Weight, weight, weight!

I feel as though this could be the topic of discussion everyday, but once again weight is on my mind. Quentin's weight, to be exact. We had an appointment with the nutritionist a week ago. One of those appointments that takes me an hour to prepare for, you know: waking Quentin, dressing him, feeding him, giving him medicine, getting him and his chair in the car, making sure that I don't look completely hideous, oh yeah and brushing our teeth, schlepping the two of us fifteen minutes across town, getting the chair off of the car and getting Quentin into it and finally arriving just on time for our appointment (or a few minutes late, but whose keeping track of that anyway). The appointment which we have every three to four months that consists of weighing Quentin and inevitably not being able to remember where the nutritionist wrote down the weight of Quentin's chair on the previous appointment, so of course we must go through the whole process again. The appointment in which we discuss how to add calories to Quentin's diet, the same ones that we discussed just three months ago, of course. The appointment that should last for ten minutes but takes at least a half an hour. The appointment that just feels like a waste of time, but makes them feel like we are being good parents by allowing them to check up on us and assure that we are following their recommendations.

So, I know you must be saying to yourself right now, "tell me how you really feel Alicia"! After all of this rambling on, I am just happy to report that Quentin is now almost a complete 37 lbs. We have increased his weight steadily and consistently and it feels amazing to know that even though, yes, we do use the supplements that they give us; No, we do not use them in every meal, every day because there are just too many things happening in any given day to remember and to do every single thing that we are "supposed" to be doing feels downright impossible. Every year I tell myself that I am going to create a daily calendar for Quentin so that I can make sure that I get everything done, but every year it gets pushed to the back burner and never gets done. As I sit here typing I am thinking of how I can set up the schedule and that I really should put that darn calendar together!!! But, right now at this moment in time I just feel so happy that he is on track (5th percentile..woo hoo) and that they aren't going to badger me again for another four months.

Just a side note. We had a play date a few Saturday's ago and it was so much fun. I met a new mommy Denise and her little boy Lucas who has beautiful blonde curly hair and blue eyes (he also has CP). Denise was amazing. As soon as we got to our host's home, she came over to Quentin and had him interacting with the other boys, she was stretching him and sitting with him. It felt so nice to be greeted in a way that was to all of us very "normal". Sometimes I feel myself worrying about where I'm going and how people are going to react to Quentin and his differences and on that day I really felt none of those typical apprehensions and it was really nice and relaxing. So I am happy to say that my new group of mommies is amazing and that I look forward to our next outing and sharing time with their kiddos (who are as wonderful as their moms are)!

Our new respite worker

So they say that summer isn't going to begin until June 21st, but I think that someone forgot to tell Arizona that. We have already begun to reach the wonderful triple digit weather here and I'm dreading the days when it's even hotter. I know that was off the subject, but I have to mention to all of my friends and family that live in beautiful CA (can't forget the lucky Hawaii residents either) that while you are living in bliss in your 85 degree beach weather, we are slowly melting away.

I know that I started this post with something more important to say. Now where was I? Oh yeah, we now have respite worker #2. Her name is Nicole and she is a 20-something pre-med student from Phoenix currently attending U of A. How lucky are we? She made her debut this past Saturday and so we stayed home for the first hour and a half to allow her to get comfortable, at least I told myself it was for her benefit, and then we went to dinner for a few hours and came back so that I could show her the bedtime routine. She couldn't get him to eat, poor thing, so she was holding him in his favorite position, head resting on the lady pillows, when we got home (he's such a man)! I think that she will definitely be ready to take on the full five hours next time since she got to see the whole routine, but we'll just have to see how I feel.

We have actually started to do many more things now that we have respite. Although most of it has to do with food, we are enjoying ourselves and it feels good to know that we have two very capable individuals helping us out. Now we are able to do something every Saturday night (5PM to 10PM) just the two of us and it's a nice change of pace to get out of our cramped space.

Our new friends have created a facebook page dedicated to Tucson families with children with cerebral palsy. I think that will probably open us up to meeting more families and for me more women to interact with. I still miss my girlfriends, but I enjoy making new friends. There is a playgroup date this Saturday and I'm excited that Quentin will be able to have some new friends.

There is a lot of things happening this summer, so I'll be in touch! Love you all.