Easy as Tapioca

Notice anything missing from this picture?



Ever since I accepted the reality that my daughter has significant physical challenges, I have dreaded the losing-teeth phase. Perhaps it's because her teeth took so long to come in and I hate to lose something that we worked so long to obtain. Perhaps it's because I had some traumatic experiences losing teeth when I was a child. Perhaps I assumed that losing teeth would be much more difficult for her because everything has been much more difficult. I don't know.

Today, I took her to an occupational therapy appointment. She is practicing feeding herself and we're trying out various devices to help her do this. She loves to go because she gets to eat pudding.

Every other time, and we've been doing this for 4 months now, she has chosen chocolate pudding. Today she choose tapioca. When she was a toddler, the lumps were too much for her to handle. But today she didn't hesitate once.

Before she started working on the pudding, the therapist spent some time "alerting" her mouth. Suddenly, she asked me if my daughter had a loose tooth. We both looked at it and realized that indeed, it was VERY, VERY loose. But I still figured it would fall out this weekend.

The session went really well, and we headed home to get some lunch. When she opened her mouth, I was stunned to see a gap there. Somehow, somewhere, she lost that tooth without one whimper or second of drama. In fact, we have concluded that the tooth is genuinely lost. I cannot find it anywhere on her person, her wheelchair, in our house, or in the van. She has either swallowed it with the tapioca lumps, or it fell on the floor somewhere. (Imagine being the custodian who sweeps that up!)

Tonight, we're driving to my in-laws' home for a visit and to celebrate my niece's birthday. Looks like we'll be celebrating a visit from the Tooth Fairy as well. I have contacted the local Tooth Fairy there, and she said she will be happy to pinch-hit.

Tantrums

I think the total number of hours I've spent with the cry of one of my children ringing in my ears exceeds 5, and at the moment I write this paragraph, one of them was still going strong. It was such a bad day and I was so desperate to get away that I called a friend up and invited myself over. This is a first in my more than six years of motherhood.

There also seems to be a mysterious link between the kids' moods and the weather. It started to pour down rain through rush hour, jamming the highways and trapping buses in snarls. Scott had to wait 40 extra minutes just to board his bus, and that doesn't even count the additional commute time home. He arrived 2 hours later than normal, which is a big deal on days like this. My sanity - my motivation to keep going and not hide in the shower for the night - is his return for dinner.

I find it interesting that only the girls threw screaming, crying, mucus-laden fits today. Sam has been pretty easy-going throughout the whole thing, even jumping in to try to entertain Anna while I finished talking to the doctor this morning. It worked too -- her crying turned to giggling at his antics. Praise God for my little comedian.

These girls have the stamina of triatheletes. Anna loves the drama -- she will throw herself flat on the floor, throw open the mucus floodgates, and wallow in her tears and snot until someone notices. I walked passed her to take a phone call outside today, which really enraged her. How dare I ignore her pitiful self?

Anyway, with her I believe she was overtired, hungry, and thirsty. She refused to drink from any cup but her Dora straw cup. She wasn't happy in my lap and wasn't happy on her own. Her tantrums were evenly scattered throughout the day, with the worst apparently occuring at bedtime.

Elli... well, she is always somewhat difficult to interpret. She was in high spirits all morning. But when I gave Sam the choice of movie, and he chose something she didn't want to see, that's when she descended into the death spiral. I had a tea party with her outside, but we had to come in when it started raining. Sam's movie wasn't done yet, so she had to listen to it, of all things. Then we tried to call Mamaw to tell her when we're coming to visit, and she didn't understand why we left a message and didn't actually talk to her.

That was the last straw. She didn't stop crying for an hour and a half. Not to eat. Not to drink. Not to say hi to Daddy. Not to use her Dynavox to tell me what she was crying about. Not even to get a bath.

Thank you God for giving me one boy. If I had had to deal with three tantrum throwers today, I think I would have exploded.

Back On My iBook

Here I am, posting from my own laptop. Ahhhh...

I am not completely confident that my problems are fixed, however. The computer has done a couple odd things in the last 36 hours. This morning I updated everything so I'm hoping that will get it running flawlessly from here on out.

I won an auction Saturday for a new Airport Extreme wireless card. I should receive that Wednesday.

Today I have to take Elli to a pulmonary appointment. I also hope to do my birthday shopping for my niece and finalize the family's wardrobe for a new family portrait we're getting taken on Saturday. We haven't had a family portrait made since Sam was an infant. I want us all to coordinate, and am trying to also coordinate our clothes with the room the portrait will hang in (got this idea from a friend).

We are also trying to rearrange our schedules so we can go visit Scott's family one day this week. My niece's birthday party would be the best day, but I have a meeting at work that I am not sure I can get out of.

So it's a busy day and a busy week.

Oh and Anna got an ear infection over the weekend. She was fine Saturday, though she woke up crying in the middle of the night. I found her chewing on her fingers, so I figured it was her teeth. Sunday morning she seemed fine, but then after Sunday School, a few people told me she was sleeping on people's laps and not playing at all in the nursery (totally out of character for her). I went back to check on her after I finished playing piano and found her running a 101.3 fever.

A trip to the urgent care confirmed an ear infection in one ear and a developing one in the other. She's much happier now that she's on tylenol, ibuprofen, and antibiotics. Since I spent all afternoon at the urgent care, I was very glad we did our Father's Day stuff Saturday!