SLCH

It's a good thing we love Children's Hospital so much, and that it is so close! We are spending three days there this week, although very thankfully all as outpatient.

Tuesday was one hour of speech for Emily. Normal time, normal activities for the rest of us (playing in the rooftop garden).

Today was a tooth extraction for Tim. He had full sedation and was intubated (which was a surprise for Mark and I) and had three teeth removed. He had an extra adult tooth on the top row that was preventing a few of his adult teeth from being able to drop down. This also meant he had not lost some of his baby teeth since the roots were not being dissolved by the incoming teeth. No worries; he lost two baby teeth and an (extra) adult tooth today! He did great and is the first of our kids to undergo anesthesia without throwing up afterwards (he's the third kid to undergo full anesthesia, and another has had nitrous). We had prepped him pretty well. He felt miserable when he first got home. He took off his coat and shoes and went straight upstairs to bed. I think he thought that's what he was supposed to do as I had told him that when he got home he wouldn't feel good and would want a nap. ;) After he woke up he ate a bit, watched a movie (a very special treat in the middle of the week around here!) and then started playing. By bedtime he was pretty normal, but a little more subdued than usual. I made sure he knew to wake me up if he woke up in pain. Sometimes our kids just don't think to come tell us if they have problems at night since they spent so long without anyone to help them. :(

Tomorrow is speech for Emily in the morning (school for all the rest in the cafeteria!) and then a physical therapy evaluation for Danielle in the afternoon. I was hoping we could get those scheduled concurrently but I'll take a separate eval time if we can try to get regular therapy times coordinated! We had put off having Danielle do PT for quite a while, giving her time to strengthen her muscles and simply be upright for more than a few hours a day. But now I am concerned about her posture and think she probably needs to do some more stretching and strengthening to prevent back problems in the future. Our pediatrician agreed so we'll see what the PT thinks after the eval tomorrow.

Thankfully the kids are very used to our crazy schedule and are learning to do school pretty much anywhere. That's particularly good as both Julia and Danielle will be starting speech therapy next month. I think we're going to need our own schoolroom at Children's!