Taking the Scenic Route

• Early morning eye appointment for me, bookended by a child who wanted to nurse and was not very happy.  (my eyes aren’t much worse, but I needed a new prescription.)
• All. Day. Long.  the car would stall out at nearly every stop light.  Very nerve-wracking.
• Zach was supposed to go into school early today to talk to a prof. about an internship opportunity.  He called while Zach was napping.  I had to carry a ‘I just got her to sleep and now she is back awake’ child back to the bedroom when he called an hour before he was supposed to go in.  Zach then had a long conversation with him, pacing around the room as he talked.  He was asked if he could stop by his office after class instead of before class.
• Soon after Zach leaves for classes I get a call from Zach’s aunt.  Zach’s mom had a mild heart attack and is in the hospital.  My anxiety level shoots up.  I can’t believe it, and know that Zach is already really stressed because the decision on his internship is today and Zach HATES dentist appointments and is stressed about the possibility of Zane having dental surgery.   This is going to throw him for a big loop.  I decide to tell him between the speech therapy and the birthday party tonight so he can be at home when I tell him.
• I had the fun of getting two cranky kids ready for a dentist appointment, trying to time everything so the youngest didn’t lose her mind because I wasn’t holding her every second, and the oldest didn’t get undressed while I tried to get everything together.  I managed to get out of the door on time.  whew!
• Then I couldn’t find the dentist office on first pass of the googled address.  I wove back through the area through parking lots (remember, the car stalls out every time I stopped…this was fun).  I finally find it, but Zach hasn’t arrived yet.  (he was supposed to meet me there)
• Filled out a stack of paperwork because Zane is a new patient while trying to balance Zora and keep Zane away from the water fountain in the waiting room.  Get called back and Zach still isn’t’ there. 
• Zora, thankfully, stopped crying long enough for me to sit on the dentist chair holding Zane so the hygienist can brush his teeth.  He was reasonably cooperative….a rare thing.  He is very, very orally defensive.  He has always been that way…even before teeth he would clamp down on my finger brush and leave my fingers bruised.  He is serious about not letting anything into his mouth, especially toothbrushes.
• Zach finally finds his way to the office.  (appoinment with prof went long and had problems finding the place too) The dentist comes in shortly after that.  Really neat guy.  (Zach liked him so much he wished the guy saw adults too because he would go to him).  He will need some fillings on his molars.  There is an opening a week from Friday, which is amazing because it usually takes 6 weeks to get a surgery scheduled  with this dentist.  The guy is fine with no mercury fillings.  He still does them if requested, but generally uses stainless steel instead.
• Zach informs me that the prof made his decision.  He chose Zach.  So, now I can finally talk about what he will be doing this summer (had to keep it under my hat).  Zach is being invited to intern at NASA this summer.  yeah…the space people.  He is going to be working on the alarm systems for the space shuttle (or something like that).  It isn’t really clear what he is doing, frankly, but it is a HUGE honor, as you can imagine.  This is a 10 week paid (although not well paid considering the expenses that he will incur to be there) internship.
• We get out of the dentist in time to drop off one of the cars at home before the speech therapy appointment so we can all be in one car.  (First had to make it down a main road with two cars following each other , taking turns stalling out.  lol)
• We have a 15 minute lag and decide it would be better to grab a burger than attempt to go into the apartment and then try to leave again before the appointment.
• Speech therapy goes well.  I am really having a hard time by now knowing about his mom but not being able to share it quite yet.
• Get home.  I tell him we need to talk.  He gets a drink, then goes to the bathroom, then changes a diaper, and keeps doing ‘one more thing’ all the while I am trying to get him to come with me out to the porch so we can talk without little ears.  He starts to get the answering machine messages and I suddenly realize what the messages might be and actually yell  “pause it…I need to talk to you BEFORE you get the messages”  He looks startled to say the least and FINALLY follows me outside so I can tell him.  I was glad I stopped him because one of the messages was an update saying his mom had been life-flighted out of the small town hospital to a bigger town hospital. 
• Spend the next dizzying half hour – forty-five minutes trying to figure out where exactly she is.  We know the town, but didn’t know the hospital.  After calling a bunch of places and dealing with the ‘press 1 for …., press 2….” crap trying to get a human, only to have them connect us with somebody with a similar, but not the same name in a convalescent section of the hospital, we finally find a cell phone number of a family member who might know something.  He does.  He calls us back for a brief update…enough to know she is ok and that we will get a call back soon with more details.
• Sat around wrapping presents for the birthday party tonight while feeling utterly helpless and distressed while waiting for the call back.
• While waiting the hair salon we go to for Zane called to say our stylist quit (the only one we have found that can give a good cut to a kid who dives around) and wanting to know if we want to reschedule with somebody else.  Never did a call feel so irrelevant.
• Finally get a call.  His mom has 99% blockage one place, and mostly clear another place.  They put in a stint and found a big clot and used some clot busting drug to deal with that.  She is in a lot of pain and is now too drugged up for us to be able to talk to her, so we will call tomorrow.  I want to talk to the person who knows what is going on tomorrow because not knowing the exact details (after A & P I actually understand the heart pretty well) is making me a little crazy.
• Got the mail before leaving for the party.  The speech-language evaluation results are in the mail.  It was long, technical, and pretty depressing.  I don’t really want to talk about it right now, but it looks like they think either PPD-NOS or autism.  Will have to wait for the developmental ped appointment (which I did get moved from Jan. 2007 to Aug 2006) to get an official diagnosis.
• Go to the birthday party of friends kids.  They have 3 kids in a 1 bedroom apartment and had all the grandparents, aunts and uncles, and some other friends in there.  It was insane, and really difficult for Zane.  He did better once the majority of people left.
• Finally home.  The kids are in bed.  Our brains are buzzing from such a roller coaster day.  I will upload pictures tomorrow and see if there are any worth posting.  For some reason, I don’t feel like doing that now.  wonder why.

Other than that, it was a boring typical day.