For the Love of Ivey

As the new year is quickly approaching, I am asking "How has another year gone by?"  Wow.  Another year.  So many things have been amazing for the girl this year.  She is doing things never imagined possible.  But I'll tell you, the past year and a half has been the hardest for me than any so far.  It's hard to imagine even saying it, especially admitting it, but this past couple of years have just about done me in.  For Ivey, they have been her best. Once we had this amazing nurse.  Her name was Dee.  She was here in a time that I needed her more sometimes than even Ivey.  She used her experience to care not only for Ivey, but for our entire family.  The boys were tiny, as was Ivey, and like all nurses she took the night shift so that Matt and I could sleep.  I miss sleep.  I miss Dee even more. Any who, one morning the boys (most likely around the ages of 3 and 4) had gotten up and Dee, like many other days, turned c...

In my endeavor to expose the hidden thoughts of a mom with a child with special needs, I feel it would be beneficial to expose some of the random (and sometimes not so random) ramblings that surge through my head from time to time.  Also, I feel it beneficial to expose the same ramblings when thinking of my "typical" boys in light of living with a sister with special needs as well.  However, as the years pass, I am learning that many abnormal and weird things that boys do are apparently normal when speaking of boys.  This includes the oldest boy - my husband. Let's start by letting you know that I will label these amusing brain synapses under the tag "Musings". Simple enough.  Found under this label will be the things I often wonder, but fear to ask, or ask, and hear crickets chirping in reply. This will be the section of "Is it normal for me to wonder"........ "IS  THIS  N.O.R.M.A.L?" With Easter fast approaching, I will start with  The...

This is a preface in the somewhere middle of our story. A preface, as Paul Harvey would have said, to the "rest of the story". I am a reader.  A trait that comes straight from my mom.  Storylines along the fringes of Kathy Reichs and Harry Potter can be found in my reading stack. However, I am also a reader of realistic women.  My favorites range from Jen Hatmaker to Glennon.  I need wit and humor facing 'real' life in the trenches. But, the one book I cannot find, the one I have been in search of for many years, is the book about a  medically complicated, developmentally delayed, deaf-blind kinda family -- surviving.  Happily. I do not use the term 'survive' loosely.  Surviving comes in all kinds of kinds, with unique skills, and most importantly, the ability to flex through a range of pressure cooker temperatures.  Let it be known that keeping your nose just above the water is, in fact, surviving.  Surviving can also be accomplish...