encouragement

funny the difference a day makes...

*a two hour nap, thanks to some personal time from work.

*a cooperative little boy getting ready for bed, even if it was only because he is obsessed with playing games on my phone.

*a dance party with hiba including "i got a feeling", "God made me", and "dog days are over".

*a super wonderful little girl who loves to follow the rules, simply because they are rules.

*beautiful weather that means i can turn the ac off for a big part of the day.

*a sudden burst of energy that resulted in a clean(ish) house and five baskets of laundry folded.

*ice cream in the freezer to bribe reward matthias for putting his laundry away.

*full TEFRA funding approval for hiba, taking a huge weight off my shoulders.

*a cheap nice bottle of wine to share with my awesome husband at the end of long day. 

disappoitments

disappointments today - some bigger, some small, so trivial. and they will all pass, they will all be ok. but they are still disappointing. 

*watching the u.s. open and realizing i will probably never be the best in the world at anything.

*having a conversation with hiba and realizing her symptoms of autism will probably be around for the rest of her life. 

*watching matthias throw a tantrum, and another, and another, and another and realizing this phase of life may last longer than i was hoping.

*snapping at matthias after his billionth fit for the evening and realizing that i don't give him nearly enough patience as i should.

*watching the master chef finale and realizing that i don't have the time or energy to dream big, and realizing i don't know when i will.

*reading a friend's blog and realizing she got to go walk the streets of bethlehem again before i could.

*hearing about jason's doctors appointments and realizing we may be spending money on wrist surgery instead of trips i want to take.

labor day weekend highlights

we had a really great labor day weekend. jason was off on monday, which gave us an actual weekend together as a family.

saturday included a swim at the pool with this goofy boy:

 

sunday was full of bbqs - first with our church:

matthias and his burger - that's after eating a hotdog and chips

baggo tournament! not to brag, but gibann and i were totally the winners

although, matthias was pretty awesome too.

hiba explaining something super important to mark

throwing rocks in the stream

 and then sunday night with the neighbors.

hiba's newest funny face.

enjoying the swing

matthias loving on baby ruby

monday was spent doing yard work, napping, and one last swim at the pool. jason went with us to the pool and had hiba swimming all around within a few minutes. since he taught her to swim at the lake last month, she has not swam with me at all. i guess he just has the magic touch. it was a great end to the summer - now if only the weather would realize that fall is supposed to be here!

the bale elementary playground

we live about a block away from bale elementary. and the bale elementary playground is on our way to savvy kids, the daycare that the kiddos used to go to. pretty much every morning and afternoon this summer, hiba would ask if we could go to the bale elementary playground. since it was usually 407 degrees outside, the general answer was "sure, someday that sounds great!". well, last week i made the mistake of telling hiba that we could go to the bale elementary playground on thursday. not that i didn't want to go, but i didn't want to be so committed. but the thing about hiba is once it is said, it is set in stone. she told most people that she saw over the next three days that on thursday we were going to the bale elementary playground. there's not really a "pencil that in" option.

so, last thursday evening, we went to the bale elementary playground. i'm not sure it lived up to all it's hype, but the kids did have fun and enjoyed watching football practice, cheer practice, swings, and making new friends.

turns out, she has a brain

last monday, hiba had an EEG to look at suspected seizure activity. we have been noticing some staring spells she's been having, where she will just trail off from talking or just stop what she's doing and stare off, not really focusing on anything, and then she'll snap out of it and be fine. one time i was able to rub her face and she didn't react, so we decided to get this looked into.

the super fun thing about EEGs is that they work a lot better if the child is "sleep deprived" so it will hopefully trigger seizures, if that is in fact what is happening. so besides having an EEG scheduled in the morning on both hiba and matthias' first day at a new school, which was a little stressful in and of itself, add to that the task of allowing hiba five hours of sleep the night before. have you ever intentionally had your four-year-old only get five hours of sleep? yeah. me neither. it was not every on my top ten mother-daughter activities. our plan was that i would take the night shift and keep her up and jason would get her up early in the morning. i had plans of making cookies until midnight, looking at books, eating popcorn and watching dora till the wee hours of the morning.

but, in fact it was not too bad (at least not on my end). we had some friends over for dinner, so that took up some time and provided entertainment for hiba. then after matthias was asleep, we hung out in the back yard with our neighbors and just let hiba hang out with us. we took my kindle and she played games and just hung out. we had popcorn and some other snacks, but didn't have to work too hard to keep her up. about 10:30, she wanted to go inside, but we managed to stall her and keep distracting her until about 11, when she was ready to go to bed (as was I). so we went inside and she had a bubble bath and then we watched on episode of diego, to try to keep her up a little longer. she was trying so hard to stay awake! she kept singing along and trying to answer all of diego's questions, but finally gave in about 12:35 a.m. and told me she was ready for bed. i gladly obliged.

jason got her up about 5:30 a.m. and they went to get donuts and then played at chick-fil-a all morning. i took matthias to pre-school at easter seals, which thankfully went very smoothly. then i swung by chick-fil-a to pick up jason and hiba and we were off to ACH.

i don't know if it was because we were the first appointment or if they really are super efficent, but the neuro clinic was on time, friendly, and great. hiba did great getting all the little wires stuck to her head and was super cooperative. she is also very competitive, so anything they asked her to do, like blow on a pinwheel, if she didn't want to then jason would try to do it better and then she would do it and obviously always be the best. as soon as they turned off the lights, she went right to sleep, and she was great when they woke her back off.

and the super good news is she passed. turns out, she does have a brain (jason kept asking her if she thought they would find one) and she does not have epilepsy. kids and adults with pervasive disorders (autism, aspergers, adhd, etc) sometimes have staring spells or blank looks that may look like seizures, but there was no indication that it is seizures in hiba's case. i was very happy to hear that, because it is one thing that now we don't have to worry and wonder about. and hiba was glad to confirm that she does, in fact, have a brain.