Gentle Planning

Day 23: Blog Challenge 31 For 21 Down Syndrome Awareness

Well...Sydney is not quite in her room yet.  I had planned to finish her room and get her in there yesterday.  Hmmm.  Our friend who is doing the blinds can't make it til tomorrow morning, so that left me with finishing everything else so after tomorrow she can be in.  Yesterday, we spent most of the work on the backyard, read that as picking up almost four hundred bricks.  We'll get the medium dumpster on Friday and see if we can't get the concrete out of the backyard.  We kept looking at it, trying to see if any of it would be salvageable because concrete is expensive, only weird placement and shoddy repair work on top of not being even anymore tell us that we need to do this and start from scratch.  The kids, especially Bradley need to be a whole lot safer in our backyard. We're going to get some help next weekend and it should be gone.  Thank Goodness!

Knowing we'll have help next weekend, back to Sydney's room - finished the trim and the door today, once it is good and dry, put the doorknob back on.  Tomorrow, we get the blinds up, then I will clean the glass door, the glass mirror closet doors, and the slider track.  After school and work, we will move her in and she will sleep in her room tomorrow night.  Hurray!  Wondering now why I ever told them they could paint their rooms any color they wanted...actually, trying to figure out why we didn't keep looking when we noted that every wall in this house was either yellow or some weird color that we would be painting over.  Note to self, painting is just so much work!  UGH.  But I think it will be worth it in the end.  I'll stop being so tired when it is all done and when I look around I think I will be much happier.  Oh, the rest of the family might be too.  Heehee.

Bradley has been in seventh heaven with his movie because the girls have both been doing loads of math homework.  Both have changed their math classes, oddly at the same time, so they are both busy getting caught up in their new classes.  All was well until late afternoon, Bradley began to cry about everything, literally.  So I said: "Somebody is really tired."  To which Dad, "Yep, that's why I have him in my lap."  Great minds I tell ya!

We both know when he is too tired to be awake, and even as he fought to stay awake, we both recognize that sometimes for Bradley, he just needs to find one of our laps for some one on one time.  Sometimes he just needs to be held and rocked.  There are times at bedtime when he will sit up off his pillow and he'll crawl over to my lap to get situated where he can put his head on my shoulder.  On these occasions, it takes him mere seconds to fall asleep once he is in what he considers to be his most comfortable position.

Dad and I love the cuddle time, but it's getting harder and harder to carry him because our little guy is really trying to grow.  Despite that hole in his esophagus, and all the Reflux, something we are doing is keeping the monster at bay.  The extra time to it takes to prep and then give him his medicine seems to be worth it right now because he is still gaining weight and he has gotten taller too. We'll take all we can get!  Plus, we'll take any extra so that when the time comes to have the surgery, we're hoping he will have some stores to fall back on.  We still watch him pretty close, even though he's gaining weight, he still manages to gag and retch a couple times a month and he still manages to get too much air in his tummy.  It used to be that we were always having both of these happen, but over time things seemed to be improving and it felt like the wrap was working more efficiently because we were getting less and less, and then after almost nothing it was almost all the time.  So we looked last November and knew he had another Hernia, another hole in his esophagus.  So when I vented him today and he had a bunch of air, the second time in a week...it's a bummer and something we have to think about and update his doctor about.  Ugh again I say!

So, just as we have always done, we continue with one day at a time.  Today, I will make some dinner, get these kids settled for the night and collapse after a tiring weekend.  Tomorrow, we will move our middle daughter into her own room and Tuesday?  I don't know, but if nothing else comes up, it will probably include a paint brush.  I have the opposite side of Sydney's room to paint so that my hubby will help me choose and place bookshelves so we can empty the rest of the book boxes in the garage, which just might really clear out our garage.  I call this gentle planning, things to do but without hard deadlines so that all the surprise stuff doesn't delay anything too important.  I'll keep you posted on our progress though!

Happy Sunday all!  Hope you had a great day, ours was tiring but productive!