There was just something off about today, not sure what it was. Maybe just cumulation of stress and fatigue. It started with a nice long video chat with Gramma and she got to virtually chase both boys all over the house and take part in their antics.
But then crabbiness prevailed. We had a first today that I knew was coming – Brendan bit Trevor. He bit his forearm hard enough that when Trevor screamed and came to me, there were nice deep teeth mark indentations. (It did not break the skin).
Then I traumatized poor Trevor with the vacuum. We had worked so hard to get him used to it again and to not be afraid. He had been playing with it and I was ready to see if he would mind if I ran it. When I went to plug it in, I did not realize the switch was on and it jumped to roaring life just as Trevor reached out to touch it. He SCREAMED. He was so scared, he was trembling and his heart was racing. It took a while to get him calmed down. I felt so bad!

Trevor had to get in to Brendan’s tub when Brendan got out. This tub is about to be retired!

I burned dinner because there were two crying angry boys in high chairs and I wasn’t paying enough attention to the food! Bill got Brendan calmed down with this little spray bottle of water. Brendan will let Bill spritz his mouth with the water mist, it is pretty funny.

During pre-bedtime hallway antics, Trevor tries to create a diversion to cover for his brother

Bad Brendan

“It wasn’t me!”

Now that both boys are asleep, it is tough to detox and relax. We have some fun planned for tomorrow, I hope it helps!

I am going to start with the cuteness today. Trevor had a million pictures during breakfast as he went through his range of dramatic expressions.

He was giving me such a cheesy ham face, it doesn’t even look like Trevor anymore! It was too funny then, and still funny to me now!

Then Trevor discovered the treasure at the end of the rainbow. The secret stash of loud clanging pots and pans.

He has to get out every one

Brendan came to investigate the noise

There was a little battle

Trevor got lunch in his hair and as I cleaned him up, this just happened

When Uncle Kevin made these tables, I don’t think a Trevor sandwich was what he had in mind.

For the first time since the boys were born, the four of us sat at the table and had dinner as a family. Trevor loved his steak and potatoes. I should have made him his own steak!

Aside from the cuteness, today was pretty stressful. I let my emotions get the better of me and am embarrassed that I got upset during the therapy meeting today. As I feared, the three hours a week of therapy that Brendan used to get (1hr each of PT, OT, and speech) is gone and we are left with one hour a week of the “team based approach”. He will have one therapist that is a team leader that will visit, in Brendan’s case it will be an OT. That person will bring in the other specialists “as needed” to provide other services. The therapists will alternate instead of each seeing him weekly, as long as we don’t run out of “units”.
They promise me that “research shows this works” and that I will just have to wait and see. I can’t possibly imagine how less is more in this instance.
I have full confidence that Brendan will achieve any goals we set for him, therapists or none. We will have it no other way and his whole family will do everything to take care of his needs. Then their “research” can show just how effective this team crap is in his case and they can pat themselves on the back for how much money they saved.
I am furious with how poorly this transition has been handled. I am sad to lose the hard working therapists that have invested so much time in Brendan so far that were dumped like a dirty diaper.
I am angry with myself for feeling angry with them all. I am fortunate that there is any assistance from the state to provide early intervention services without massive out of pocket costs to us, and I should be grateful that he gets therapies at all. It is hard to separate the stress and emotion in this huge time of change.
Today was a raw gut reaction to the fact that we are losing help in the form of people and time. It sucks, but as always, things could be a lot worse.

It should be busy Tuesday tomorrow, but it is going to be a lot different. Brendan’s old therapists have already been cut so we won’t have PT or OT. We will be getting oxygen refills, and we will be having our first planning meeting with Brendan’s new therapy team in the afternoon.

Today was a pretty good day. The boys were full of their usual antics.
Brendan is pretending that he doesn’t like to eat goldfish crackers.

He loves when I put some out for Trevor, and he picks them up and licks them and scrapes them on his teeth.

Brendan actually ate a large amount of cinnamon applesauce at lunch time today, he had it straight from one of those squeeze pouches. He liked it! It must have given him lots of energy because he played like crazy this afternoon.

After dinner, Trevor “helped” with the dishes again. Mean Inspector Trevor looked at each thing in the drying rack and decided that it needed to get rewashed.

So he threw it in the soapy water. I guess I needed to sort and organize the drying rack anyway!

Trevor LOVE LOVE LOVES the new room and the bare wood hollow floor. He loves the echo and he loves to stomp around in circles. He will play in there until he falls over tired.

Here’s a little Brendan video too, just to be fair!