So.......2010, huh?

Grant is watching TV across the room from where I'm typing this. Just as I was entering the title, the TV announcer said something along the lines of, ".....missed the grab there. I think that shows his lack of confidence......" WHAT THE HECK???!!!??? Of course, my "mom brain" immediately looked up over the top of the computer screen to see precisely WHAT Grant was watching on TV??!!?? Extreme skiing. Seriously.

I think that sums up my feeling of the last few weeks since I last blogged. Reacting. Behind the motion. Like most of you out there, the holidays were a whirlwind. But this year, they almost felt like they were over before they began. Tree goes in........tree goes out........ugh. I have my perpetual "to do" list still on my desk, and far too many of the items haven't changed in the last 60 days, which means they're not being accomplished. Hmph.

This year, with the start of the new year, the younger members of our family are going to experience some transition. Grant is moving from wrestling season to basketball. Tiersten will have a new first grade teacher, following the unexpected death of her teacher a few weeks before Christmas. And, at the recommendation of her occupational therapist, Jennica is going to take a 4-5 month "break" from her weekly private OT appointment. Grant will be fine.......but it means more evening commitments for us, as the basketball game schedule is heavier than the wrestling meet schedule. We have no word yet on who Tiersten's teacher will be, and I admit to being worried as to the possibilities. There aren't usually a lot of teachers looking for jobs in December, and the school is going to have a difficult set of shoes to fill. As for Jennica.....we've done a solid 13 months of OT, and Renae feels she is ready for a break. I was resistant to the whole idea in the beginning, but Renae gave us a few weeks to think it over, and I can see the validity of the points she made. So......we're not going to be making the weekly drive to Olympia for a little while. (Can't say I will miss that 3 hours on the road.) And, as Renae reminds us constantly, she is never more than a phone call or email away.

And then, in mid-January, Jen will be admitted to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital and "plugged in" for 48 hours straight for a high-intensity VEEG. Her previous sleep-deprivation EEG was normal, her sleep studies were just slightly outside the ranges of normal.......so her neurologist wants the longer EEG before he officially stamps her as "seizure-free." The seizure-free diagnosis would be great......and would be a further confirmation that her only diagnosis is Sensory Processing Disorder. Another part of me feels that, while very worth it, its a heckuva long road to a result of "normal" electrical brain activity. We'll see how I feel after the 2 days in purgatory. And then again, I feel like such a whiner when I think about people who spend months there with terminally-ill children. There is always always ALWAYS someone that has it so much worse than we do......I try to always remember that.

Dane left on a bus this morning at 6:00 a.m., bound for the never-ending Saturday wrestling meet. Today, he is 90 minutes to the north. He started the season in the 160-pound bracket......which is one of the toughest. Young men in the "little guy" brackets are......well.....little. Big men in the "big guy" brackets are sometimes chubby and unfit. But the middle brackets are always heavily stacked with athletic brutes that thrive on turning their opponents into human pretzels. So.......Dane has spent some more time than he would prefer as the pretzel. Dane occasionally threatens to drop a weight class in search of weaker opponents, but by state rules, each wrestler has a weigh-in/calibration at the beginning of the season with a specifically-qualified medical person, and Dane's bottom weight limit was set at 148 pounds (THANK HEAVENS!!!). He's not going to gain much by dropping just that far, so.....he's pretty much stuck where he is. We all have our opinions of what he should be doing to cross over to the "tougher" side, but he's ignoring us so far. So......again.......I remind myself with the lives of my children---"It is HIS journey." :)

Wishing you all the best in this new year of new opportunities!!!