Life updates

Most of our recent posts have been event related, so here is a little taste of our current day to day activity.
Kyle: The picture says it all. The man is exhausted most of the time. He is working full time and taking six credits for his first semester of his MBA program. He goes to class two nights a week and is studying on the other nights and the precious weekends. He had a birthday a few weeks ago and to celebrate, I had to drag him out of the house and promise to finish writing his paper for him while he was at work the next day (since it was due that night). We went to dinner and rented a movie... we even stayed up till almost 11pm!! That is so totally rare for us right now that I had to laugh about it. Between his long schedule and my pregnancy exhaustion, I am usually begging to go to bed by 9:30 every night! Kyle got some help from my brother in law, Spencer over Christmas and between that day and another full day I spent helping, we managed to finish tiling our basement wet bar area, bathroom, and shower. It still needs to be grouted, but Kyle was happy to have that progress made. Our tax return will help us to put the final touches on the bathroom downstairs and then we will have two full bedrooms and a guest bath that are functional. Hooray! I am proud of Kyle for working so hard for us. We definitely miss seeing him as frequently as we used to, but I am glad he can do this now when kids are little. Allison: This is a picture from when I was pregnant with Grant. I pretty much look the exact same right now, so this will do since I have yet to take a belly shot this round. Life is pretty calm right now. I feel in some ways like I am back in school because I often read Kyle's homework so I can help him with research and papers. Maybe I will be awarded an honorary MBA when this is all over! My pregnancy has been going pretty well... Last week on Kyle's birthday, I woke up at 4 am with contractions (strong enough to wake me up...yikes!) and was a little worried when they were still present and fairly consistent through the morning. By ten am, I was having contractions about every 6 minutes and they were lasting a good 60 seconds each. When I laid down, they would slow, but as soon as I sat in a chair or stood up, they were back on. I took a nap while Grant napped in hopes of stopping the Braxton Hicks contractions, but when they were still going strong after almost 12 hours, I called my OB. He told me if they were stopping when I laid down, I was ok for the night, but he wanted to see me first thing the next day. After checking all kinds of things, it was determined that I had a completely asymptomatic yeast infection and bacterial infection that was likely creating pre term labor complications. Go figure. This was the second round of infections this pregnancy...again with no symptoms to alert me to a problem (I never had a problem with Grant... this pregnancy is just so different!). After a few days on medications and having to take it really easy, the contractions are gone and life is back to normal. The other plague of this pregnancy has been my insomnia. At least a few times a week, I wake up either to settle Grant back down or to use the bathroom and then I can't fall back asleep. This has been the pregnancy of 2:30 am bowls of cereal and pacing the floors. The sad part is by the time I can finally fall back asleep, Kyle is just waking up for work and so I too am in a permanent state of exhaustion!

Grant: He turns three in a month and with that comes a lot of transition. Grant has been receiving services through the state's Infant Toddler program since we moved here and when a kid turns three, all of their care transitions to the school district. Grant qualifies for the district's developmental preschool program due to his extensive language delays and developmental delay. If we wanted, he would start going on the school bus for a few hours each day to an elementary school where they have lots of programs designed to help kids catch up. The germ issue is a little too much to take on for him, so we are electing to keep him out of the school setting, but we might end up sending him when he is a little older. They may end up bringing school to our home for a little while with curriculum and a traveling teacher, but who knows. In any case, turning the magical age of three means that I have had appointments nearly every day in our home for different types of therapists/specialists/school district officials/ state employees/case workers as he transitions from the two programs. It has been a ton of paper work and calling around for records, but hopefully the end is in sight. We meet in a few weeks to develop his initial IEP and 504 plans which will warn the school district that they have a child with medical needs coming in the future.

Grant however is oblivious to most of this...he just enjoys the attention from all the visitors. His language is improving every day, but we also keep discovering more areas where his feeding problems are influencing speech. He still chokes frequently on food to the point of needing immediate intervention and he cannot handle something stuck in his cheek or on his tongue. He is a mystery to his speech therapist, but we keep trying new things in the hopes that we can desensitize his gag reflex so he can feel safe to get rid of unwanted food on his own. We tried a practice potty training over the weekend and after 1 success and then four subsequent accidents that didn't seem to faze him in the least, we decided to wait and try again in a month. I really wanted him out of diapers, but he doesn't quite have the cognitive connection necessary. One of these days, I will sit down and write some of his latest funny behaviors and things that I don't want to forget about Grant at this age. He is so funny and his intelligence and understanding of our conversations amazes me sometimes. Just tonight, Kyle was asking me if I had seen his yellow highlighter and Grant came in from the other room, crawled on the floor, and produced the highlighter out from under the recliner. He must have known it was there and was so proud to give it to Daddy. He cracks me up.

I will add more on silly Grant later...Kyle is home from class now and needs to work on an assignment.