success and revelations

I know, I know. I’ve been slacking with my blog posts lately. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to write and I’ve been too tired to give it too much thought. And I don’t want to talk about the latest annoyances with home nursing, Wyatt's continuous stubbornness hindering the oral feeding and sprinting progress, the ongoing struggles with Wyatt’s blue spells and now temper tantrums leading to even more blue spells, or the promising yet disappointing new CO2Monitor. I feel like a broken record on these subjects. Let’s talk about something positive…

Well, last weekend my husband and I dared to get away for a couple days and we handed all the responsibility for all the kids, including Wyatt, over to Grandma and Grandpa. We picked the two older boys up from school a little early and were hoping to get out of town by 3pm when our nurse was scheduled to leave. Well, we underestimated the challenge of transporting everyone and everything for the short 3 mile car ride to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Even our new minivan can’t fit six people, plus three days worth of supplies and equipment. So after a couple trips back and forth and everyone and everything was unloaded, we ended up just throwing our own luggage together and manage to leave by 5pm. It was a smooth ride after that and the two of us finally had random small talk again. This may seem boring and meaningless to most of you but to us, it is such a relief from the usual short and sweet dialog evolving only around the latest medical updates and kids related news. Since this was the first time that we went away overnight and considering it would have taken us a good 3 hours to drive back home if something were to happen, it was a bit nerve-wrecking. After all, this was a test for all of us. Wyatt is very clingy and we all didn’t know how he would react (a.k.a. how many episodes) especially when it was time to go to sleep. If he could handle staying overnight at Grandma and Grandpa’s, that would mean that we have found a greater state of normal again and it opens up the possibility of all the kids being able to have sleep-over every now and then instead of Wyatt being the only one excluded. Long story short, the weekend was a success!

The reality of what we all have been through in the last 11months definitely hit last Tuesday when I had a parent teacher conference with my 7 year old son’s 1^st grade teacher. I walked into the conference with the urge to apologize for this being the first year ever that I haven’t been involved in my kids’ education. I feel so much guilt for not knowing what is going on at school for my 10 year old and 7 year old. Most weeks I couldn’t even tell you what their homework was, whether it got done or how they did on exams. I knew they were doing well based on their progress reports and report cards but we’ve been so busy at home that it often went unnoticed how much responsibility and trust we placed on them. Before I could even say anything at all to my son’s teacher she started out with complimenting my son on how polite and responsible and smart he is. I wanted to cry. He managed to be the best student in his class despite coming home to having to help take care of his 3 year old brother every day and having to learn to handle emergency situations with Wyatt. I can’t even express how proud I am of all my kids for taking life as it is and just rolling with it. My goal and my expectations have always been to raise my kids from an early age to be responsible, independent and well-mannered. Never could I have imagined that they would learn these skills from their youngest brother Wyatt.