Therapy Part II: The Two Scoots

Jesus, I had to literally swim out of a vat of snot to get to my computer.  Fall is here, and with it -- the snots.  The kids have been sick, I've been sick, and we're only just now coming back to life.  There are no sick days once you're a parent -- so getting the snots really sucks.  But thankfully, we are out of the woods of actually having to be afraid or worried about our daughter getting sick -- we used to really FEAR the sniffles -- now we just get to be annoyed with them like any other family. 

So, we are on the mend.  We are on the mend -- and we need to be  -- because we have a busy little schedule these next few months.  LOTS of therapy in this family.  We've got the mental health therapy locked down as I've previously mentioned and now it's time to get physical Olivia Newton John style (which by-the-way might just be one of the most horrifying/hysterical music videos of all time).  We love therapy of any kind in this family.  Just can't get enough of it really.

So, here's the deal.  My daughter has had two open heart surgeries so far and will have her third sometime next year.  Needless-to-say, open heart surgeries at such an early age obviously can have an impact on development.  Because of her chest incision we couldn't put her on her stomach for tummy time, we couldn't pick her up under her arms (how the hell else are you supposed to pick up a baby?!?!?) and therefore she never crawled.  She scooted.  We thought it was adorable and immediately assumed she was the most brilliant child to ever grace the earth because she had figured out this very clever way to get around given all she had been through.  The doctors said her scooting was completely understandable and clearly a by-product of her surgeries.  

She did months and months of physical therapy to learn how to bear weight on her legs, at about a year and a half she started pulling herself up and by two she was walking.  Totally amazing considering there are some kids who haven't had open heart surgery who also scoot and are late walkers.

Because I was a stay-at-home-mom, I was able to attend all of her appointments, learned many physical therapy exercises for babies/toddlers, worked with her a lot at home between appointments to help her get up and walking and added yet another skill set to my growing resume since leaving the workforce (I will definitely be adding cardiologist, nurse practitioner, and physical therapist to my resume before my next job interview...so just keep that in mind, FYI,  when I start networking again.....)

It was SO unbelievably awesome when she started walking because of (literally) all the blood, sweat and tears that went into getting her there.  My dear friend Amy actually made a video of her which not only captured Ms. Scooty Patooty but also the first time she ever pulled herself up on her own. 

ONE SCOOT

So, that was that.  Once she was up and walking we just chalked up her scooting style as having been a part of her crazy-ass beginnings as a heart baby and never looked back.  (We tend to blame a lot of shit on the heart condition because we have no freakin clue what's normal and what's not in the world of babies...you think we would know a lot of shit about babies by now but we're just as stupefied by parenthood and child rearing as anyone else :) 

Until this:


This is my son at a park.  At least my daughter used her arms in combination with her scoot.  My son literally doesn't use his hands at all.  I will say, he's definitely going to have some mean moves on the dance floor if he keeps working his core like this. 

TWO SCOOT

This is my son at the beach.  On an extremely rocky beach.  What you can't see from this video is the fact that he actually started this trek from a sidewalk, went down a wooden ramp, cleared some really disgusting and crunchy seaweed, definitely scooted over some razor clams, all in an effort to get closer to this man and his boat  So, hmmmm, I guess we can't really blame the scooting thing on my daughter's heart condition.  

When I took him to his one year appointment and he wasn't bearing weight on his legs and basically scooted down the hall and around the corner into the doctor's office on his own...the pediatrician just laughed and said, "Well, what'd ya know....guess it wasn't the heart condition after all must just be in the genes."  Right.  Genes, maybe.  Although neither my husband nor I are admitting whether we were "scooters" -- I think we're both waiting to see who caves first to take the responsibility :) 

But Jeans with a J?  Not in this family.  When you have scooters -- you basically have to throw the kid's pants away every four or five days (after peeling off the cigarette butts, rocks, nails, and other debris that becomes embedded in the pants of a child who scoots).  In saying that, I'd like to give a big shout out to the endless hand-me-down baby clothes we've received from friends and family these past two years -- and fair warning -- please remember this post if I ever offer "slightly" used baby clothing to any of you.  You better hope it's a bag of baby tops and not the bottoms.  You don't want any girl or boy bottom hand-me-downs from this family.

Not to mention my daughter was only recently introduced to the idea of a dress because of the bloody mess she would have made out of her body if we didn't put pants on her for the first two years.  When scooting is your only means of transportation -- you start to just straight up not care about the physical pain it causes to your body.  My daughter would have scooted on gravel if I let her.  My son is the same way.  He has scooted the skin right off his ankles...doesn't bother him in the slightest.  He must just think it's the normal price you have to pay to get where you want to go.

So, we're back at PT.  Twice a week for two months.  My daughter's physical therapist thought there was an error on the client list when she saw our name listed for a second time.  When she saw my son scoot right on past her in the waiting room -- she just smiled and said, "I've actually never seen that happen twice in one family back-to-back like that."  Well, we're into a lot of "rare occurrences" in this family.  We're actually getting really good at it come to think of it.

I know he'd probably be fine on his own and eventually start bearing weight on his legs, maybe even crawling, and eventually walking.  I mean, clearly we're not going to drop him off at college and watch him scoot off to his dorm room -- but still.  I want to give the poor guy a little boost in the right direction -- I mean he's scooting across a rocky beach for Christ sake and clearly frustrated that he can't get to where he wants to go without it hurting like hell.  So, the peeps at Braintree Rehab are going to work with scooter number two and he'll be off and running in no time and I'll be wishing he was still scooting instead of climbing up a bookshelf when I'm not looking.  

Oh, and did I mention, I am in PT?  Of course, I am.  I can't let the kids have all this one-on-one attention and not grab some for myself.  Yah, I guess having two kids in two years can really F a person up.  So, I actually can't kneel because my knee cap is floating around or some shit like that because of pregnancy hormones, and abusing my body on a day-to-day basis with the Iron Man I try to execute each and everyday with two kids 18 months apart.....blah, blah, blah....So, I am also trying to get my creaky-old-ass into PT from 6AM-730AM (WTF?!?!?!) three times a week while the kids are still asleep?  Awesome.  Like my bedtime at 35 years old wasn't early enough at 10PM -- now the kids are keeping me up PAST my bedtime if they don't go down by 7:30PM.  

I'm not even kidding you....the dog is even starting to limp.  Seriously.  The vet says she needs to be on anti-inflammatories and that water-based-physical-therapy would be good for her?  Are you kidding me right now?  Obviously, that's not going to happen -- we may be a house of special needs -- but the dog is not going to some super expensive dog aquatics center to get water therapy or whatever the hell the vet was talking about.  She's going to have to buck up like the rest of us, take her ibuprofen, and maybe I can hook her up every now and again to the portable Stim machine my mother let me borrow.  (Your mother has a portable Stim machine?  Ok, so, clearly it's likely a genetic flaw on my side....just don't tell my husband in case he decides to cave first...totally not going to happen...he's a lawyer must I remind you -- they are never wrong and they definitely don't have a flawed genetic make-up.)

So, two scoots later and most definitely getting the bang-for-our-buck out of our health insurance policy and we're knee deep in physical therapy.  We'll, we're actually floating knee cap deep in physical therapy but you catch my drift.

Saran Wrap...

...it's not just used in the kitchen.

Ahh...vacations.  Can you really call them vacations after you have kids?  Let's be honest -- a true vacation would consist of "getting away," "taking a break," or "rest and relaxation." 

After you have kids, a vacation WITH your children doesn't really conjure up images of rest and relaxation.  You're really just running the same program in the woods or by the beach.  And the packing involved just to get anywhere kind of cancels out the purpose of going in the first place.  

This is a picture of our car from our vacation to Maine last week.  Once we got the two pac-n-plays into the bag strapped to the roof, and packed every foot well and remaining square inch of our car with our crap -- we pretty much looked like Irish Tinkers.

Having a window fall into the door of our car was annoying before having kids.  Having a window fall into the car door in ME right next to my one year old's car seat and a two hour drive home including a ferry ride? 

A new kind of annoying.

Here's something much less annoying that happened on our "vacation":

Logan Bridge

So clearly I've been having a tough time lately.  But I figured I better get on here before people started thinking suicide watch or sending DSS to the house to check on me and the kids.

We're fine.  I'm fine.  Just chalk it up to another rough patch as a Mom, I guess.  My husband has had a front row seat to me loosing my mind lately at home with the kids and I don't think it helped when he tried to reach out to me the other night and said, "So, Moll -- you doing ok?  You feeling a little bit better after a tough run of it?" to which I replied, "Well, at least I haven't jumped off the Logan Bridge yet!"

He kind of looked at me with that "awe, the poor thing, she's not out of the water yet" look, -- not because I made a joke about jumping off a bridge -- but because I meant to say Tobin Bridge.  Instead, I think my mind is so jumbled up with kid gunk I actually combined Tobin Bridge, with Logan Airport, and maybe even a little London Bridge mixed in there.  I don't know.  But thankfully, we both laughed at how messed up I've been feeling and for the most part, things have pretty much gone back to our normal insanely busy lifestyles without me on the verge of a nervous breakdown all the time.   Oh, but just wait.  It'll happen again in due time, just ask my husband, because he has season tickets.

So, now that I temporarily have my sanity back, I can actually celebrate the fact that my darling son turned one this past weekend.  As difficult as it is to raise kids, there are some pretty awesome moments you just can't deny (when you aren't too exhausted or worn out to notice them).  Like my son eating his first cupcake:

This freakin kid is awesome.  So so so different from my daughter.  Likes to get dirty, likes to bang things together, smash things, and pretty much likes hearing the sound of his own voice -- but as loud as he can possibly muster.  He's pretty much the loudest person I know.  Not super interested in saying mama or dada (although he does both) but he'd rather just make a noise like a lion and say, "roar".  He says, "roar" to pretty much anyone who will engage him in such animal behavior.  And he loves it.  Smiliest little lion you'll ever meet.  Love him.  Seriously, I do.  Still not cool with him pinching the skin on my neck -- really, really do not like that at all.  But other than that.  He's a cool guy.

My littlest has turned one.  Good job, buddy.  You got longer, wider, grew some hair, learned to sit up, move around a bit, and have a few teeth.  All very large accomplishments when you've just arrived on the planet.  And me?  I have successfully made it through another pregnancy, another newborn, and now another one year old.  Well jeez, when you put it that way, maybe there are some rainbows occasionally shooting out of my ass...who knew?

But you know, if you don't look at cute cupcake eating pictures in between the neck pinching, screaming, and diaper changing they potentially could start to lose their cuteness.  Come to think of it, this might be why little kid birthday's exist in the first place (because let's be honest -- they have no freakin idea at this age what is going on on their birthday) -- we throw a birthday party, unknowingly take a ton of super cute pictures of our kids, which end up reminding us that they really are adorable and we wouldn't trade 'em for the world.  Until they wake up crying the next morning and the thought briefly crosses your mind that you might be a better parent if you'd gone the route of the Sally Struthers Children's Fund -- getting a letter with an attached photo of your kid every year rather than actually taking care of it every day.

But still.  Looking back at my son's first year there is a laundry list (no pun intended) of things I absolutely love about this kid and if they were ever to be taken away from me, I would be utterly and totally devastated.  Here's a few of them:

1.  He's Irish, has red hair, and is from Southie.

2.  He kinda already looks like a scalper.  

Because of this, I respect his grittiness, his street smarts, and his overall general ballsy attitude.

3.  I love his relationship with our bulldog, Bella.  I know it's because he gives her food.  I don't care.  They are the best of friends and it's adorable.

4.  He loves this little monkey.  When we put him to bed, he gently pats the monkey's head before he goes to sleep every night.  It might just be the sweetest thing....ever.   

Happy Birthday, buddy.  

Since Mommy can't even get the name right of the bridge she threatens to jump off of every now and again, it's likely she wouldn't be able to pull something like that off logistically, anyway.  That said, I think we're in it together for the long haul, my friend.   

And just for the record, when I really ask myself, even on the hardest of the hard days, I wouldn't walk away from any of this.  I wouldn't mind being picked up in a limo and driven away from it to an amazing restaurant overlooking the water with an open-bar from time-to-time.  But entirely walk away from it?

Not a chance.