another the good, the bad, the ugly.

**  the good! **

my great grandma millie was known in her town as the cookie lady. she loved to bake...i guess some traits are passed down, eh? anyway, she would display her baked goods on this painted metal stepback cupboard/hutch in her kitchen. i believe cupboard was given to her sometime in the 1930's or earlier. once she passed away (at age 105!) it was given to my mom...then somehow it was decided to pass it on to me! 

it has been in the basement for nearly 3 years now, then in the garage for the entire past summer while wes was working on it...removing decades of paint & rust (which took a very long time & even burnt out one angle grinder). then he rust-proofed it, painted it, restored & replaced some of the hardware)...

...& here it is.

love.it.

we were able to save one shelf with the shelf liner paper stuff that my great grandma had picked out herself. *sigh* now i just have to wait for all the paint to fully dry before i fill it up with something. the shelf that was on this wall before held our pictures & liquor. if you know my great grandma, you may know she was strictly against alcohol so i feel a bit horrible about putting our liquor in it...but...

**  the bad  **

on our family calendar--which is my lifeline to getting folks where they need to be--wes has blocked 2 weeks of work when he will be busy...as in, try to get home before girls go to bed, kind of busy. so i see it & know that it may be a bit more stressful than normal, but totally doable, right? ... until my body decides that this exact time is the perfect moment to become sick. i'm not sick enough to have wes come home from work (although passing out yesterday was nearly that reason). it's just the cough-mucous-throat nastiness that has been going around for the past few months & it's finally caught our family... ugh.

so i'm trying to sleep as much as possible, including an extra hour in the morning. generally, the girls just hang out in front of the tv when this happens, when i sleep in. yesterday, addy had a bit of a fever. & then she woke me up about 10 minutes before her school starts. *smile* so combine her cough, fever, & my late wake up = no school for addy. i had already called amelia in for the day...this chica has a cough that will just disrupt radio frequencies. but it only comes & goes & for some reason was intense on sunday. 

anyway, so we spent the day being lazy until addy's appointment with her new pediatrician (more about that next!). & being lazy means me sitting around holding a doll--being the grandma of doll land--& reading or playing some sudoku. & the girls get deeper & deeper into some fantasy doll land.

so this morning, around 7:30, i decided to just let myself sleep another hour. i turned my alarm on. i mumbled something about the girls watching tv. apparently no one was around, lol, because they did nothing like that. wes left for work & the girls decided to P.L.A.Y.

they moved both their kid rocking chairs from their bedroom to the playroom. they pulled the heavy wood futon out from the wall, took all the cushions off, & then somehow pulled the full size mattress onto the futon bed. then they moved the rest of the small furniture in the playroom to different places so they could set up their doll land. this is doll sized, right: 2 wood cradles, 1 wood bunk bed, 1 bassinet, 1 crib, 1 changing table...you get the picture. then they took all the towels out of the hall closet & covered the bed with them, then pulled out several blankets to cover the bed yet again.

really, why can't my kids just turn the tv on as other kids? zone out, children! i'm begging you!!  it was a pretty intense doll nursery set up, eh?

addy story (not so much bad as funny??)

at school, addy's class had a visitor talking about internet safety. good, right? yes! so i'm asking addy questions about it all, what did the woman talk about, did you understand, what are your questions, etc. adeline brought up this conversation: 

Internet Instructor/II: has anyone ever seen an adult website on the computer?

adeline: yes!

II: what did you do?

adeline: i went to my PBSKIDS.ORG! site that i love.

II: did you tell your parents?

adeline: no.

II: how did it make you feel?

adeline: gross!

so she's telling this to me & i'm internally freaking out. how did she see an adult sight? we have software to sift that out! maybe it was on youtube when they were watching old cartoons & caillou episodes... so i ask her: what did you see? her response: *big sigh, rolling of eyes* LOTS OF WORDS! small words, just reading, reading reading...that's all adults want to do is read small words!

& yes, after that i let out a huge freakin' sigh of relief & laughed it out... then i told adeline that technically that is a site for adults but that's not exactly what the instructor was talking about. she told me, yea that's what the II told her also, that words are good! but pictures that make you feel icky are adult sites & told them to turn the computer off. 

so it sounds like adline clarified the misunderstanding to the instructor. at least i hope so *smile*...

**  the ugly  **

what else? well, as you may know, we've been struggling with some intense, uh, situations with adeline. behaviors & a few odd illnesses & the discovery of her hearing loss & its cause. so now we switched to a more intense pediatrician, dr. ali carine: she is AMAZING. wes & i met with her, talking for about an hour with her & before that, half an hour or more with a equally intense nurse practitioner. dr carine ordered very detailed blood work & is also sending addy to see an allergist (we have been avoiding this for a bit too long) & is also doing osteopathic manipulative treatment (very cool stuff! i'm going to look into this for myself, actually). so with 1 office visit, 3 weeks of daily curcumin & probiotic supplements & going dairy free (addy only...but with amelia, i'm wondering...) addy has told me she is feeling better, that her stomach doesn't hurt as much & her head feels better. i never even knew her head was hurting! i guess if it's been that way for so long it becomes normal ?? poor kiddo.

anyway, we found out that addy has an inherited genetic mutation (MTHFR A1298C & read here to know more...) & also suffers from PANS (or otherwise known as PANDAS...very interesting, read here!) in addition to having both streptococcus & a mycoplasma bacterial infection that has been going on for probably a few years (!!!wtf?!!!) & has iron deficiency anemia.

*sigh* for so many reasons here. so we are not certain yet that her behavioral problems will decrease or go away altogether or if they will continue...we also don't know if she must stay dairy free past the 6 week trial (she is very intolerant to dairy, as in she will vomit if eaten/drank in certain quantities...otherwise, it's just intense stomach pains.). anyway. it's just nice to have some answers. they may not be the end of it, as dr. carine say, we may be following a bunny trail, but even that bunny trail will help us get more answers for the real problem. 

i nearly cried while she was telling me this...it's hard to explain, but we've just been pushed around now for awhile with medical folks, some even dismissive of our concerns. & here this woman is, telling me that it will get better, that she is with us to figure it out, that she knows exactly what we are going through... i called my mom on the way home from the office & filled her in on these discoveries. she & i both remember addy's 103 degree fever that the pediatricians wouldn't treat until day 4-5 & only then did a strep test that came out positive. had the same doctors listened to us, we might have known this years ago! how many hours a day were taken up by these disorders, mutations, whatever. doctors should be held liable for not investigating further (these are also the docs who didn't care to look into the cause addy's severe speech delay,w hich we now know is an enlarged vestibular aqueduct)...there's probably only a few people who know what we've gone through with adeline & that's how we want it. but let me tell ya, knowing this years ago would have been such a relief. seriously.

& hopefully i'll get amelia's school pictures this week so i can post this years soon. addy's is adorable!