Year: 2008

Jeremy’s flight came in at 6:30 pm tonight and I worked, worked, worked right up to the last minute trying to finish all that I wanted to do. This is the end of the quarter for me, I wanted to do a good job and so I worked ferociously today and I got done what I needed to get done.

I had driven to work so I could leave work and head straight to Dulles, because Dulles is not really accessable by public transit. On a side note, it only took me an hour to get to work even though I left the house at 7:30 am which is the peak of morning rush hour, vs the 1.5 hours it takes me via public transit. Sigh, there is no getting around that the subway is just slow.

I am officially a stick shift driver now, I’ve taken the car on the Beltway in rush hour traffic! I can downshift and I can handle stop and go traffic. It has only taken me 12 years to learn to drive a stick shift, Jeremy’s always had one since we’ve been together (he’s had 3 different cars in 12 years), and I’m sure I tried to learn to drive each and every one of them. Now I just have to learn how to take the curves without putting on the brakes.

Rebecca asked in the previous post if Edda’s getting any services for the summer. Edda is qualified for ESY – extended school year, but it’s not extended by much. It’s from July 8th to August 1st from 9 am – noon. Other than that, Edda’s going to PT and OT once a week. We are still struggling to find an SLT that we like, but we can barely find anyone who is even willing to take Edda on, let alone find someone superfantastic.

On a fundraising note, I think I have an appointment with Sen. Mikulski’s (MD) office next Wednesday at 11 to talk about the $500,000 Rett Syndrome earmark. I don’t have an actual appointment with the senator (which I think would have freaked me out to no end), but I think I have one with the legislative health aide, which is better than I expected. I sprinkle the word “think” throughout my last sentence because the legislative aide emailed me and said “Wed. at 11?” and I replied “Great, how do I find your office?” and I’ve gotten no answer and that was 3 days ago. I wonder if I’m going to bring Edda. It’s smack dab in the middle of the work day, but what the heck, she’s up for an adventure I guess. What am I getting myself into? Apparently, I’m heading to Capitol Hill.

Jeremy is out of town again at a work retreat. Yvonne and I were laughing this morning about what a good gig Jeremy has, go to some beautiful place and have some beers and talk about saving the world. He just called from CA, he’s still sick and it’s 4 people to a room and he forgot to pack his pajamas.

Edda lost her 2nd tooth today. Yvonne thinks she lost it somewhere in the living room. We are never going to find it, I bet a dog ate it.

Vince helping out with a little feeding.

And also some carrot cutting.

Vince’s first day of summer camp was canceled because a water main broke in the neighborhood. We are under strict orders to boil our water, which (because we don’t have cable TV) no one really took seriously until I was on my way home from work and mentioned it to Jeremy.

Jeremy has been sick the past two days with a fever of 104. He has alternated between being too cold and being a “sweatball”. He went to the doctor today who laughed and told him he wasn’t taking enough Motrin.

After I spent the day telling my coworkers how wonderful the Metro is and how I haven’t had more than 5 days in the past 9 months with major delays, I spent the evening wedged into both platform and the train because the train I was on was too crowded and one overeager transit rider has his rear end leaning against a door and then the doors failed to close and we had to de-train and then I had to wait until 4 full trains passed until I could get myself back on track towards home.

Doesn’t hippotherapy sound just like a asking a hippo, “Yes, but how how do you really feel?”

After 8 months on a waiting list, we finally had our first session/evaluation today even though it was really, really hot.

Gong gong and pua pua were there:

Here we are on Monty, the fake horse:

And here is Shamrock, our therapy horse which we did not get to ride on, but at least we got to pet.

We were 30 minutes late for Edda’s IEP meeting on Friday because a train broke down on the Metro and we had to single track it for a while, which means that you have to let one train run the whole length one direction and then the other train gets to go in the opposite direction – quite a waiting ordeal.

I think that this IEP meeting is kind of funny. We love Edda’s teacher, Ms. Sarah, and she knows Edda as well as we do and I feel like I can call Ms. Sarah up and say, hey! can we try this out? and she’ll think about it for a while and then we’ll work on it. So at the IEP meeting is – Ms. Sarah, Ms. Tanya (the principal of the school, who we also have a nice relationship with) and then 2 people from the county who talk about Edda but don’t really know her. And these other folks who don’t see Edda on a daily basis, they like to talk a lot. (Hands? What’s the deal with her hands?) Yes, so it was non-confrontational and just fine. We changed a few things about her IEP to tie less of her early literacy skills and early math skills to actually physically having to do something with her hands to more eye gaze and tapping.

I spent the afternoon at the local community pool for one of Vincent’s friend’s birthday party. (I got to hold a 6 month old baby! Sigh, such babyness.) This is the first hot/humid day of the season, it was packed and Vince had a great time. This photo does not begin to tell you how crowded it was, I felt like I had one square foot of pool to myself.

Now there are 3 drivers in the house, Yvonne, Jeremy and me. We have only 2 cars, so Jeremy started taking the bus to work today. The plan is for me to drive to the Metro in the morning, then Jeremy takes the bus to the Metro and heads to work and then we coordinate and go home together. Yvonne then has the car during the day to drive the kids to their various appointments and activities and also so she can do some stuff during the day while the kids are at school.

Trying to help Yvonne find her way around has been a bit crazy and unpredictable, it makes me want to buy a GPS!

Our offices move again. On Monday, Mom & Dad are going to move into an office room where sits two people with one door and no window 🙂

Yes, it’s going to be summer soon, the kids are out of school next week. My favorite seasons are usually the transitional seasons, spring and fall. This has been a nice long spring, lots of rain, lots of flowers. I think this week marks our 1 year anniversary since we’ve moved to Maryland. A year ago, neither of us had jobs, none of the kids were in school and we were kind of adrift, not knowing how it would all turn out. It has been a lucky year for us!