Running on Adrenaline Only

This week has been crazy! Adjusting to an increasing work load at work, working with a new boss, adapting to hubby's long commute and less availability to shuttle kids places, attempting to finalize our loan so that we can close on the house, complying with Elise's new doctor's advice, worrying about Elise's school situation, saying goodbye to my favorite boss, just a busy time. Basically, all is really good right now, just hectic.

Elise has had a good week. She is still on her antibiotic. 7 more doses to go. I can't wait to finish because she really hates taking this medicine and I hate making her take something she hates. She seems to be feeling well. Initially she became odd after starting the antibiotic, as she usually does on antibiotics. However, about 4 days ago, her stimming returned to normal and she's been doing well. We've dropped her Abilify back to .4ml from .45ml. Provided all is going well, we'll adjust it back to .35 ml next week.

I picked up the forms Elise's babysitter and I will need to complete to volunteer in the classroom. Both of us need to have TB tests before we can volunteer. I'd like to have that done early next week. The week after next, I'm volunteering in A's classroom for an hour. A is still young enough that he's excited to have mom come to his class. I'll enjoy that while it lasts. I'm hoping to get some doctor appointments scheduled that same day so that I just take the whole day off work and minimize time I'll need off work in the future. I have my ERCP test scheduled for 2/21 and that should be the absolute last of this whole gallbladder/stone fiasco. I'm not looking forward to another hospital day though.

Elise's DTT supervisor observed her in class last Monday. She said that Elise did ok but that she really needs an aide. No disagreement on our part. She thinks having Elise's babysitter attend with Elise would be wonderful. We'll see how it goes. Babysitter is willing to do this, but if it makes her uncomfortable or anything, then it won't work. I do find Elise's teacher to be odd. She's incredibly stuck on the fact that we're not sending Elise 5 days per week. When Elise's DTT supervisor asked whether she could help the teacher with any problem behaviors Elise may be exhibiting, the teacher didn't really ask for help, she just asked whether Elise's home schedule could be rearranged so that Elise was in school 5 days per week. The supervisor explained that it was the parent's decision so the teacher would have to talk to us about this. Kind of irritating that she's not letting this drop. She even told me how most of the kids had a better, more even mix of school & home based therapy. I smiled and said that we felt Elise had proven she learns best in her home based program so that we were not going to reduce that. Inside, I was smoldering because I wanted to lash out and say "The other parents weren't blessed with the gift of 30 hours per week from Regional Center and if they were, they wouldn't have to send their 3-4 year olds to school so many hours each week." Just sayin...

So, I'm trying to keep an open mind to this school thing, but it's not easy. Time will tell. The positive thing is that Elise seems to be happy when I drop her off and happy when the babysitter picks her up. I'd assume this means she likes school. There are two little girls in her glass who really like her. They give her hugs each morning and like to help her. She appears not to pay attention to them, but I can tell by seeing her eyes laugh and by her little quiet smirk that it makes her really happy. That my friends is the crux of the reason that I do NOT want her in an autism only classroom . This would never happen in an autism class.