Monday, Monday!

Oh goodness, was I a zombie this morning, which is not the best way to start your day, especially with kids and needing to get them to school. I believe my Zombie like state was due to the fact that I was up so late finishing my blog post last night and then Payten was up most of the night, which kept me up and believe me, that makes for one tired, zombie like Momma! Which you can only imagine how worried I was about how my day was going to go. Mondays are one of my busiest days, so starting off tired is not good and to top it off, I knew that Joseph was going to be working really late and so I was not looking forward to that either. But I can honestly say it went better than expected. There were still a few bumps in the road, but all in all it was a pretty good day, especially for a Monday. I was able to get the kids to school on time, which is an accomplishment in itself, especially when you are as tired as I was. Then Payten had Feeding Therapy and I was really leery about how she was going to do with that today, since Payten has not been able to do it for three weeks straight, due to seizures, etc. and I am happy to report, she ROCKED it! Payten was engaged, she was happy and alert, playful with her therapist and she tasted some food! Food! Can we say AMAZING! This is not typical for her to do, so that was pure awesomeness for her to do and for me to see. The food she tried was,

 

 

The flavor was sweet potato and chicken and boy did she love it! She kept grabbing the spoon and putting it back in her mouth. I guess she is trying to tell us that she is tired of that formula crap, but like I said in previous posts, it will be a long road before she is fully mouth feeding, but these are baby steps in the right direction and we will take them.

As well as feeding therapy went, we still hit a bump in the road with our Payter and it left me utterly confused. Yesterday, I posted about Payten and how Sundays seem to be the day of seizures for her, but after feeding therapy today, she was completely off. Payten went from being happy and engaged, to sleepy and fussy for the rest of the day, until about 7 pm. This is how she looked most of the day,

This picture was when we went to pick the kids up from school, the poor girl could not even function, let alone hold her head up. It truly made me cry to see. I don't get it? What happened? How does a person go from one state of mind to another state so quickly and drastically? I'll tell you, seizures. Even though I did not see an official seizure take place, I can honestly say by seeing her behavior and state of mind today after therapy, the only explanation for it was a seizure. But, why? Why did she have one? What triggered it? Was it because she was up throughout the night and therefore she was tired and that caused it? Or did feeding therapy overwhelm/over stimulate and therefore she had one, or did the tasting of food bring it on, or was it just a fluke and nothing really triggered it? These are the questions that go through my mind, these unknowns, are what makes her seizures so frustrating. Not only the state the seizure leaves her in, but also the fact that we have no clue as to why they are happening.

After really thinking, pondering and praying about it, I have decided that I am going to start keeping a seizure journal and I am going to right down every time I suspect a seizure, followed by, how long the seizure lasted, what time of day it was, what was going on right before the seizure took place and what state of mind she was left in afterwards, as well as how long she was gone/out of it/sleeping for. Hopefully by doing this, we will be able see similarities between all of her seizures, which will hopefully lead us to the reasons behind all of these horrible seizures and help us fully understand what might be causing them and try to avoid those things. Maybe once we find similarities and we avoid those triggers, we can finally gain a little more control over these little buggers, that are called seizures. My worry is that we are not going to find a trigger and then what, we will be left in the dark with no solutions as to why and how to help our daughter. This leaves me extremely frustrated and very vulnerable, for I want to help my daughter and I feel like I am so helpless. It truly is beyond frustrating for me. I really thought we over this hump, but I guess we are not. I just need to remain positive and hopeful that we find answers and solutions, but until then I will, just keep swimming, just keep swimming! (that Dory from finding Nemo really had some sound advice!)

As for the other kids, today was awesome, Zachary passed his timed math test at school with 100%, which is the first time he has done this, since school has started and Makenna also did well on her spelling and math tests and because they did so well,  I took them to get Sonic drinks and corn dogs as their reward for a job well done! Sonic corn dogs are usually really tasty, but these corn dogs, were more like corn crap! They were burnt to a black crisp and all you tasted was burnt ash, it was seriously disgusting! Zachary had a little rant about it in the car and I was able to catch a few seconds of it,,

 

 

For those of you who saw the video probably a year ago or so on Facebook about the Sonic Corn Dogs by Zach, you should really appreciate this video and irony behind it! Zachary is my little ham. He is always making us laugh. Seriously though, we should have demanded a refund from Sonic because those corn dogs they gave us were really bad, but I didn't have time to deal with it so we went home and since our treat had been ruined, well at least part of our treat! The sodas were still good! We went home and made banana bread instead! Which made Makenna utterly happy, for she is my little baker/cook, she loves to get down and dirty in the kitchen. Here are a few pictures of her,

 

 

 Sonic ruining our corn dogs actually worked out in our favor, for it forced me to come home and first off, use up all my ripe bananas that I had and it was a great treat for family home evening, so thank you Sonic! Also, Makenna had a blast baking it! So really it was a win, win all the way around! Let me just add, Makenna did a fantastic job, the banana bread was really yummy! She is going to be a great baker/cook when she grows and a cute one to boot! I love this little girl so much.

So even though I was leery at the start of my day, worried about how it would go and even though there were some bumps in the road, especially regarding Payten and her seizures, the day still had it's really good parts and that made all the bad parts just melt away, well kind of, Payten's problems never melt away, but I am used to constantly worrying about her, so that doesn't count. HA! And we were still able to have family home evening which is not always accomplished around here, so that was another drop of awesome in our jar of life for today.

 I am grateful for the life events of this day and I hope everyone else had a great Monday too. I really hope and pray that by starting this new idea I had, the seizure journals, we will be able to find out the whys to Payten's seizures. Wish me luck and if you pray, please feel free to pray for our sweet Payten. Now as you all know from the beginning of this post, I am definitely one tired Momma, so it is off to bed for me! Sweet dreams to all my friends out there and I hope for a bright day for all of us tomorrow! Good night!