daddy on Sunday for the first time in weeks though, and I think I heard a Momma today in the van, or at least that's what I'm telling myself I heard. 

Take a lesson from me, don't take it for granted when your kiddos call you Momma or Daddy.  You never know when you will get to hear it again.

Spring Break 2011...

Spring break flew by this year, and we were sure busy!  If you looked at my calendar (some of my friends at work caught a glimpse) you would have seen that every day had at least 1-2 appointments scheduled.  While it was busy week, it was still nice to enjoy a week off with my kids.  I'm going to give you a little glimpse into what we did last week...

Monday: We started the morning off with a trip to the post office to mail our favorite girl Holly her birthday present, and on the way home stopped off at the library to pick up some Curious George books for Noah.  After we got home, Juliana had her visit with Laura, her amazing speech therapist.  Later that day, Juliana had her visit with Meghan, her equally amazing physical therapist.  It was then that we were given the news that Meghan would be discharging Juliana from Early Intervention, because her delay was not great enough.  Ryan and I had seen that coming, and this was great news to hear, but bittersweet at the same time.  When you work with the same therapists for almost a year, they become like family members (but I will save that post for another time).

Mrs. Laura

Miss Meghan

Tuesday: Juliana and I started out with our drive downtown to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, which is on the campus of Northwestern University.  It's not a tough drive for me to do alone, although the GPS did want me to turn left on a street with "no left turns" allowed.  Nevertheless, we got there.  However, when I had looked at the time on my calendar, I had looked at the time for our Wednesday appointment which was for 9 AM.  Our appointment was at 10 AM, we were an hour and a half early.  Fortunately the floor our doctor is on has a children's play area, and Juliana was happy playing there and flirting with the man behind the desk.  Our appointment with Dr. Gaebler went well (I really like her) and she is going to do some digging to hopefully help us get some answers to Juliana's "seizure/non-seizure" last month.  We then ended the day with our appointment with our chiropractor.

Playing at the RIC

Wednesday: I hadn't slept well, and I had a birthday coffee coupon (free medium coffee) from Dunkin Donuts, so once the kids woke up, we went through the drive-thru and got myself a coffee, Noah a sprinkle donut, and Juliana 2 munchkins.  1 of my former students was working the window, and refused to take payment for the donuts, which was kind of cool.  Then, Juliana had her Developmental Therapy evaluation.  I was slightly cocky about this one.  Since she didn't qualify for DT last year when she was evaluated, I figured she wouldn't qualify this year.  Yeah, that's what happens when you get cocky.  Fortunately, the areas she has her delays in are being treated with speech therapy, so we don't have to add in another therapy.  From there, we went to do Noah's 4 year check up with Dr. Russell.  It went really well.  Noah weighed in at a whopping 33 lbs 7 oz, so he won't be moving to a booster seat in the car for a while, and he's 40 inches tall.  Juliana was a bit confused when we were there because she is so used to being the center of attention at the doctor's that she didn't understand why she wasn't being examined.  Then we played outside all afternoon.

 

 

 

Dr. Russell

Thursday: We spent the morning and part of the afternoon up at Jaime's.  The kids liked that they got to spend time with their cousins and meet Jaime & Bill's new dog, Igor.  Then, we had to leave, because it was time for Juliana's Early Intervention meeting.  Juliana's meeting went well.  Juliana qualified for everything except for Physical Therapy, but Meghan suggested that she be re-evaluated in three months since she is at risk of falling behind again.  It took about an hour to go through everyone's evaluation and set the new goals, but this time I knew what to expect- last time it was hard to hear everything that she had a delay in- it depressed me for days.

Miss Suzy holding conference with Laura and Meghan

Friday: This was our low-key day.  We only had one thing on the calendar- lunch with Ryan and Uncle Jeff.  We drove up to Ryan's work, picked him up, and met up with Uncle Jeff at this yummy Greek restaurant.  There was so much food left that we were able to bring home the leftovers to eat for Saturday's lunch.

Juliana's first gyro

Lunch with Daddy and Uncle Jeff

So that is just a glimpse into our spring break activities.  We were busy, but we had fun too.

A Happy Birthday Message From Noah...

Dear Holly,

Here is a special message just for you on your birthday.  I miss you so much and I love you.

Love,

Noah (& Juliana too)

P.S. At the end of the video, Juliana put her mouth on the camera trying to kiss you.

Grandpa, This Tantrum Is For You...

Juliana has started throwing tantrums if she doesn't get her way.  It's magical.  Grandpa Jim (my dad), who Juliana has wrapped around her finger, doesn't believe that she could ever do anything like that.

This is from this past Wednesday.  I'll set the stage.  Juliana didn't want to leave Theresa's when I picked them up after school.  On the 3 minute drive home she proceeded to scream, and then something hit me in the back of the head.  I said, "What was that?"  Noah answered, "Sister's shoe."  Juliana had taken her shoe off, and thrown it.  I realize the accuracy of a 22 month old is not good, so the fact that it hit me in the back of my head is pretty amazing.

When we got home, I told her she was going to go into time out after I took her coat off.  This was what I got.  Notice she only has one shoe on. 

 During this episode, Noah and I went upstairs until the screaming was done.  When she stopped screaming, her coat was off, and she was sitting in time out. 

Then, she wanted some animal crackers when she was done in time out.  Unfortuantely, I didn't put them in the right container.  This is what I got.  Again, notice the shoes.

Noah and I again went upstairs until she was done screaming and re-seated in time out. 

So, Grandpa, what do you think now?  Is that enough proof?