Hanging on!

I thought it was about time that I post an update. Emily is hanging on. She is still having headaches almost daily, but we are back to having the positional headaches that can often be quickly relieved by having her lay down to equalize the pressure in her head. As hard as it is to have her still having headaches, these are much more bearable than what we went through for that week of hell when her pressure was increased because for the most part Emily is a very happy child who seems to be enjoying life despite the moments of pain. I will be taking her back to the neurosurgeon and see if we can possibly make one more small adjustment, but I'm a little scared, too, after what happened before. Just the slightest pressure change can totally change her personality and it is frightening. As I sit here typing this, Emily is jamming out to "Party in the U.S.A." on her mp3 player in the living room and is dancing up a storm. I love it!

Ethan just started baseball this week. What the heck have we gotten ourselves into???? This is one hefty commitment. It is three days of practice a week. And I some how have to squeeze in taking him to Pensacola one day a week for allergy shots, and then God forbid I have any other appointments for the kids. Oh, and have I mentioned that Emily is about to start tennis lessons soon? It wouldn't be so bad if my plate wasn't already full with their other appointments I am always having to go to. I just hope that I can keep up with it all. On the positive side, Ethan said that he is loving baseball after just the first week. Since he has never played it before, he has a lot of catching up to do to be where the other players are on his team, but we are lucky that we have a great coach. His coach is really doing an awesome job of teaching him what to do. Now, if I can just get him to stop picking grass out in the outfield then things would be perfect. But on a side note, the fact that he is even TOUCHING the grass is an amazing thing. Ethan has sensory issues and has always had an aversion to grass. In fact, the first couple of times that he was out on the field with the other boys, he wouldn't even sit in the grass because he wouldn't touch it. I was watching out there and I noticed that he was squatting because he wouldn't allow himself to touch the grass. I was starting to get very worried how he was going to cope with playing ball if he couldn't get past his grass aversion. So, as much as I hated seeing him not pay attention last night when he was in the outfield, I was secretly LOVING the fact that I saw him actually picking the grass. Oh, the little things that we moms take joy in. It's baby steps for us. Now, somebody please tell me how to teach him to cope with his bug phobia and things will be perfect in Ethan World. And another thing that I was quite proud of last night was how well Ethan handled a slight injury on the field without breaking down into the full blown drama that sometimes happens when he gets hurt. As he was running from first base to second base, the ball that was hit came and hit him straight on in his leg. And it did hit pretty hard! He stopped for a minute, grabbed his leg and still kept on hobbling on to second base. He never cried. He never went into any kind of dramatic meltdown. It was great. I sat there in the dugout and quietly watched to see what would happen. The coach just yelled and asked if he was okay. He stood up and shrugged it off and then ran on to third with the next hit. It was quite a proud moment and I think a very first moment of its kind, too. I think organized sports have been a really good thing for Ethan.

Today just might be a big day for Emily. She has informed me that she wants to get her ears pierced. Actually, she has been MAD at me because I didn't have them pierced when she was a baby. She told me that I should have done it back then because then she wouldn't have to worry about it now. I had to show her how tiny her little ears are. I told her that her ear lobes weren't big enough to even pierce back when she was a baby and that I wanted her to be old enough to make the decision on her own. Well, now the decision has been made, but she is scared to death of the pain. All of her friends have their ears pierced and she doesn't like being left out. Plus she likes looking at my earrings and she has been wanting this for so long. So, today is the day and to help with the process, I am going to numb her ears with Emla cream. I hope she goes through with it. We'll have to wait and see what happens.

To be continued...