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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

My day so far:

6:15 get up. Get dressed. Pop frozen pancakes into the microwave to heat.
6:20 Get Tiffany up. Get her dressed. Pop her into booster seat, feed her the pancakes and some apple juice.
6:25 Pack her lunch/snack bag for school.
6:35 Comb her hair, wash face, apply sneakers, and let her get up.
6:36 while I'm cleaning her plate off the table, hear her happily slamming a door in the back of the house.
6:37 find out that she's not, in fact, in her brother's bed (score a point for good behavior!)
6:45 the bus appears. Tiff leaves for school.

7:10 Robbie is awake and sucking on his toes.
7:15 get Robbie up. Apply diaper, inhaler, and suction the mucus from his nose.
7:25 feed him a biscuit, try to feed the bottle. Compromise on two swallows of formula and a handful of Baby Crunchies.

Load and start the dishwasher.

7:45 begin his therapy. Alternate activities while scanning his extremities every few minutes for color. When his breathing starts to wheeze, step back on physical exertion and do compressions and speech. Encourage eye contact. Encourage vocalizations. Watch for color, listen for breathing. Whenever he seems likely to accept a crunchy or a swallow of formula, provide it. Even if I have to trick him into it.

Things that got done between 7:45 and 10:15:
Dishwasher ran.
Mixed up a bowl of gluten-free pancake batter. Added a cup of butterscotch morsels, and fried up about 6 pancakes before being swatted firmly on the ankles by a small unhappy child who wanted more crunchies. Poured the rest of the batter into a greased loaf pan and baked in oven (turned out very good, incidentally).
Changed sheets on Tiff's bed and cleaned the room up. Stuffed animals back in place, bed made, the remnants of three books collected and removed. She likes to shred; we try to discourage this and don't let her have books in her room during times when she's most likely to shred them, but sometimes it happens.
Washed kitchen floor.
Rescheduled my cardiology appt to next week, and said a prayer that I don't have to re-re-schedule it. They want an echocardiogram, I think, and I've got two little kids that I'll have to schlep with to that. It happens. Hopefully we'll get it done in record time, with good behavior, since the appt is first thing.
Robbie ate about 5oz and 1/4 cup baby crunchies.

In fifteen minutes Tiff comes home. I need to have her lunch on the table by then, and I have to have dishes put away, and dinner starting to defrost, and I need to call the yard service people to come mow the lawn. I need to run two loads of laundry tonight. Change Robbie's sheets and bedding. Do another round of therapy for him, and a round with her. I should take them both outside for fresh air. I should vacuum. I should...

but we're already running out of time. By the time I convince her to eat some lunch and him to both eat and do his therapy, we're looking at afternoon naps. I can get some housework done then, or I can lay down for a bit. Lately I've been plowing through the work. Today I'm exhausted and need to lay down a bit. If the kids are quiet enough, I might even get to sleep a little.

We're getting everything ready, bit by bit, to move again. I don't want to move. I don't want to go to a new area with new doctors where I'm going to be judged all over again by everyone I come into contact with. These are good kids. They are the light of my life. I'm a good mother to them. So why do I still get judged as unworthy of them because of their developmental delays and weight?

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