Archive for January 2009
The meltdown week.
When Ivy has the infusion of Intragam, she usually has a couple of days where she feels pretty ordinary afterwards.
Generally achy after a night of sweats and high temps.
After that, though, she gets an unmistakable boost in her energy. A period of time when she is just a normal preschooler, doing what all preschoolers do. She runs and jumps and dances. She plays hard. She laughs and sings and draws.
This lasts about three weeks and then we enter what we have come to know as…
The Meltdown Week.
We are in that very week right now.
Her energy levels fall, she eats less and sleeps more
and there are lots and lots of tears.
Lots of them.
The kids all sigh and huff and roll their eyes while I carry around the meltdown girl but we all know that it’s only for a week.
I mean, a week of sad beats a month of sad any day, doesn’t it?
Before the infusions started Ivy would cry all day, almost every day and when she wasn’t crying or clinging she was sleeping or lying on the lounge, still as could be.
It was sad and terrible and heart wrenching and it turned our lives upside down.
So what’s a little meltdown as her antibody levels decline?
For me, it is a reminder of what once was, what could be, if we didn’t have the IVIG.
For me, the meltdown week keeps it real.
Originally posted at 5 minutes for special needs.
The April child.
He’s five this year, in April.
I know, I know, I might have held him back.
I might have wanted to keep him close that extra year but probably not.
Knowing my kids, as I do, he would have been confident and clever and I would have sent him.
Shiny shoes and a button down shirt, crisp and clean and ready.
He might have been smaller than the other kids, fragile somehow but still, his little chest would be bursting with pride as he slipped his big boy back pack over his shoulders.
The other kids would all be celebrating with him, congratulating him on his ‘big school’ status and my heart would swell as I let him go.
Off to kindergarten.
He would be five and like all the others, I would have sent him.
I promise you I did not dwell on today, what today would have been if my April child were here.
I promise that I lived for the moment and celebrated my others as they push forward, always forward.
It was just a silly thing that set me off, a small sentence, streaming through my living room as I watched the light and shadow of the television play upon the walls.
“Don’t grow up too soon”.
I might have said that very thing if he were here today, standing in front of me as I tried to manage his blonde fuzz.
I’ve said it to all the others, a superfluous statement to any child.
Tonight I wish that, for just one day, I could see the boy he would have been, with his big boy smile and his eyes bright with possibility.
Yes, preschool really is that exciting!
For more Wordless Wednesday go here.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow morning, bright and early, seven children will pack their bags.
They’ll pack their bags and put on their shiniest school shoes.
Three will head off to their very first day of highschool
Two will be entering their senior stage of primary and
two will be starting preschool.
All my babies.
The highschool kids are scared beyond measure.
I’m scared for them.
It’s a big step, highschool.
New school, new uniforms, new routines, new expectations.
It’s a time when everything changes.
I know they’ll be fine and it’s okay to be scared but still…
What’s more is that I am a mother to highschoolers.
What’s with that?
I am way too young to have young people in highschool.
I feel a midlife crisis coming on.
Lily is going back to school on her own for the first time ever.
She has always been with the big kids.
Mal is moving into the senior group in his special needs class
and preschool?
My head is spinning.
Tomorrow seven children will walk into their future
and I
will have my first day off, child free, in over three years.
What will I do without them?