Stuck in the Middle

Home is GREAT! Yes, Levi is a handful, but as we have settled in a bit more, we realize even more how completely wonderful home is.

Dan and I had our first chance to get away on a date on Sat night and it was such a nice time to be on the other side of this hospitaliztion and looking forward to starting back into life again. During our time together, I realized that many of the ideas and hopes that we kept talking about started out with, "When Levi can walk again . . . " or , "When things are more stable . . ." and then I began to realize that I was in some ways putting my life on hold. Waiting for when things are better and Levi is himself again. So Dan and I decided to make decisions to live NOW, not waiting for things to change or things to get easier. Yes, I do hope they get easier and Levi walks soon, but it could be longer than I anticipate and I would be bummed to look back and have wasted that time while our lives were stuck between the nightmare we just went through and the "normal" live we hope to have again. Perhaps we'll need to open our eyes and accept our current life as our new normal and not think about the better times ahead, rather focus on the many blessings we have today. Ya, I think so.

Levi continues to be better and stronger and has a LOT to say. Wow, the little guy loves attention and he knows how to get it. He finds that if repeating "Mom" over and over again doesn't work that grabbing my face and turning it towards him usually does. While I love to see his persistence, this does get a little tiring (okay, a lot tiring), especially since he desires my full attention pretty much every time I try to have a conversation with another adult. He seems to even kick it up a notch at Doctor appointments, they are the worst.

We had his OT/PT evaluation last week and they anticipate having him in therapy twice a week for an hour each visit. In my very non professional opinion this is not enough, so I will be involving his rehab docs to make sure he is getting everything he needs to get better. In addition, he has to wait a couple more weeks until it starts to wait for all the paperwork to go through. Things don't happen fast in a hospital, but wow, things happen even slower outside. Patience for getting Levi the things he needs to improve isn't something I have a lot of.

I have found that I am not able to give him much focused attention to specifically work on the areas of weakness (that we do in therapy) when we are at home together. Maybe since this week has a little less going one we'll be able to work on his therapy stuff. I might have to start incorporating more caffeine in my life, that may help too.

This week is a very light week for us, having only 2 appointments. One being the eye doc that was going to perform the surgery to open his eye. This will be her first evaluation of Levi since his eye opened and I am very interested to see what she has to say. His eye is still not 100% open, so who knows what it will do long term. Thankfully there is no rush to perform any surgery since he is able to open it enough to see. At this point any procedure would be cosmetic, as far as I am told.

Thankfully, Levi is tolerating his ankle and foot braces, aka his "boots" much better, as he realizes that he can walk much better with them on. The trouble is that they don't have any give in the ankles which make it hard for him to get down once he is up and standing. While he has shown the ability to walk independently, he hasn't been able to muster up the courage. The only time he will even try is when he is forced, and it is a very sad thing to watch, he just gets so upset and anxious.

Looking forward to another Monday and starting off another week here together! It has been so fun to meet some of you and I am so thankful when people say hi and let us know that hey have been following Levi. We are planning to have a celebration gathering, inviting everybody that has followed Levi and supported us along the way. More info to follow.

Love,

Kara

Photos: (Top) A good old tractor ride at Sears, our Microwave broke this week! (Bottom) Kade's first day of Preschool! Mission Hills Preschool has been so great to us, Kade loves it.