First Day Back

(Tuesday)

Today was AJ’s first day back at school following Christmas break.  I woke up victorious, having gotten a full night’s sleep for the first time in weeks. AJ chose today as the first day to sleep in the last two weeks.  Each morning we wake to “beep, beep, beep, doo doo doo, doo, spinny thing, vroom vroom”…you get the idea.  Because AJ needs his seizure medication around the same time each morning, there is no more true sleeping in for this family.  Unless… Jer and I are in Hawaii. There was lots of sleeping in there.  Sigh.

Anywho, I had to wake him, which was rather uneventful.  He had a few seizures during breakfast and maybe two more after breakfast-or what I’d call his attempt to be a bird.  His platform swing…wait.  Did I tell you we put it up?  And he loves it?  He does.  The bolt came out of the joist on New Year’s Eve. We’ve had a bit of a sad boy, but then we pull out his ginormous new body ball (yoga ball) and he’s giggly again.  The swing should be up by this evening. 

Moving forward again…usually we swing after getting dressed, as he knows that’s the next thing in our routine.  Sadly I told him no we couldn’t swing and signed broke while I said it was broken.  When saying, “Do you want you ball?”  I received a big smile and manic signing of please occurred.  I love that little guy.

So roll on the ball we did until it was time to go.  He stopped in the middle of the driveway and starred at me whining a bit.  Hm.  Odd.  Lightbulb! He’s got to go potty.  Sure enough, that’s what it was.  This is what makes things so frustrating at times as he knows what in blue blazes is going on and needs a way to tell us.  I know, you say whip out the iPad.  Well, we’re learning quickly that there is no perfect system (other than saying aloud what you need, honestly) to this.  I knew what he needed, so we went.

We arrived at school and he was tired, but excited to be there.  I spent my morning listening to the pleasant hum of the humidifier while I did homework, sent out 435 emails and making 1,765 phone calls.  It was one of those days.

When I picked him up from school he was sleeping, and slept a good 2.5 hours.  He woke up happy and bubbly.  Happy and bubbly until 11:30pm.  We swung A LOT and he ate A LOT.  All was normal.

I often find myself going over days like this over and over in my head to try and see if there was something I could have done different.  I decided that if I find him sleeping that hard again, I’ll allow him to sleep until the latest time possible and take him in to school late.  We’ll play it by ear. Sleep is very important to kids with epilepsy-it certainly is for our little dude.