A little bit of this, a little bit of that

The randomness of my mind, in bullet-point form!

• School got off to a rather harried beginning.  B's bus is supposed to come at the same time I have to be driving S to his school.  So I enlisted the help of my Dad who puts B on the morning bus for me.  I get B ready to go, take his first day of school pictures, and leave him waiting on the corner with my Dad while I take S to school.  S's school does not have bus service so all kids are dropped off.  Doors open ten minutes before class starts and let me tell you, that isn't enough time to get all the cars through the drop-off line so there are always kids getting dropped off after school has begun because we've been sitting in the line for ten minutes.  First day of school is even more insane because so many want to park in a very very very tiny lot and take the kids inside to do pictures and stuff.  I take the pictures at home and I drop my kid off at the door just as we do every other "normal" day because it is INSANITY.  People were parking in the drop off lane so it was really hard to get through.  Took about twenty minutes to get in and out of the lot. I go back home and B and my Dad are STILL at the corner.  *sigh*  Apparently they added B to the bus route too late and the driver didn't know to come get him so I drove him to school and was assured that all would go smoothly after school and the bus would be here at four.  Nope.  They put him on the wrong bus.  The driver didn't know what to do with him, didn't even have an address for him, and she didn't even have any stops in our neighborhood.  When his bus didn't show up by 4:10, I called transportation and by the time they figured out where he was and had the bus drive over to our house, it was 4:45.  You know, if that had happened to S, I wouldn't have thought too much of it because kids get on the wrong bus sometimes. But B is a special needs student in a special needs classroom riding a special needs bus.  He always has an adult with him--they take him off the bus and escort him to the classroom and then he's to be escorted from classroom to bus.  While his speech has improved, he is still limited in his communication abilities and the bus driver couldn't understand much beyond his name and asking the aide to sit with him.  This is most definitely a mistake that should never have happened :|  He is not supposed to be on a regular bus and gosh, it sure does scare me to think he could have gotten off at a regular bus stop as part of the crowd :(  The head of the special needs transportation section got involved and it has gone smoothly the rest of the week.
• S's personal goal for the last year or so has been to read a Magic Treehouse book himself.  He is finally at he point where his skills are high enough that he has begun reading one of the shorter ones to me for his nightly reading time.  He is so proud of himself and I'm so proud of him!  He has worked really hard to get better and it shows.  He is hoping maybe he can catch up to his classmates this year and be on grade level by the time school is out (he is behind several years and gets extra help at school one-on-one.  Part of his neuropsych testing shows two learning disabilities in reading and math).
• Izzy had her rescheduled neurology appointment (they had called me the day of her appointment last month because her doctor had a medical emergency--turns out it was for the birth of his daughter :)  And excellent reason to reschedule your patients!).  When she started the trileptal, the improvements were swift--she was more coordinated, her speech was better, her falling episodes were much further apart and sometimes not as severe.  She was still having some seizure activity but not even close to what it was before.  But the last month or so, she's been having some odd things happen that I wasn't sure was even connected to neurology but I told him about it anyway, just in case.  The major thing is that most of the time she speaks fairly clearly and then sometimes she sounds like she is speaking another language.  Repeating herself or asking her to slow down doesn't seem to help.  Other times, she will get "stuck" and repeat the same syllable (or two) over and over.  Neuro says that sometimes when you start seizure meds and you get the main seizures to stop or at least be less severe, you might find minor seizure activity spreading to nearby areas of the brain.  The unusual activity in Izzy's brain is very close to her speech centers and he believes that the episodes of incomprehensibility and getting "stuck" are minor seizures, especially since she is still having random absence/focal seizures.  So we upped her meds and will see if this new dose is high enough to bring them to a stop.  We are going to slowly up her dose until we hit a level where she is seizure free. 
• Izzy has fallen in love with Garfield--if I would let her, she would just watch Garfield cartoons all day long :p  I should track down some Garfield stuff for her upcoming birthday (four more days!!)
• We went to the zoo last weekend and now Izzy is convinced every time we leave the house that I am taking her to see the "namimals"