ARGGGGGG!

Ok, everyone, please be prepared because I am going to VENT!


So, Faith has been going to have some congnitive testing done, privately. We have had a series of 3 appt. w/ a "fellow" resident at Dev. Peds. Now, this person is leaving in a week or two, ending her residency. A few weeks ago, when we had our second appt., they called at the last minute and resceduled our appt.( the same day, just later in the day). Frustrating, yes, but I am somewhat used to dr's doing stupid stuff like this. If I cancelled an appt. w/o a 24 hr notice they can charge me a cancelation fee.(Don't recall the exact amount, somewhere in the $25 range)
Fast foward to 4pm today, I get home from therapy (being gone ALL day) and there is a garbled message from this same person wanting to reschedule our appt. that is tomorrow!!! Now, Hubby has already requested this day off, not to mention that she wants to reschedule so she can go to her own dr's appt! So I call the office about 4:10 pm, still well within business hrs, but guess what!!! She has already left for the day!! OF COURSE SHE HAS! No one has any idea what she wanted us to do, exactly, no one has ANY contact info for her, (What the crap?) and there are NO other dr's able to be found or contacted! Where are we here, people, don't business hrs. mean that you work? If you call, LAST MINUTE, and make a ridiculous request like that, shouldn't you make yourself available? How do you run a business, that obviously makes TONS of money, without having a plan for contacting dr's after hrs or during emergencies? The scheduling supervisor tells me that they are emailing her but she probably won't respond until tomorrow morning!!! AGAIN, WHAT THE CRAP? What are WE supposed to do, hubby take off or hubby go to work? Well, they don't know what to tell me.... After I loose my cool (just a little) the very nice girl on the phone offers to take my # and call me from her home if she hears from this dr. I AM THANKFUL FOR THIS GESTURE! Don't get me wrong! But for Pete's sake, two times in a row? Very unprofessional! I still don't know what we are supposed to do in the morning... if I do hear back, I think I am going to tell them that we are showing up for the appt and expect SOMEONE to be there to see us! ARRRRRRGGGGGGGG!

Thanks and Homeschooling conference adventures

First of all I have to plug, my friend, Amy of Inside Amy's World (http://amygenn.blogspot.com/). Amy, I am writing in yellow for Eli's giraffes! Amy was so kind to offer a prize to someone who commented on her blog, a few days ago. Well, turns out I won to drawing, now I say this b/c I know she suffers like alot of us with "is anyone out there" blogger disease. So if you happen here, go visit her. She is a mom of a very special little boy named Eli.

Now on to our latest homeschool conference, today. It was held in Charlotte at a very nice community college. There were very few vendors, maybe 12, compared to last weekend, over 100 easy! But this conference seemed to focus more on seminars and speakers, they had dozens. We found 3 good ones, that applied to us: H.S. laws in SC, H.S. methods and last but not least Unschooling special needs children, which had a huge crowd! We learned alot despite being bored in between the seminars. We also found a great third option group in SC, that should work for what we have been looking for. It is for unschooling, third option families. Very free thinking, open to alternatives, non conforming... which should be just perfect for us, with Faith's situation. The group is called...
www.schoolsoutsupport.com . We are very excited about the prospects. Anyway, that was our exciting trip out of state, today. Very educational!

TEN things about me

Here is a post in response to Lynnette Kraft's Dancing On Weathered Ground blog

Ten things about me!


1. I am a born again Christian, saved before kindergarden. I also attended a baptist church
school until 8th grade. Hated it then, but am soooo thankful now!

2. I Never wanted kids!!! I know I was crazy, I just didn't know what I would miss.

3. I love to scrapbook, for that matter, any kinds of arts and crafts. If I see it, I think I can do that for cheaper!

4. I am crazy over Alton Brown (ie: Good Eats, Food Network) He's a southern boy now, you know! Don't lie, girls, you know you'd love to have a guy who can cook!

5. I love the water, any kind of water: beach, lake, river, streams, creeks, I am NOT picky!

6. I am an old soul, described that way by my family. I relate better to older folks, enjoy doing things that my peers would be bored by (knitting). My mom says I was born like that. Most people my age(31) are already wishing for youth, but not me, I look foward to getting older! Am I too weird?

7. I am not afraid of any kind of animal except spiders! Snakes, bugs, birds, dogs, cats nothing scares me except those 8 legged little varmits!

8. I love ladybugs, my daughter's room is decorated in them. Even when they come in the house, I am ok with it. They just make me so happy, with their beautiful colors!

9. I have known my husband for half my life, in April. We were high school sweeties, the first day I came to school in 10th grade, he told his best friend he was going to marry me! AWWWWWWW, so sweet he is! He is MY soulmate, no doubt, we were meant for eachother.

10. I am mom to the cutest, funniest, sweetest, strongest little girl ever! She IS my reason for breathing every day! The world can be such a cruel place, but everything just seems right when I see that little face, every morning!

So, that's me in 10 or less! Tell me about yourselves!

Backyard frogs and frontyard pumpkins

Mountain Chorus Frog

(Pseudacris brachyphona)

I love living in the country! When I was young, I always wanted to live in a big city, but things change, especially after having Faith. This was my view of the world outside, yesterday evening. I don't know where this huge pumpkin vine came from, but it just sprung up almost overnight in our FRONTYARD! It's a few feet long, already! Carl was cutting the grass and agreed to leave it to see what happens. We tried growing them last yr, way away from this spot but they couldn't keep up with the drought conditions and fizzled out before they ever got THIS big. After all, who else is going to see it besides our neighbors who live half a mile down the dirt road! Seriously, ya'll, our town doesn't even have a stop light!

Then after dark, we had a sudden rain shower, I was getting ready to let the dog out to go pee and I saw this cute little frog on our door! We don't usually see too many frogs, mostly we see toads, but this little guy was just looking right in our house! Actually, he was pretty big for a frog of his kind, he just posed for his pics and didn't move an inch. I am such a nature girl, I love frogs! It just made my day, to have a visitor (who wasn't human!) and new life in our yard. So, do any of you live in the country? What things do you see out there? Any neat, unusual things? Who WANTS to live in the country?

PS. Thanks, Honey, for the cute title! I love you!

Feed me, Seymore!

My little firecracker never ceases to amaze me, when I think she isn't ready to learn something or she won't cooperate with her therapists on a new task. As some of you already know, Faith has a feeding tube, places 3 days after her first birthday. Feeding her was like participating in a marathon. Most days, feeding took up about 8 hrs! We would feed her about every 4 hrs and a feeding could easily be 2 hrs or more! At first we refused the feeding tube but after a yr of this we couldn't take it anymore. Well, the tube worked great putting weight on but alas, we did not continue to force the feeding thing, like we should have. So now, she doesn't swallow voluntarily. As I have talked about before, she spent 8 weeks in an intensive feeding program in Atlanta in 2007, but we had minimal success. So, after the dx of her tumor that summer we quit pushing feeding all together. We quit feeding therapy, stopped forcing food in her mouth, stopped oral motor exercises (exept speech stuff). Well, after all this time, she has suddenly decided that she wants to EAT!!! She has started begging for our food, putting her hands in our plates, pretending with spoons and plates(like she's eating!)!
Which brings me to tonight. At dinner, we started putting her back in her booster seat and giving her a plate and spoon. Tonight we put a few broken up noodles w/ sauce on her plate and she dillegently tried her best to figure out how to get noodles on a spoon and then take them to her mouth. Now, she still isn't swallowing anything, but this is such a BIG DEAL! She gets so excited if she gets a taste of something, anything! I tried giving her a taste of a green bell pepper last night and she went "MMMMMMMM" like it was ice cream or something! It was sooo FREAKING cute! Every time she got it in her mouth we would break into voratious cheers and dance all around the table, and she would just laugh and dance with her hands. I don't want to jinks us but maybe she will eat one day, after all. I must say, I underestimated her and had pretty much given up on eating all together. She likes to do that kind of thing and surprise me, alot. I guess I should not make such quick assumptions (well, not quick after 5+ yrs!). She even begged for my cereal this morning. She is so darn cute, I could never deny her! Way to go, Faithy, keep me guessing, I can take it!

Hotlanta, I mean Atlanta!

YEAH! Today we made it to our first homeschooling convention in Atlanta! We just found out about it yesterday, so I asked Hubby and he was like "Heck Yeah, let's go!". So we went! We got up at the crack of dawn and hit good ole I-85 down to Hotlanta! Now I will say that I hold few fond memories of Atl., after spending 2 months down there in 2007. Faith and I spent 8 wks at the Marcus Inst. for feeding school. I was miserable and lonely the entire time. Anyway, we made it there and spent the day. It was our first one, as I said, and we were totally unprepared for the chaos and people. It was shoulder to shoulder the entire time, (which isn't good for wheelchairs!). We did get to see alot of cool stuff, sat in on a great seminar about H.S.ing special needs children and met a really neat guy who started a therapy play center for special needs children. His daughter has sensory processing disorder and he wanted a place where children could come and just play on safe stuff that also provided therapy for them! He said it was the only one of it's kind in the U.S.! Very cool, we even got a free pass to visit! Can't wait to go. The seminar that we went to was great, this woman who put it on did work with h.s.ing families and w/ the schools to identify how to help s.n. children learn different concepts like reading, for instance. She was also a h.sing mom of 3, one with dislexia. She had alot of good resources and programs. She also pointed out some great things that I had been thinking in my head about Faith but wasn't sure about. Like about the importance of instilling lifeskills as primary learning and not making the academics the biggest focus. She talked about teaching your children to be functional adults who are pleasant to be around and can do things for themselves. I know I am rabbling but I was very excited. Anyhow, we are off to our second convention, in Charlotte, next weekend. Hopefully, we can be more prepared and not so scatterbrained.

Side Note: I just got word that Faith's wheelchair was approved by TEFRA and has ACTUALLY beenn ordered! After MONTHS of waiting and fighting and trying to get things through the system, we did! Her PT said that the mobility co. ordered it last Fri. and they said it should be in by the end of Aug.!!!!! I can't believe it! She said that "everything" was approved, which I hope means that they approved a tray for her chair, too. SOOOO HAPPY!