Crazy Heart Mama

Colman had his yearly well checkup last week with our pediatrician. We’re pretty sure, based on all of Colman’s measurements from the various doctors we see, that he hasn’t grown any in the past year. Our pediatrician is sending the data to Texas Children’s Hospital so they can add that to Colman’s file. I don’t want to hurry Colman toward a heart transplant, but I want to make sure that they have all of the data since he is still a fairly new patient to them.

I spoke to the nutritionist from TCH today as well. I faxed Colman’s nutrition log to her a couple of weeks ago, so she could see if there were any holes to fill. (Nutrition log sounds kind of fancy. In reality, it’s my scribblings of what Colman eats on a daily basis.) She thought everything looked pretty good and suggested substituting heavy whipping cream in any recipe that calls for milk, so I think I’ll try that in pancakes and see how they turn out. I’d already implemented several of the suggestions she’d made, including switching Colman from two percent milk to whole milk and melting down Colman’s ice cream, blending it with several packages of Carnation Instant Breakfast and refreezing it, which adds a couple hundred calories to a serving of ice cream and Colman is none the wiser.

We have an appointment for a blood draw and check at the Hem/Onc Clinic at CHOSA on June 13th, and I will be curious to see if we’ve made any progress in the weight department. I’m trying to make sure to offer lots of snacks during the day, like a big bowl of hot, buttered popcorn while he’s watching TV, and then a bedtime snack of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk, apples with peanut butter or peanut butter crackers.

Do you see a theme emerging here? A friend of mine suggested that I could write a book and call it the “Crazy Heart Mama’s Guide to Nutrition” and I started laughing when I thought about what it would say, “Put peanut butter on everything. The End.”

On an exciting note, Colman passed his STAAR test! Kevin and I were thrilled. I’d already pretty much resigned myself to the fact that Colman was going to be in summer school. I found the results envelope in Colman’s backpack and when I opened them I said, “Colman, you passed!”

“I did?” He was just as surprised as I was. So we all jumped around and made a really big deal. It’s not that Colman’s not capable. He’s really smart. It’s just that sometimes if something doesn’t float that little stinker’s boat, he decides it’s not worth his time. The day he took the STAAR test, Sarah told me that she asked him, “How do you think you did on the test today?”

Colman said, “Good. Well, maybe not. I got kind of tired and I just filled in some of the answers without reading the questions. But don’t tell anybody. Okay?”

So it was a huge relief to know that he passed both parts of the test. Then Kevin and I ran into one of Colman’s teachers at school when we were there to look at Liam’s science project, and she told us that Colman actually has an A this nine weeks in math, which is amazing since we’ve been on a mad dash the last couple of weeks for Colman to turn in assignments that he hadn’t bothered to complete. Kevin was really worried about Colman’s math skills because he and his mom had tried to sit down with Colman to do some of the assignments and he said Colman couldn’t add any of the numbers together. Math has always been Colman’s best subject. He can add, subtract and multiply numbers in his head, so I suspect he was tooling Kevin and grandma around. Again, if it doesn’t float his boat…

I went to Colorado on a girls’ vacation last week and then Kevin left for Peru on a mancation a couple of days after I got back. Kevin’s texting some great pictures, and I’m taking care of Rowan. He caught a bad stomach bug and had to miss his last few days of preschool for the year. He keeps saying, “Oh, no! I gotta go potty.” Then when he sits down on the potty, he says, “Oh, no, poor Rowwweeeee,” and makes a sad face.

I woke him up from his nap this afternoon because we had to go get Liam and Colman from school. He’s been walking around the last few days in just his underwear, and I couldn’t convince him that it was a good idea to put on any clothes to go pick up the boys. So I just took him to school in his diaper and kept my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t have car trouble. Because I don’t care how nice you look, nothing screams WHITE TRASH more than standing on the side of the road with a giant toddler in nothing but a diaper. I did have his shoes in my purse, but I don’t think that would have done much to help that particular image.

The boys get out of school on June 6th and we’re taking Liam to camp on June 9th. I know he’s really excited to go and cram in as much fishing as possible. And I need to find something to keep Colman occupied since the summer school thing didn’t pan out. 🙂