In less than 48 hours, K will have been off the oxygen for 3 weeks. I haven’t even been checking her oxygen levels in her blood for the last several days. She’s always been fine and never shows any signs of problems. She does, however, sometimes have this whistling to her breathing. When she was still in the NICU sometimes we’d hear that and we were always told it was because the cannula was up against the side of her nose or something, but that the noises were always caused by that. Well now she’s off of the oxygen and we still hear it from time to time. But the times I’ve heard it when she’s been on the oximeter, her blood levels have been fine. So I don’t know why she does this but she goes to the pulmonologist soon so I will be asking him.

The Renegade Tomato Weed is now HUUUUGE. And it looks, “oh so wonderful” there but now it’s actually producing some red tomatoes so I don’t know what else to do with it but let it go. Elijah loves it. He loves to pick the tomatoes and he’ll wash them and eat them right away. Strange boy who will eat the grape tomatoes but not touch any other kind.

more of the renegade tomato weed

It made a nice addition to his nature journal though, for today, the first day of school. He cut a clipping of just leaves and then a clipping of blossoms and put them on a page. He wrote “tomato” and the date and drew a picture of tomatoes on the vine (though he insisted the vine be red and the tomatoes green… whatever) and he drew a picture of the blossoms. On the back I printed the photo above as well as this one and he taped them on.

For the first day we also did 3 math pages, 3 pages of handwriting basic skills, reviewed letters and sounds and some easy words, and read the first chapter (?) from the Wizard of Oz. Some time ago I bought The Treasury of Oz which has all of Baum’s books in it, so that’s what we’re reading from a section at a time. It’s a big book with two columns of about 10 pt text, no illustrations — there is a lot in there!

But Elijah was SO good today, I hope every day goes as smooth! He cooperated, he listened for the most part, he did his work… it was amazing. And Kayleigh slept through all of it. She woke up to eat so we took a little break before I read to him after she fell asleep, but she slept well before then. I know every day won’t be so easy, but boy was it nice for the first day of this year!

There was more I wanted to say about K, but I forget. :P
She’s doing well, though. Starting to make more noises and eating more. Her development is right in line with her corrected age. Guess I can’t ask for more, could I? :)

And I know this sounds petty, but her health aside, I’m glad she’s off of oxygen because even with the cooler summer we’ve had so far, our electric bill with that oxygen condenser running was 25% more than it’s ever ever been. The bill almost gave me a heart attack. Not to mention there’s the rental cost which for any one piece of equipment we’ve had to pay for isn’t bad after insurance pays, but it really adds up! And the G-button stuff, though, that wasn’t covered by insurance at all so all of that was out of pocket. I still need to find somewhere to send our unused, unopened stuff. I have spare bags, an extension tube, and even a spare G-button. When the doctor clears K to actually be rid of the equipment (I can’t see him NOT saying we don’t need it anymore) then I’ll also have spare cannulas and tender grips, etc. The equipment supplier would not take them back even though we were originally told (by who? can’t remember) they’d take back unopened stuff for credit. They keep insisting that the insurance paid for it so we own it and we kept saying NO WE paid for it and we’d like to send it back but they won’t take it so we are also the proud owners of an IV pole. But it was suggested to me that maybe a hospital or nursing home would like our spare stuff so I think I’m going to ask online for a family like us and if I don’t find one, then I’ll start asking the hospitals and stuff. But down here… after the home nurse care we got, it makes me wonder if anyone has ever even HEARD of a G-button!!

Side note: WOW, Elijah is totally hooked on this new Fresh Beat Band show… I’m glad it’s not quite as annoying as his last obsession: iCarly or the the Wonder Pets for that matter…