I’m linking up with This Ain’t the Lyceum today – head over and read some more!
- I’ve been tapering off my antidepressants over the past month and a half (my doctor recommended trying it after a year, and I waited until warm sunny weather would give me some help), and I think it’s going well! I have noticed some old thought patterns re-emerging, but they aren’t strong and all-consuming, and I’m equipped to process them effectively thanks to therapy. I should be completely off by the end of August, and probably due to my long and slow journey away from them I’ve avoided the unpleasant symptoms one can experience when abruptly messing with one’s serotonin pathways 😉
- Aubade had yet another dermatology appointment this week and we finally had good news: it appears that her mysterious rash is gone for now (or at least controlled without continued daily use of heavy steroids), and her skin is healthy. We’ll keep an eye on it in case it was triggered by some allergen or environmental factor that might be an issue again next spring, but at least for now she should be comfortable and unmedicated except for moisturizing cream.
- In case anyone else needs allergen-free lotion, we’ve been using Vanicream and I like it a lot. It doesn’t have lanolin in it, which can apparently irritate or trigger some people, and it’s probably all completely artificial, but it has a good feel and has definitely helped Aubade’s rash of mysterious origin.
- In non-medical news, I got a new camera!! My old DSLR was 8.5 years old and still working great, but there have been some advances since then 🙂 and it is nice to have the added pixels in the sensor especially in low-light settings. The boys have even posed for a me a few times (or at least, smiled at the camera and then asked to see themselves).
- It has been hot here, and humid since we’re in between waves of the monsoon, but we have to get out of the house so we’ve been playing a lot out back with the hose. We’ve rigged things so the hose will spray on the slides and the large wading pool will tuck underneath the slides, so the boys can go up and down the slides endlessly to much splashing underneath the mist.
- I’m attempting to babysit two little girls from church a few days a week, Limerick and Aubade’s ages; we had our first afternoon together this week and it went so well (despite my bone-crushing anxiety the night before)! All five kids played together well, in kind of a parallel play sort of way, and there was only one instance of quarreling the entire time. I’m sure it won’t always be that smooth and easy, but it was a good start, and left the boys anticipating the next playdate rather than dreading it. From the other mom’s perspective, it’s a chance for her to work and pay off debt; from my perspective, it’s a chance for my boys to make friends and practice social skills in a low-stress environment, and an opportunity for me to contribute monetarily a bit more to the household. Maybe I wouldn’t care about that so much if I were an excellent homemaker… but I’m really not 😛 In fact it’s tempting to use some of the extra income to pay someone to clean the house every other week or so…
- We qualified for ESA funds for Rondel for the year! In Arizona, if a “special needs” student (one who would have an IEP) isn’t enrolled in a public school, they are eligible for a certain amount of money to use for curriculum and therapeutic services. Since we’re homeschooling, we can use some of it for some good books and manipulatives, and since health insurance can be finicky about approving therapy, we can also use it for his speech therapy. It’s not a huge sum of money, but it’s enough to be very helpful with things. The eligibility criteria are very specific, but if you meet them the application process is very simple and straightforward, so I would encourage any homeschooler in Arizona with a developmentally delayed child to look into it.
How has your week been? What do you do to cope with the summer heat? What resources have you found in your state/country to support the needs of differently wired students, especially outside the public education system?
little thoughts 