July 2012

 

July 15, 2012 – Things have been busy as usual around our house.  We’ve had Ryan’s re-evaluation for the developmental disabilities program, we had to meet with the school district to decide what we were going to do this fall since we want to keep Ryan in JumpStart for one more year and don't think he is ready for kindergarten, we’re fighting insurance as they have decided to write Ryan off and not allow him to have occupational therapy, physical therapy or speech therapy anymore.  We’ve been continually adjusting his baclofen pump and still not quite where we need to be with the dosage for his legs.  As far as school goes, Ryan will continue to go to JumpStart in the mornings and we’re going to shoot for 2 days of kindergarten a week.  This will help him get used to the environment, staff, etc. and then next year he’ll go to kindergarten full time.  After much research and talking with Ryan’s lawyer we’ve filed an appeal with our insurance company over denying his therapies.  They tell us he is not making progress but all his therapy evaluations say he is.  A lot of people ask why we’re fighting it when Medicaid will pay it.  Well I pay for insurance and my son has a medical disability that deserves therapy and it should be considered medical necessity and insurance should cover it.  If he wasn’t making progress I’d probably be ok with it but he’s making progress and we’ve finally got him feeling good that we think there will be much more to come.  We’re to have a decision by July 28th.  Keep fingers crossed for us.  We’ve started back up the aquatic physical therapy over the last couple weeks and he’s loved being back in the pool.  We upgraded our home kiddy pool so it is much bigger and now all 4 of us can get in it.  Ryan would stay in there all day and float on his back and kick if you’d let him.  He's doing pretty well - we've been hearing him say words we have not heard before.  I heard him counting to 10 one day and got him to do it with me another - I have to get that on video!  He's been eating pretty decent - he really likes hot dogs so we're working with that.  His caretaker has been getting him to drink chocolate milk so we're working on that.  He's been having a junky nose though - he hasn't any other symptoms so we don't think he's got a cold - wondering if it is allergies. 

Megan is doing great – the things that come out of her mouth amaze us.  She's saying complete sentences and knows words that we would not expect her to.  She is a sponge and we're trying to help that sponge learn all she can.  Unfortanately we've also taught her a few bad words like ‘God damn it’ or ‘Crap’ and she has learned the right way to use those words.  One night at dinner she’d been eating more with her fingers than her silverware and she looked down at her fingers and said, ‘God damn it I’m all wrinkled.’  Scott about fell out of his chair.  I hadn’t heard it but he filled me in and all we could do is laugh.  Another night she went into her room and said ‘Look at all the crap in my bed’ referring to her stuff animals and blanket.  Smart girl.  She’s doing soccer at school.  She had been doing Magic Tumble Bus and loved it but they stopped coming for the summer.  Hopefully they will come back this fall.  She’s getting moved up to the next room in another week.  This is a good thing since we thinks he has been bored in her room and has been biting her friends.  Well we think it is a mixture of boredom, people getting into her space and her getting confused with our discussion of don’t bite your friend, tell your teacher if you’re mad.  The teachers tell us how smart she is – she knows the alphabet, phonics, numbers, songs and stories.  If does amaze us that if you have read her a book enough times, she knows it and will read it back to you.  She knows exactly what is on each page.  We recently borrowed little Carter's balance bike to try her on it and she loves it so we've ordered a pink one for her.  She loves to shop - most days she asks if we can go to Costco or Albertsons.  Yesterday she asked me if we could go to the mall.  She loves airplanes so a couple weekends ago we took her over to the Warhawk Air Museum because they had some WWII airplanes like a P51 and P38 that were going to do some flying around the airport.  She loved it.  She was so giddy.  And in the museum at one point she was running back and forth between 2 of the planes because she couldn't decide if she wanted to see the yellow one or blue one first. 

Scott & I went to San Francisco for my birthday weekend and Father's Day weekend.  We flew in Friday and drove up to Sacramento and had dinner with a few of my girlfriends from there.  It was so good to see them and we laughed so hard.  It was like we'd seen each other yesterday and not quite a few years.  We stayed in Vacaville Friday night (where I also used to live) and then headed into SF Saturday morning.  We came in across the Golden Gate Bridge, headed over to Cliff House/Seal Rock, drove through Golden Gate Park, went to the old Victorian houses at Alamo Park, drove down Lombard St., and then got checked into our hotel and did the Wharf.  Saturday night wandered up to North Beach and we went to Stinking Rose for my birthday dinner.  Sunday we headed out to Candlestick Park around 8, went through security and got on the bus to head over to the Olympic Club for the Championship Day of the USGA/PGA US Open.  Got in and went straight to the merchandise tent and bought a ton of stuff.  Luckily they had a UPS shipping center or a merchandise check in so you didn't have to carry that all day.  We did the merchandise check in.  Our tickets got us into the Trophy Club so we checked that out and then went over to the American Express tent to get our headsets.  They gave you these to listen to the broadcast so you could keep up with what was going on out on the course.  We then went to the driving range and didn't know who was practicing and the grandstands were full so we wandered over to #1.  Davis Love's group was just teeing off so we followed them and then cut down to #2 and watched Zach Johnson's group finish and then we cut over to #3 to watch them play that one.  We wandered around the front 9 for a couple hours.  Stopping at #7 which was the drivable par 4.  We were standing right outside the ESPN and Golf Channel tent so had you been watching you'd have seen us.  Around 11:30 we went and had lunch at the tropy club.  Up to this point the weather had been pretty nice but when we came out from lunch the fog had rolled in and it got cool.  Luckily we were smart to bring pull overs.  We walked around a bit more - seeing Keegan Bradley play #7, seeing Ricky Fowler finish #7.  We were getting to the point where the stands for 18 were filling up so we had to decide what we wanted to do.  By this time Phil Mickelson was almost to #7.  We planted it on #7 so we could watch him play the whole hole and then went and sat on the grass hill at #18 green.  We sat there from 1:30 to 7:30 watching all but the first two groups finish and the very last group.  By 7:30 Furyk had blown up and didn't think Graham could come back and we were cold.  We hadn't moved in 6 hours - no bathroom, no food, no drink.  Didn't want to lose our spot nor deal with walking on the grass hill and trying to weave in between people.  So we saw Furyk and McDowell tee off and then headed for the merchandise check in tent, got our stuff and headed to the buses before everyone else did.  We listened to the end on our little headsets they gave us so that was fine by us.  We'd seen Web Simpson come through so we got to see the winner.  Unfortunately they don't allow phones or cameras so we don't have any photos.  That night we were watching the local news and they were doing a story on fans and what they had to do to get to the Open and there was a shot of us standing in line at the merchandise pick up tent.  It was kind of cool to see ourselves!  We had a great time.

 It almost didn't happen as my mom fell off the bed the night before she was to come down and watch the kids so we could go on this trip.  Everyone thought she broke her hip.  She landed in the hospital a couple days and luckily did not break her hip but was pretty banged up and had to use a walker for a week or two.  Scott's sister, mom and grandparents stepped up to help us out so we could still go.  We thank them so much.  We had a great time and needed to get away.

We're now getting ready to celebrate Ryan's 5th birthday next Saturday.  Can you believe it's been 5 years?  I can't.  The time is flying. 

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