Wow, it's been nearly a month since I've updated this. I guess I've been busy? I don't know... no excuse really.
Things have been crazy around here - with the nursing hours and all. Plus, I'm up for a promotion at work. I should find out early next week if I get it or not - and training starts a week from Monday. Wish me luck!

Well... what have we missed?

I left off last time in the middle of a nursing hour crisis - they were going to take away all of my nursing hours with hardly any notice. Well, finally I was able to get ahold of Dr. H. He said that although he agrees with Kim in that to continue to sign off on David's nursing hours would be fraudulent, he could see where I was coming from.

He agreed to sign off for forty hours for 2-3 more weeks, and then the wean him down to 30, etc. If I'm not mistaken, next week is our last week with forty hours. Then they'll wean us down to 30 - and we'll have some sort of nursing hours through August, which is when David starts school.

The diagnostician from the school district is coming on July 1st to see if David qualifies for the PPCD program, which I already know he will. I need to contact headstart as well to see if he could maybe do both, in order to keep him out of daycare.

There's a program called MDCP that I am trying to get David into - it will qualify him for a "personal attendant." They don't supply the personal attendants - I'll have to find one of those myself - but basically it will help me keep him out of daycare.

But here's the weird part - there's a waiting list for this program. To bypass the waiting list, we have to go to Herford, TX and spend at least two hours in a nursing home with David - starting at midnight. So, basically we have to spend from 12 midnight-2am in Herford, and then drive back. How random is that? I'm not exactly sure of the reasoning behind it - I'll have to ask - but if it means David doesn't have to go to daycare I'll do it.

Anyways. Enough of me blabbing on and on - here's some pictures.

Here's a picture of David, hanging on for dear life on the slide


A video of David, dancing to Usher. SO cute!


A sweet father-son moment:

Last week was the ECI annual picnic. It was at the park just up the street so JoAnn and I decided to take David. It was fun!

Here's David petting one of the therapist's dog:


So all of a sudden David got real brave and decided to walk away from us


And then I realized he had spotted one of his therapists! Here's David and Dana (his speech therapist)


She was REALLY surprised about the bubbles.


They had hamburgers and potato chips for us to eat!


This is Annette (David's occupational therapist) and David in the bouncy house!


Do I want to reach in there and grab a toy?


They had a little slide for the kids to play on - this is what I want for our backyard but haven't been able to find one



Finally, they had face painting. The woman asked what we wanted. A dragon? A butterfly? I told her we'd be lucky to get a smiley face This is what we managed to get:


My friend Cory and her cousin came over last Saturday, and she brought her "son," Leonitis.



He was pretty good, except for when he climbed my DVD tower


We went outside for a little while


David didn't really care too much for him

Finally, a blackmail picture:


Looks like I didn't take as many pictures as I thought I had - so I'll share some tidbits:

***Every night before bed, David and I take a walk. Maria takes him to the park several times a week, and I always try to go out and do something fun on the weekends. David spends a pretty significant amount of time outside. But he's not satisfied with that! I think he'd live outside if it were up to him!!! He's so cute though - he'll walk up next to me and grab my hand, and do this funny dance thing to let me know he wants to go out. Haha.

***We drink expresso coffee. And David LOVES LOVES LOVES it. Even without milk!

And he insists on having several drinks of it every morning.

I know alot of toddlers drink coffee... but I've let nurses try ours in the morning before, and they've come back the next day and said that they were up past midnight because of it.

So, letting him drink it isn't bad for him.... is it?

*** I'd like to know when David's cute little baby feet turned into stinky kid feet.

Seriously - his sandals make his feet stink so bad! What can I do?

He's so cute, though - when I take his sandals off at night I make this HUGE deal about how stinky his feet are, and he giggles and then sniffs them.

***David's ped put David on a new feeding schedule - where we don't give him any boluses throughout the day at all, and make up for whatever he doesn't eat/drink at night. Their theory is that David will eat and drink if he's hungry and thirsty. Well, it's not going too well - he's already lost two pounds - and I'm a little worried.

I know they say that they don't have to eat as much as we think they have to... but this is ridiculous.

One day, this is seriously all he ate:

Rice Crispies and banana for breakfast (he actually at good there)

For lunch he had one fish stick and one and a half baked french fry.

For snack he had practically nothing - but was offered peaches and cheerios.

For dinner he again ate practically nothing but was offered baked chicken and carrots.

He drank MAYBE one ounce of water all day long.

And, it was 100 degrees here on that day, and we went to the park. So I was really worried about dehydration. I caved and gave him a bolus of 10 ounces of water before bed because I KNEW he hadn't gotten enough.

Some days he does okay - other days not so much. This is going to be difficult.

***We have figured out a couple of things that David LOVES. One of them is sunflower seeds. I couldn't get them out of the shell fast enough!

I'm gonna have to go get him some that are already shelled....

We also learned that he loves hot cheetos. He's a weird kid.

**Here's a fun story - not about David, but about me - I'm a hero!!

Last week at work we were outside on break when we saw a mommy duck walking out of the field by work followed by eight or nine little baby ducklings. They were SOOOOOO cute!!! So we oohed and awwed about them for a minute, then went back to work.

Later my friend said "I just had a horrible thought. What if one of those baby ducks fell in the sewer drain?"

The sewer drains out by work are crazy steep. The hole isn't very big, but the cement outside of it goes down at like a forty five degree angle.

So on our next break, we went back out there and listened by each of the drains... and sure enough! One of the baby ducks had fallen in there!

It was like something off Animal Cops!

So I called animal control, and they gave me another number. In a little more than fifteen minutes, they had someone out there listening for the baby duck.

They had to call the city of Amarillo to get someone to come unscrew the sewer lid - and a few minutes after that a firetruck was there!

So eventually the got the baby duck and put it out in the field. The guy said that the mama duck is probably out there, looking for the baby duck.

It was neat

***And finally - David cracks me up.

He's been saying things wrong lately. Like he'll say "book" as "gook" or he says "mine" like "nine"


Earlier I was showing him to say "Mine."

Me: "mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ine."

David: "nine."

Me: "mmmmmmMMMMMMMmmmmmMMMMMMMMM ine."

David "mmmmmmm nine."



Till next time.