It snowed here last night. I love the snow. I love the peace that it seems to bring on our house and our family. Even though we are kind of stuck inside, the quiet white outside seems to calm the kids, and energize me.
Which is great because I have not had much energy lately.
A lot has been happening around here. To make a long story short, here's some of what's going on:
Elizabeth started classes at NOVA, our local community college, in the fall as a dual enrolled junior in home school high school/freshman in college. But being dual enrolled means that she can't apply for financial aid, and she is limited on the number of credits she can take a semester. She did so well on the placement tests, and tested into the highest levels of all the subjects covered, that we decided to graduated her now from high school so that she can take a full load of classes at NOVA and also apply for tuition assistance. That means that she can graduate from NOVA next spring with an associates, and then go on to a 4 year university, entering as a junior, to finish her degree.
Hazel is doing really well. She is still very delayed, but she is progressing on her own chart, on her own time. She has been almost a month off the oxygen, and has even gone through having a cold without having to hook back up to it! Her big hurdle now is gaining weight and growing. She is almost 19 months old, and hovering just around 17 pounds. She's tiny, but with a HUGE personality! She pulls up and cruises, and crawls super fast all over the house, giggling when she knows she's getting into something that she's not supposed to. She has been evaluated for in home occupational and physical therapy, and has been approved for a special needs program at the local public school when she turns 2, which means she could start in September. If we choose to go that route, she will get her PT and OT there, but not here at the house anymore. If we choose to not send her there, then PT and OT will continue to come here, but mostly to train us (meaning me) how to work with her and then we have to do it on our own. And as much as I can't imagine sending a 2 year old Hazel off to school on a big yellow bus, I'm not sure that with everything else going on here, I will be able to keep up with her exercises and what she needs to continue to improve. I guess between now and then we will have a chance to see how it goes with PT and OT coming here to train me, and go from there.
We have decided to do some major moves in the house. The final layout will be that Jesse and Gabriel will be downstairs into the big bedroom, Elizabeth is moving up into their room, which is really her old room, and Jo has moved into the tiny room that Elizabeth occupied most recently. Hazel is still with Jimmy and me in our room. We hope that this will help some of the issues we have been having with keeping things neat and organized, since most of the issue was in Jo's room with it being so big. It's been kind of a dumping ground for toys when the kids play, and the boys' clothes were in there, too, so it's been sensory overload for her. When we moved Jo into the smaller room, all she took with her was her bed, her dresser and her desk. We hope that minimizing what's in her room will also help to minimize her stress levels. So far, we have moved all of Elizabeth's stuff out of her room and into the living room and Jo's old room, and we have moved Jo into Elizabeth's room. So, as I am sure you can imagine, everything is pretty much a huge disaster at the moment, but I am hopeful that it will soon be sorted out.
(Note that I said *hopeful*.)
There are other things that are going on here, and some other stuff possibly brewing in the future, but for now, my toes and fingers are freezing, so I say goodbye for now, and I hope to be back on here much more regularly. I know I seem to do so much better when I write!
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