Happy Half-Birthday to Lars

Today Lars is 3 1/2.
Yee haw. I put a little age counter at the bottom of this web page so I can always know just how old he is without taxing my tired brain.

Weighed in at 39.4 pounds yesterday & he's almost 3 1/2 feet, too. Big guy. The days of being able to hold him in one arm & cruise around the kitchen preparing food or meds are over & he now has to spend more time in his swing, hammock, chair, and on the floor.

Lars "celebrated" his 3 1/2 birthday by basically staying up all night. After his bath & dinner yesterday, just before bed, he threw up 3 times in a row. Absolutely everything came up & out. So back into the bath, adaptive stroller cushions & covers into the wash, etc.. Didn't know if he had a stomach bug or what, so ran his nighttime feed very slowly. He just couldn't sleep. I was way down on sleep for the week, because of my schedule & stuff I have to do right now, so the night was very crazy-making for me. I think also because he's been sleeping soooo much better than he used to, we have become accustomed to being able to sleep a good part of the night even if we're on Lars duty. Why does the occasional bad night then become even harder to manage? It's not normal any more, I guess. Which is good, until it's bad.

Wednesday I drove directly from work in Worcester to UMass Boston for my night class & the professor didn't show up. There were 10 or 15 of us there waiting. Eventually we wrote a note with our email addresses & stuck it under someone's door. The next day we get an email saying the course had been cancelled & we should be sure to check our UMB email for announcements like that. I didn't even know I had a UMB email address & in spite of 90 minutes of trying after that, I was unable to access it. But I found an equivalent course offered at Lesley on Tuesday evenings, which I can hopefully shoehorn into my schedule & use a voucher for. It could be way better.

Yesterday Joa & I decided that we should spend the afternoon swimming while Andey slept in preparation for working. I said let's wait for Lars to come back on the school bus & go to Hopkinton State Park & swim in the lake. Joa insisted we instead go to the warm pool @ Fernald. Okay, so I raced back from a meeting in Worcester, picked up Joa & Gannon, drove to Perkins & picked Lars up & all of us drove to Fernald to go swimming. Sign on the door: "pool closed sorry." Arguh. But we drove to Hopkinton State & spent the afternoon in the cool cool lake instead. Which we all agreed was way better.

school days...

Great first week @ school. Such a happy boy. Bus has been coming, but he arrived 50 minutes late Wednesday, 20 minutes late Thursday & we'll see about today. Back home is fine. Phoning the collaborative director every day & that'll continue until he's @ school on time. With only 4 hours of school I want him to have every minute & this is unacceptable. They're taking the pike instead of rt 20 like shuttlebug did, so traffic is really random instead of consistently slow & steady. I'd sure rather have him on rt. 20.

Waiting for the school bus this morning:

Check out the new lunch box:


Since Lars started on neurontin, he's only had inconsolable pain episodes like last winter's about once a month. He did have one last night. So sad. Seems okay this morning, but tired.

Med chart from last week

back in school

Well the bus didn't work out yesterday, so Andey missed an hour of morning work & brought Lars to school, I left work 5 hours early & picked him up. We were not about to let incompetence on someone else's part keep him from his first day of school.

It was fabulous, of course. He was happy & excited to be back. Tired, too. So thrilled about school he couldn't possibly nap yesterday, except 5 minutes, so he was exhausted & fell asleep early. He'll get used to this schedule again.

I attended closing circle with Lars & his buddy Eleanor, who is very happily now in his class. 100% sweet & adorable.

And the bus actually showed up this morning, albeit 20 minutes after it came last year. I'll be curious to hear whether they made it in time. Seemed like I spent basically all of yesterday on the phone in various states of irritation and irateness; as of yesterday afternoon @ 2:00 they still claimed they had no idea Lars got out @ 12:30, different from the other two kids that go from Marlborough to Perkins, who get out @ 2:30.

Will he get picked up @ 12:30 today? Stay tuned...

Wednesdays this semester I drive directly from work to my class at umass boston & won't get home 'til probably 11. Thursday morning 4:45 will come early, methinks. Kills me not to see the boys for 24 hours like that. Joa's asleep in the morning, so I won't see him from Tuesday night until Thursday afternoon :-(

school tomorrow!

Finally it's time for Lars to go back to school. He says he's been waiting for a really long time ;-)

Of course I don't know how he's getting there.

I've called this new bus company every day since I got the postcard. I did speak to a person again today & she promised again that the driver would be in touch with me by the end of the day. At 6:00 I called again to say again that no one has called me again.

I don't know what time they're coming.
I don't know if he's riding in his car seat or in his wheel chair.
If he's supposed to be riding in the wheel chair, then how does the tie down thing work, because I've never used them.
And I'm supposed to put my 3-year-old onto a bus with someone I've never met, who can't manage to return daily phone calls to her boss?
Whose boss promises repeatedly that she'll call me, but doesn't?

Andey has to work tonight, so there's a good chance she won't be here in the morning.
She's on call until 8:00 a.m.
Joa's staying overnight with Gannon because SVS doesn't start for another week.
I'm supposed to leave for work at 7:00 tomorrow.
Lars used to get on the bus @ 6:50.

Don't know if the bus is going to work, but come hell or high water I'm getting him to Perkins tomorrow.

On a better note, we had a grand time at the bed races
& then the parade with Patty, Abby, Emma, Gannon & Joa today. Sirens, bagpipes, marching bands, jazz bands, Inca Son, horses, retro bands, the spray bottle of water & lots of giggles. It was grand. And looong!

who did what?

I want to know who did what to this judge in Iowa... And I quote:

"DES MOINES (Reuters) - Gay couples lined up before dawn on Friday to apply for marriage licenses until an Iowa judge, who set off the rush to the altar by scuttling the state's law against same-sex marriage, put a halt to their bliss.

"Less than 24 hours after starting the marriage stampede, Judge Robert Hanson of the Polk County District Court issued a stay to his own ruling that had said Iowa's law restricting marriage to a man and a woman was unconstitutional.

"On Friday Hanson ordered that no more marriage licenses be issued to gay couples at the request of a county prosecutor who wanted a halt until Iowa's Supreme Court can rule on the prosecutor's appeal.

"But two Iowa State University students, Sean Fritz, 24, and Tim McQuillan, 21, beat the judge's stay and got their license, with a waiver bypassing the usual three-day waiting period.

"Then they rushed off and found a Unitarian minister to unite them in a brief ceremony in the front yard of his Des Moines home."

The rest is here.

wow

One of the best concerts I've been to in my life & certainly the most successful with both boys. Outrageously fabulous & phenomenal from start to finish, Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster is a musical virtuoso & a stunningly physically expressive human being. Joa, Lars & I LOVED every minute. While Joa wore himself out dancing through the concert & fell asleep on the way home, Lars was still dancin' & hootin' & laughin' at midnight. Soooo many thanks to Lisa & John & Griffin for taking us.