Hey blog fam! Wow, that was an unexpected short break that I took. Hah! I thought I’d jump back in with a quick “Life Update” type of post to fill you guys in on what I’ve been up to.
First up – you know from my last post that we’re dealing with a broken finger for my son D. He had a follow-up appointment since the last time I wrote and they upgraded his cast to a permanent one. He chose the color green and a few family & friends signed it for him 😉 The only big bummer about this is that it’s on his right hand and he writes with his right hand … and because it’s a full permanent cast, he can’t use his hand at all (despite it just being one finger that’s broken). Plus, he can’t get the cast wet (the previous cast/splint was removable so he could shower fully, etc) so it’s just been some extra coordinating and carefulness on our part.
Next up, we also celebrated my husband’s 35th birthday! I asked him if he wanted to go out for dinner or if he wanted me to cook something at home and he requested I cook a bunch of his favorite foods for a small family dinner at home. Wish granted! We celebrated with pasta, meatballs, hot links, potatoes, salad, and cake. During dinner, Hubby & I kept looking at each other and commenting that we couldn’t believe we were finally at a season of parenting when we could sit down to a nicer meal with all three of our kids and everyone was somewhat behaved. Insane!
The bigger insanity is that the day after his birthday, on Leap Day (2/29) we went out and did something that would shake up any ‘stability’ we’d finally reached in our parenting.
WE GOT A PUPPY Y’ALL.
Meet Kylo. As in Kylo Ren, of Star Wars infamy; aptly named by our 6-year old son.
As a little back story, we had a wonderful Goldendoodle for almost 10 years who died at the beginning of 2019. He died really suddenly and it was our kids’ first real exposure to the concept of “death” and its permanence. Thankfully, our kids didn’t seem to grieve Spartan too long but our son DID miss having a dog in the house. He asked when we could have a new dog next, if the new dog could be a black dog, etc. At first, we told him that we could get a new dog when baby A was around 4 or 5 years old. But over the course of 2019, we noticed that baby A was starting to exhibit some fear over dogs, even really gentle and lazy ones that weren’t even looking in her direction. I refuse to have a kid who is scared of dogs when she doesn’t even have a reason to be afraid of them. This is a kid who used to crawl all over Spartan and pull his ears when she was a baby! That sort of fast-forwarded our plans to get a new dog sooner rather than later. After researching breeds, specifically black dogs (because, D) that were doodle hybrids (because I have allergies) we settled on a bernedoodle and got ourselves on a waitlist in October of last year.
We’d been waiting for “our turn” and been ready to own a new dog for a few months but when Kylo finally came into our lives, it felt like a tornado hurricane. It happened so quick that we didn’t even have most of the supplies we needed for him and I had to make an 11th hour trip to Pet Food Express to get the real basics before we brought him home.
We got him from a breeder in San Diego and paid a “pet nanny” to fly him up so we could pick him up here in the Bay Area instead of fly down to Socal and then back up with him. We’ve had him for a full week now and are absolutely in LOVE. Puppies are a lot of work though – I’d forgotten exactly how much work so we’re pretty tired hahah. I made a new IG just for him if anyone wants to follow along our puppy adventures @kylothewoof.
Adding to the stress/exhaustion of our first week home with the new puppy, this past week we also had a huge triennial IEP meeting for our daughter E. I don’t know why but I was an emotional WRECK leading up to the meeting. A WRECK. If you follow me on my own IG @sophiaksays, you’ll have known this already but I couldn’t stop bawling. It felt like getting her diagnosis all over again when she was 2 years old – I haven’t cried over her disability like that in a super long time.
A friend of mine pointed out that it was probably a little bit of PTSD too and I think she’s right. We have an IEP every year and those are fine but these big triennial IEPs are only every 3 years and they include a full reassessment and lots discussions over school placement, services, etc. The first time we had this type of assessment, E had just turned 3 years old and it was a terrible experience for me. I was postpartum with D and the school district we were in at the time (not our current one) was terrible at evaluating her. I was in the room when they tested and it seemed to me that they already had expectations of what they wanted to see from her and then made their results fit that. They’d ask her questions and then not give her time to answer or make sure she was attending to them when they asked, then just automatically mark her as a zero. The results at the time showed severe cognitive deficits … they basically reported the findings to me as E being super stupid, low IQ, etc – which I KNEW in my gut was not true. Her latest assessments are actually showing mostly average scores in a lot of areas (average is good – it means she’s tracking ‘normal’ albeit on the lower end of the scale). She has her areas of weakness of course and those weaknesses are REALLY weak but her strengths are SO strong that they balance each other out. I really should be so proud but it was still such a hard meeting/week for me. I’m glad it’s over 😉
Last but not least! So with the crazy & emotional last week or so I’ve been having .. I took a full on break from 75Hard. BUT! The good news is that with still about 3 weeks left of the 75 days, I’m already within 5 lbs of where I wanted to be when I started. And numbers aside, I can fit back into all the clothes that were getting too tight for me when I first embarked on the journey. I feel so good and feel like the things I implemented in the challenge will be things I carry into a permanent lifestyle (like daily Bible reading, regular workouts, etc). I’ll try to have a more full, detailed update when the whole 75 days are done but just as a quick update … that was exciting to fit back into pants that previously wouldn’t zip hahahahahaha.
And that’s it! That’s what I’ve been up to for the last two weeks … lots of life happening and a bit of a readjustment with Kylo now in our lives. Hopefully I’ll be able to find my blogging rhythm again though!
Leave a Reply