We're back......

Yes, we’re still alive. I’ve had every intention of being a good blogger but it hasn’t worked out that well. The original intention of this blog was to explore our lives dealing with the obstacles we face every day but those are constantly evolving and sometimes it’s hard to keep up. It’s also hard to research and post about something, only to find that, a month or so later, life is going in a complete opposite direction.

It’s been almost a year since I blogged. A lot has happened, some good and some not. After our trip to Disney, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. His prognosis was not good and we sort of went into a period of just focusing on day-by-day stuff. I’m very happy to say that he is defying odds and doing very well right now. M finished what can only be described as a tumultuous year in Kindergarten. It saddens me to say that she did not have a good experience to start off her school life and she still gets very upset when asked to talk about it….unfortunately, I was so focused on her being a model student that I was blind to the fact that the environment she was in was not a healthy one. Luckily, we survived to the end of the year but then we spent a very anxious summer waiting on 1st grade to start – at a brand new school. This year has been a vast improvement. She is loving the experience of public school (things like PE, music, computer, art, etc. should never be underestimated). She has an amazing teacher this year who not only understands her needs but has eagerly embraced helping us to find what works. Not to mention, she is a rock star at communicating. Just days after starting school (and breathing a sigh of relief that it was going to be an awesome school year), my grandmother died. M had her first real experience with death and funerals. It was a sad time in our lives, a truly amazing lady gone from us. We took our annual trip to the beach in September, this time both of my parents went with us. We also managed a trip to a lake house with the whole family for a weekend in October.

Through this all, we’ve had ups and downs. We’ve had changes in diagnoses, medication changes, family therapy, and lots of other stuff. M has made great leaps forward in her physical development. We quit occupational therapy because it was not addressing our needs (she needed gross motor therapy and we weren’t getting it) but between taekwondo and tumbling class, she has become strong and coordinated. She went from barely being able to pedal a bike with training wheels last summer to riding without her training wheels back around Christmas time. She is still teeny in stature but now has a loose tooth (something she’s been dying for since she was about 3) so she doesn’t mind being the smallest in her class anymore. And very recently, she turned 6!

That’s our last year in a very (very) small nutshell. I promise to try to blog more and keep up. I think about blogging often but when I think about trying to play catchup, it’s too overwhelming. So I’m blogging from this point forward….with maybe some flashback posts!