This is going to be another one of the shorter posts. Other than our little mini vacation earlier this week, it’s been rather quiet around here. As you’ll see in some of the pictures I’ll include below, the swelling from James’ surgery is pretty much completely gone now.

Mini Vacation

Sunday through Tuesday we took our annual trip up to Wisconsin with my mom’s side of the family. For 40+ years it was an Easter weekend tradition, but with some of the kids off at college now, most of them couldn’t make it so we changed it to summer. For the most part it was a good weekend.

Stacy’s one big complaint with travelling with James is the sleeping in the same room with him. If the air in the hotel room is too dry, James is very snorty (if that’s a word). If it’s too moist, he is really juicy. Either way, Stacy doesn’t get much sleep. I, on the other hand, sleep like a baby no matter what.

This time the hotel was on the dry side, which meant that James was dry, and his breathing was noisy…almost like he was snoring. Fortunately, there is a 24-hour Walmart down the road from the resort we were at, so I ran out at about 1 am Monday morning and bought a small travel diffuser to try to moisten the air a bit in the hotel room. I think it helped. We were able to get a few hours of sleep before we had to get up, get James his breakfast and meds, and start our day.

Here’s a pic of James watching cartoons on Stacy’s phone while we had lunch on Monday. You can really see how much the swelling in his face has gone down. If you need a reminder on how swollen his face was after his salivary gland removal surgery, look back at that post. You may notice some redness around his eye in the picture below. We have no idea why, but it went away on its own later in the day.

Monday night we went down to the indoor pool at the resort and there was nobody there. We had the entire pool to ourselves!

New Wheelchair Finally Arrived

James finally got his new wheelchair. It was ordered in February…five months ago! We understand that the seating portion of the wheelchair is customized for James, but should it really take five months?! It would be different if he was an adult, but James is a kid and is continuing to grow. How much has he grown in these past five months and how long can we expect him to be able to use it before he outgrows it?

It is a Quickie Iris, which is a nice wheelchair and probably cost a nice chunk of money—I don’t know how much because insurance covered it—but I feel like we’re getting jipped out of 5 months of usage. Is it normal to take this long to order and receive a wheelchair?

Epilepsy Warriors Foundation Fundraiser

James is one of the Faces of Epilepsy for the Epilepsy Warriors Foundation and there is a fundraiser coming up in February if anyone local to Chicago is interested. We don’t know any of the details yet other than what’s on this flyer. I’ll have to post an update when we know more.

Lunch and Coffee Date

Stacy and James went out for lunch with another mom of a special need child on Thursday and then out for coffee on Friday morning with James’ “girlfriend” and her mom.