North Georgia mountains | Mixed Up Mommy

It was a quiet, relaxing, long weekend in the North Georgia mountains minus the morning we woke up with a couple of surprise visitors in the room.

Chris was the first to drag himself out of bed and head to the bathroom. I heard him utter, “What is that?! Is that a scorpion?!” Haha. Chris is the boy who cried scorpion (and various other creepy crawlers) to scare me so I just said, “Yeah, right.” He continued to insist there was something in the bathtub, so I got up to look. I didn’t even make it to the door because right there in my path:

Okay, technically this is the one in the tub, but you get the idea.

Yes, right in the exact precise path I had used three times in the nearly pitch dark to use the bathroom throughout the night (I blame wine and my 30s). Thank God for my $2 Target flip flops. Sometime during the night a couple of scorpions showed up to party. I don’t CARE that the Internet insists Georgia scorpions aren’t deadly. There are certain things that should never be in a bedroom and scorpions are on the list, right after porcelain dolls and Robert Pattinson (sorry, I just don’t see it). I ended up discovering a couple dead scorpions between my nightstand and bed as well. So began the panicked gathering of items — including one toddler — and move from the bottom floor (selected for misguided idea that Connor might go to bed first ) to the top/third floor. A hefty climb for such creatures (I choose to believe). We then went through everything in our bags to ensure we had not picked up any stowaways. Chris, for perhaps the first time ever, had not completely repacked and closed his bag, something I always make fun of him for doing every night on any vacation anywhere in the world. He says he likes to be prepared for escape Jason Bourne-style. He claimed he skipped it this time because I always make fun of him, and now here he was checking for scorpions as a result of my ridicule.

But other than that little adventure with wildlife, it was a relaxing trip. I even managed to read an entire book in about a day and a half — something that I used to be able to do all the time, but can barely get through a chapter most of the time these days. I couldn’t believe how fast I tore through this book. I felt like my increasingly dysfunctional brain had woken up in the fresh mountain air. Okay, so it turned out at the end that I had downloaded a Young Adult novel. I knew it had won awards and was also being banned in several places, cementing my desire to read it. I just didn’t realize the places it was being banned were American school libraries. At any rate, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie was pretty good.

I also discovered that Connor, who loves taking baths at home, isn’t down with large Jacuzzi-style tubs. He flipped out and refused to even let me set him down in it, so I had to bathe him in the sink as the regular tub was now hosting a scorpion.

Connor has really been making great progress lately. Some of the awesome things we’ve seen lately:

He’s very quick to respond to requests more frequently, like “let’s go upstairs,” “time to eat” or “show me______.”

He was able to squat down perfectly, pick up book and stand back up without any support from furniture.

He watched me demonstrate his bowling set and immediately helped me set the pins back up after ONE DEMONSTRATION!

He had taken his bib and put it on the couch. When I told him to come eat, he actually stopped, picked up the bib and brought it with him!

We are still waiting to hear from GW about including him in the Epidiolex trial. Argh. It’s been a month since additional paperwork was submitted.

Side note: I’ve previously posted about Accredo Pharmacy (Express Scripts) issues. A couple readers have contacted me about their ongoing issues and have subsequently started an FB group and petition. Please check out those links if you are a dissatisfied patient. While I do believe there are some employees working to help the situation, it appears they are the minority and way too many people are still fighting for their prescriptions. The change isn’t coming fast enough for people who are very sick and depend on these meds. If you are experiencing issues, please e-mail Jennifer Luddy at ExpressRxHelp@express-scripts.com.

Connor’s first year was such slow development that I still can’t wrap my head around the last few months. I mean I vividly remember obsessing over him just lifting his head. It took forever. He sat somewhat independently around my birthday in October of 2012, and I thought here we go! But it was months before he could sustain it comfortably on his own. We put our old house on the market at the beginning of June this year. I vividly remember that his crib was still in the raised position as there was no worry that he would fall out. He could sit well, but couldn’t get into sitting on his own. It all started when he finally chose to roll from back to front. He went the other way on time, but refused to CHOOSE tummy time, leaving himself immobile. Since June 1, he

mastered pulling up to sit

become mobile through rolling and scooting

added consonants to his babbling

learned to crawl

pulled to stand

started cruising furniture

has shown recognition of more words

has become very (too) opinionated

and initiated his first game of peekaboo

Exponential progress.

His physical therapist almost cried when she saw him cruise. She had been away for a couple weeks as her granddaughter was having cancer surgery at CHOP for ganglioneuroblastoma. Ain’t life grand for our kids. Don’t worry. I’m aborting my angry Where’s God diatribe. (Side note: She said CHOP is the best for this surgery and they went in thinking they would be able to get 50%. They think they got over 90%!)

Cover of "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Ty... — Cover of Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type

He shows definite favorites in books — his two favorites are Click Clack Moo and Hand Hand Fingers Thumb. If I start reading from them, he comes crawling over. The other day I asked him if he wanted to read Click Clack Moo and he crawled out of the family room into the playroom to it and looked up at me expectantly (after a brief scrunched face short cry because we startled him with our enthusiasm).

I’ve given up trying to get the detailed results about his MRI from Boston. We got the standard report of no growth, but we were supposed to finally get details on number of tubers and locations so we can target potential deficits etc. But as no one ever gets back to me when I leave messages regarding that particular report, I guess we have to wait until we go for our next TSC study visit in February or March when we will schedule a visit at the clinic. Not very happy about that.

Connor still refuses to feed himself, and when we give him finger foods, he just destroys them. We’ve tried cracker type food items, but he crushes them, so his physical therapist suggested beef jerky. It’s easy for him to hold and he might like the taste. And wouldn’t you know, he sucked on that Slim Jim a couple times and bit it into pieces. He only swallowed one piece, and that was by accident, but still progress. Slim. Jims. If you had told me I would be feeding my toddler Slim Jims…

He also still won’t get off the bottle, which we think is another one of his stubborn things, kind of like refusing to roll over. His speech therapist has been pushing a straw with a squeeze bottle, since sippy cups get swatted across the room. He actually let me put the straw in his mouth without fighting me yesterday for the first time. Maybe we’ll get rid of these bottles some day after all.

I learned a valuable parenting lesson last week when we went to the North Georgia mountains with my parents. While we have had to deal with crazy TSC stuff, as far as the normal baby health issues are concerned, Connor has never really had any issues. He’s barely even had a cold. Well, last weekend we had a major bout of constipation. I never understood what the big deal was. They go eventually right? Give them some prune juice or whatever. My bad. Sorry about the flippant attitude. Almost two days of fussing and irritability. He went an entire day with no food or drink whatsoever. It wasn’t until the next morning when he willingly took his meds that I had the brilliant idea to give him milk, water and juice with the oral syringe. My mom shook her head at one point and said, “When people ask what we did this weekend I can tell them we waited for Connor to poop.” And so I deemed the weekend PoopWatch 2013. I’ll spare you further details, and only say that a couple days later I was looking for a cork.