Settling In

Jake has been home and we have all been back together again now for about 4 days, and we're all adjusting to our changed family. It's definitely different from how we were previously, and we're trying to figure out our new normal. We discovered rather quickly that Jake pushes himself and then gets very fatigued. He is having a hard time understanding that he can't do everything he used to, or go at the pace he'd like to. Just "living" and getting around the house can wipe him out. 

Luke is also having a bit of a tough time. While he is really happy to have Jake home, things are different. It's hard on him at times with the amount of attention Jake needs from us, not to mention all the attention Jake is getting from friends and neighbors who are so excited he's home. He often feels left out and not as important. Other times, he feels like he shouldn't go outside and play since Jake can't. Perfectly normal feelings for an 8 year old, but hard to deal with. 

We've also discovered the challenges in getting things done like we used to. Prior to all this, the boys could be out playing, on the computer, or doing any number of things keeping them occupied while Todd and I did whatever we needed to do. Now one of us needs to be near Jake in case he needs something, or be there to shadow him when he's getting from one place to another. In the past, we would all often load up in the car to go on a Costco run or just run errands in general. We're now finding it's a lot less taxing on Jake to just have someone stay at home with him instead. We're getting quite good and divide and conquer when it comes to running errands and learning to prioritize what needs to be done.

We know over time his stamina will increase  as will his independence and we'll adjust again, but for now it's where we are and we're figuring things out day by day. During this journey over the past 2 ½ months, we have been hit with several situations that were somewhat unexpected, but in retrospect we should have seen them coming …. and this is another one of those.

Jake did get a nice treat last night and got together with a few friends for pizza. He's been missing his friends all summer, so we invited a few over for a short visit and dinner. It was so nice to see them all talking and just hanging out. The protective mom in me was worried that he might be treated differently, but these are all great boys and things went really well.

He is supposed to start school tomorrow, (on shortened days) so yesterday morning we met his teacher at the school to do a dry run of getting to class, in and out of his desk, navigating around the room, etc. It was so nice of him to meet us on a Saturday and I think it will make the transition back to school a lot easier. Jake has been bothered by the fact he was going to have to use a wheelchair to get around the school outside of his classroom. We found out on Friday that the school has an adaptive bike like the one he rode in the hospital and they asked if he might like that better so we're going to give it a try. Nothing like getting a little physical therapy and have a cooler mode of transportation at the same time!

You'll notice I said "supposed" to start school tomorrow....having not spent a lot of time outside this summer, we haven't dealt with the joys of summer bugs and discovered that mosquitoes are out in full force. Mosquitoes have always loved Jake and he has always had a really bad reaction to them. He was out this morning for about 20 minutes and got bit 6 times, once under the left eye, which is now almost swollen shut. He looks just like he did after surgery, poor kid. We've been treating it today with all the home remedies I could think of and are hoping the swelling goes down by morning. If not, we may wait a day or two for school. Under normal circumstances, he'd still go, but he’s got enough other issues to deal with and doesn’t need to be explaining why his eye is swollen on top of everything else. We've decided to leave the choice up to him if he's still swollen in the morning and it won't surprise me if he still wants to go. Hard way to start your first day back.