vaccines & bats

Mon. 8/17 Macella & Kirstie are spending the week with Marsha's parents. They are helping with VBS in Killawog. They are very excited!

Tues. 8/18 I found out that Maria is missing a vaccine and that the pediatrician's office can't get it because there is a shortage. That meant a trip to the county health dept. for a vaccine. I was anticipating that the shot itself wouldn't go well, but it was the waiting that was the issue. When we walked into the room we were given the number 24 and they were just calling the number 3! Maria did not want to sit still at all! An hour and a half later we were finally called. You could tell that Maria was mad about the shot, but she didn't cry---I was amazed!

After putting Maria to bed at night and near the end of our movie, I let out a huge scream and dove for the floor----yes it was a bat in the house. It came flying out of our bedroom and was doing loops in the livingroom. Gary tried to hit it out of the air to no avail. It ended up going back into the bedroom and hiding. Everytime we scared it out it hid again. Gary broke my mop in the process of finding/getting the bat. We finally decided to leave the bedroom door open and go back to our movie----because at this point our bedroom was a disaster. We had to pull things out from the corners next to the dresser and pull things out from under the bed, etc. Obviously that meant a big mess! Finally the bat came back out and Gary got it with a nice baseball swing. He put it in a container to take to the county health dept. tomorrow. After it was caught I realized that I heard a noise behind the bed that morning, but thought it was some type of huge insect. I looked for it, but for fear I would actually find it, I stopped. That meant that the bat slept in our bedroom for at least one night before we found it. I'm more inclined to think that it had been there since our weekend incident with the bats.

Wed. 8/19--Maria and I took the bat to the county health dept. to have it checked for rabies. After all the scares with bats it seemed like a good idea to get one tested. We'll have the results by Friday, so that will be good:)

Our cabin with friends

Friday Aug 14-Saturday Aug 15 we had a nice time with friends over. We ate outside, the kids swam, we watched a movie on the big screen in the cabin, the kids went to bed and fell asleep watching a movie, the adults were tortured the ENTIRE night by fear of bats.

It was a hot night. It was a scary night. It was a sleepless night. Well at least it was for the grown ups. The kids had the doors locked to their own cabin and they safely slept. We had a cabin with 2 psychotic bats! Every time 3 of us fell asleep, it seemed as if 1 person heard the bats and then we were all awake again. If the bats would've just hung upside down in a corner it may have been nice, but NO they had to swoop down over us and squeak. Then they were constantly scratching (although once morning came we wondered if the scratching was the family of woodchucks we have living under the cabins). At any rate we finally fell asleep around 4:30am and now we have something to laugh about!

Saturday was a fun day of hanging out and trying to remain cool. Summer finally arrived!

Last day of summer therapy / Eye doctor appointment

August 13th-Today Maria had OT, PT, and speech, as well as an eye doctor appointment. It was a busy day to say the least! She enjoyed all of her therapies, so that was nice. The eye doctor was less fun.

We were at the eye doctor for almost 2 hours. Most of the time was spent waiting. Maria had to have eye drops which did not go well. Then we had to wait for her eyes to dilate, which took awhile. Finally she saw the eye doctor. She was much more interested in holding his hands down and holding his instruments than playing with the toys he was trying to distract her with. At the end of the appointment he said that her eyes appeared to be good. He does not think that she is cross-eyed, far sighted, or near sighted. He also said that the back of her eye lids look good---yes that was a fun part of the appointment as well! He did suggest that we see a geneticist, so we are looking into that this coming week. Just when we thought we were winding down with the different professionals we've had to meet:)

CPSE Meeting & Audiologist appointment

Tues, Aug. 11th
8:30 this morning we had Maria's CPSE meeting. It was a very helpful meeting. Even my soon to be boss came to help out and make sure that Maria was taken care of. We decided that Maria should have OT 3x/wk-30min, PT 2x/wk-30min., Speech 3x/week-90min., and Special ed teacher 3x/week-90 min-2hours. In addition, it was suggested that the services be given to her in a preschool setting. We are currently looking at a couple of preschools, as well as Head Start. Please pray that a space will open wherever the Lord thinks she will do best.

3:30 this afternoon Maria had an audiologist appointment. Since we have not observed any difference in Maria's hearing the audiologist decided not to do sound field testing. She would like to give Maria more time to adjust to the hearing aids to see if she starts responding to sound later. She did adjust them a little to help with the constant feedback that we're always hearing. We made an appointment for 5 weeks from now. In addition we are getting paperwork together to send to the cochlear implant team at NYU.

Pictures below may not be as clear because we forgot the camera, so they were taken with the cell phone. We had to get some pictures!