FX Awareness Day fun

We had a really good day today at the zoo. Our friends Matt & Beth organized the event and we had people from all over Alabama as well as Mississippi and Atlanta. A lot of people there weren't in the picture. My family is right in the center(if you click on the pic you can see it larger - not that I need to be any larger, but that's another story, I suppose). I'm on the ground holding one end of the sign, and right behind me are Justin, Lindsey, and Tim, along with my brother, Scott.

We had ice cream and the kids colored and played together and the parents got a chance to just chat with others and meet new people dealing with the same issues, which was really nice. The t-shirts sat 'got fragile X?' on the front, and the back says '1 in 250 women and 1 in 750 men carry the gene that causes Fragile X Syndrome - find out more at fragilex.org'. We wore them all over the zoo and out to eat today, so at least a few people likely took note and maybe will look it up, learn more etc. We also had some great volunteers, one in research preparing to do some work on FX, one who works bringing community artists together with people with disabilites to provide art opportunities for them, a special needs teacher...they were all fantastic to come help us out.

The zoo has a water play area near where our meeting room was are the kids had fun there too.

Ugh...the process of selling a house - bleah. Anyway...it's been about 2 weeks -we've had maybe 12 showings, a few express serious interest, so we wait and see...

Mom is feeling better - not in pain so much now, but still pretty much stuck with the wheelchair for 5 more weeks. She can put no weight on the broken leg, and the other foot(with the toe surgery) she can't get into a shoe and the boot they have her wearing doesn't give her enough stabilty to use crutches. But she's in good spirits and each day is a bit better than the prior I think.

The kids were in the basement playing earlier and Justin came up with bright red marker all over the BACK of his new white shirt. And Lindsey had the nerve to look and me and claim that Justin drew on his own back! With a straight face. How dumb does she think her mommy is? She was so serious and so appalled that I would think she did it...oh, I'mm gonna have to watch this one.

I smell like Windex and play-doh

We have an open house tomorrow - I'm tired of cleaning, so somebody buy my house so I can be a slob again. ;) I did take a little break to make play-doh flowers with Lindsey - that was fun. Of course then I had to vacuum up all the little bits of play-doh that always seem to dot the floor afterwards. *sigh*

Mom is doing a little better each day. Not so much pain now - she is off the prescription pain meds and down to regular tylenol so that is good. They are going next week while they have a post-op follow up also to her regular doc for some bloodwork to check her sugar levels to see if that is what caused her to pass out. She still basically can't put weight on either foot, so she has been pretty much confined to the recliner all week. That's certainly been a challenge as you can imagine, but the silver lining is that my dad is learning to do laundry for the first time in his life. :) I'm proud of him.

Better get to bed now...Justin is already restless and we had a long night last night waking many times and I've got to get a little sleep while I can so I can get up and finish cleaning in the morning. Oh, yay...more Windex. pfffffffffffft

Updat on my mom & more from my little vandal

Mom had her surgery this morning - all went well. She's in recovery, but the are having trouble getting her pain under control. The demoral isn't enough so they just gave her a couple Loritabs. Dad is driving her home later and is planning to see if he can get someone from fire rescue to come help get her up the steps into the house. The doc says she will not be able to bear any weight on that leg for for 4 weeks. Ther other foot (with the toe surgery) she can bear some weight on, but between that and the pain meds it will be a while before she can be steady on that one foot and learn to use crutches. They are going to have to get a wheelchair for her. Yesterday he was wheeling her around in his desk chair.

On a lighter note...

The blue nail polish from yesterday had me reflecting on earlier graffiti art created by my little hoodlum. And here are a few examples - the back of my dining room chair - that's Sharpie marker by the way. That's probably been 3-4 yrs ago and a sweater still hangs over the chair.

This was some art she drew on my bedroom walls, nightstand, lamp, and herself of course, along with her mugshot in front of the crime scene. I think she was 2 at the time.

My brain's too fried to think of a title...

This past Friday my mom had some minor surgery to correct a problem with a toe on her right foot. So she is hobbling around with a boot on her foot unable to bear much weight on it. This morning she woke up feeling lightheaded and in a good bit of pain, so she took some pain meds - on an empty stomach. So apparently she passed out, hit her head, and fell, in the process somewhere breaking her leg. Now they live about an hour away in a small town. Once my dad finally got her to let him call 911, the ambulance took them to the local hospital which did x-rays but they don't have an orthopedic doctor there, so they put her in the car and my dad drove her to Birmingham. Finally got an ortho who says she needs surgery, a plate and some pins. There are 2 bones there between the knee and the ankle and the smaller one(fibula, I think) is shattered and the larger is out of place somehow, and she has a torn ligament in her ankle. They have just sent them back home(an hour drive) with instructions to come back for outpatient surgery tomorrow. Dad's got some neighbors who can help carry her into the house, but they have 4 or 5 stairs at every entrance so it's not very wheelchair accesible and she can't bear weight on either foot...ugh.

So I get off the phone a few minutes ago with my dad, and decide to go see what damage my kids have done while I've been on the phone. I go into the bathroom where Lindsey is and I smell nail polish. And I see that she has painted Justin's toy car(Sally from the movie Cars, the blue porsche) with her sparkly blue nail polish. Well I lecture her about using nail polish without permission and defacing her brothers toy, and she quietly apologises and slips out of the room while I get out the polish remover and take as much of it off as I can. So then I go looking for Justin and he's in the kitchen eating a banana, but he got his back to me. And then he turns around and this is what I see:

Yep, she painted her brother blue. I had to keep my back to her and tell her to go to time out because I wanted to yell and laugh at the same time.