Good:
At 14 months, Anna Gray has her first tooth!! I squealed when I discovered it :) It's a pearly little chopper on top. Not quite all the way thru yet, but on it's way!
"Bad" (but not that bad):
AG had her appointment at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute yesterday.
We expected them to just give her a once over and send us on our way with confirmation that her vision is just fine... and, well, it is... BUT she does have astigmatism and will need glasses. (Won't she be adorable?!) Her eyes are strait and strong though and that's great! She is, however, going to have surgery to repair the clogged tear duct. It is completely blocked at this point and she will have continuous eye infections until it's fixed. They will just insert a little probe to clear it. Her surgery is next month and the probe will stay in for five weeks. Nothing too major!
UGLY. No quotation marks needed.
Kindergarten shots are done. Heavy sigh.
Nathan ended up having a funeral and couldn't get home in time, so I had to pick Layla up from school early and take all four kids with me. That part worked out okay... Layla was
amazingly mature and helpful. Anna Gray never made a sound from her stroller. Brynn was AWESOME and took her shots like a rockstar. She never even flinched. After the last one, she said "Well, that one hurt a little." without so much as a grimace on her face.
And then there's Cale. Poor sweet Cale.
He started off okay talking about it earlier in the day. We watched modeling videos, made a picture schedule of our afternoon, and his teacher made a storybook slideshow (using pictures of us- which made me tear up- because she is SO good at what she does). We watched it several times and talked about what was going to happen, did all the "right" things to prep a kid with autism for something you KNOW is going to trigger him. Yuck.
His anxiety got worse and worse as the appointment got closer. By the time we got there, I couldn't get him out of the car. He finally got out and immediately tried to bolt. By the time I got everyone in the door, I was already black and blue. I couldn't sign us in because he required two (strong) hands. He was flipping out. That's when I decided it wasn't safe for me to be holding AG and trying to keep him from running/hitting/kicking/spitting/biting at the same time. We were in the waiting room a little too long and his anxiety was the highest I've seen it in a LONG time.
I was fine. The girls were fine (I had prepped them regarding Cale). The nurses kind of rolled their eyes at the way he was acting when we hadn't even done anything yet, which annoyed me. By the time it was his turn, he was OUT OF CONTROL. Clearly, they hadn't bothered to read his chart because one of them said, "Get under control and stop kicking the nurse!".
I get that they are doing this constantly right now and they have to deal with all kinds of reactions. I'm SURE it gets old, but
clearly, this was not a child who had a whole lot of control over his feelings at the moment. Normally, I would have been bothered, but I was too busy taking care of my son to care.
It took 20 mins AFTER the shots to even get him to a place where I could carry him out, wearing only one shoe and his shorts falling off bc he wouldn't let me button/zip them. His sweet sister tucked away a lollipop and sticker for him. Once in the car, he calmed down and found some words to tell me how he felt (MUCH preferred, no matter what the words are!). He still got an ice cream treat for calming himself down after being so upset. I earned one too.
