In other related news...

From all the pictures posted on Facebook, it's evident that most kids are back in school now.  The shared emotions of the moms range from emotional and nostalgic (um....me) to relief and joy.  As far as first day pics, ours are always on our porch sans anything but maybe a backpack.  Thanks to Pinterest taking one or two over-achieving moms' crafty ideas viral, now some parents even to go the effort of making a cute little sign for the child to hold land marking the date and the grade in school.  Yeah, we don't do that.

I turned on the flash and this is what I get.  Priceless.  (or worthless) Take that crafty Pinterest moms!

Randomly a day or two before school started the other week, we were eating dinner and Casey asked me what I wanted her to be when she grew up.  I told her I wanted her to do whatever made her happy and Tom added, whatever made her a decent amount of money.  But Casey wanted specifics so I told her I would like her to go into a field like engineering or computer programming but I think she's way too creative and spunky for those and might more likely be an attorney or designer of some sort.  Then I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up.  Her answer:  "I think I'd like to work in a restaurant serving people."  Awesome.  For a minute I thought I was going to have to do the Heimlich maneuver on Tom.  It's probably a good thing we don't stage a crafty little sign on the front porch, after all.  Otherwise it might look something like this:

In other school-related news, I've cancelled the morning bus for Emily.  She'll still ride the bus home with the ladies and we'll consider that my baby steps' effort to relinquish control this year.  As soon as I called transportation to cancel the bus with the dudes I felt so much less stressed about school.  She had a great first week and I'm ready to settle down and just see how we do (yes, I just typed we and not she).  Baby steps.

In other related Emily news, I realized I completely forgot to include Emily's urology follow up appointment in the last post!  Emily's first kidney infection was when she was 7 weeks old and her second was when she was 10 weeks old.  Both times she was hospitalized and came home with a PICC line so that I could administer her IV antibiotics for a few weeks.  She's been followed closely by her urologist every 3 to 6 months since.  She took 2 antibiotics every day for 3 years before she had surgery to correct her kidney reflux in October of 2011.  When we saw Dr. Alam (her urologist) back in January, he said he really needed her to be potty trained to assess how her kidney health was doing.  We were very proud to show up at Children's 2 weeks ago and be able to give him a high five for being having checked this one off our list.  Her ultrasound showed her kidneys have shrunk back to a normal size and appear healthy.  Basically, we've reached the point we have been striving for for the past 5 years.  Good, good news.  She won't have to be seen now for another 18 months!!  He did tell us he and his wife were moving back to the east coast, so we'll be seen by someone else, but I'm okay with that now that her kidneys are stable.  Not to jinx anything, but her kidneys are her last medical complications as far as we know, and now that we are on the path to being discharged in the foreseeable future (which is still probably 2 years away but without tests, appointments, or antibiotics) we are doing a pretty sassy happy dance here.  So much so, that as soon as the girls and I left the hospital, we went straight to Graeters to celebrate with some ice cream at 9:30 in the morning.

Little sista' had some sass today.

In other related ice cream news, (You see what I'm doing here?  I think I'm pretty clever...)  letting Emily eat ice cream was a bit of an experiment.  Since we cut out dairy 90% out of her diet back in May, we've very rarely had the extreme tempers and behaviors.  We've also been doing acupressure to rid her of her dairy sensitivity.  While we have no intentions of adding dairy back into her daily diet (the increased attention and focus benefits have been too great), I decided to see how her behavior would result since doing the acupressure.  I have to say, I was really impressed.  I did notice her acting out a bit more but nothing erratic or out of control.  It's nice to know that an occasional treat may be okay to manage.  And she really deserved that ice cream treat after all her little body has gone through these past 5 years. 

And Casey deserved the treat, too!  Girlfriend has had to sit through many, many hours of appointments and tests at the hospital for Emily's kidney issues.  And we're not even touching on the number of hours she's sat through all of Emily's other doctor appointments and therapies.  Casey has certainly logged some time having to sit quietly (as quiet as Casey can get :) far more than the typical sibling, so ice cream for all!

I think I've run out of relevant related news items for now, which is probably best because this could get old fast.....  But really quick, in other related getting older news, Casey has started her birthday wish list (birthday in November) and if I added it up we're in the ballpark of about $600 now.  Stay tuned for some serious life lessons in disappointment in the next couple of months.  I'm finished now.  I promise :)