Our new normal

Oksana is coming home at the end of the month.  Because of that we have been increasing the length of our visits with her.  This weekend she spent the night here.  Overall it went incredibly well.  She was well behaved and seemed to really enjoy her time back home.  We had a theory that if we let her be in control of whether she walked or not she would choose to walk.  We were right.  She uses her walker for everything, but we did get to see her take a few independent steps.  It looks totally different than it did even 6 months ago.

We got our adapted van this weekend and it is absolutely wonderful.  Because of it we got to run 3 errands with Oksana that we would have not done or left her home for without it.  I love that it is allowing us to include her in so much more.  The van is so much safer.  She just didn't have the upper body strength to maintain and upright position in her booster and she kept falling over.  She also loves the ease of getting in and out of the van.  It was a major ordeal for her before this which is much of the reason we didn't take her with us anywhere if we could avoid it.  She still can't keep her head up long, but when she gets her wheelchair (she is currently in a loaner) it will have head support as well.

The good news about Anya is that she seemed to easily adapt to having Oksana at home and acted no differently with her than she does without her.  The bad news about Anya is that with or without Oksana she has been a royal pain in the butt.  We are bringing her behavior therapist back in and we are having her evaluated for ADHD at the end of March.  I hope I survive that long.

Here's the down side.  Holy moly is it hard work caring for Oksana now.  She will sit on the couch and fall over and can't get back up.  

This happened over and over and over again.  We are looking into alternative seating for her because we spent a LARGE part of our day picking her up either off of the floor or the couch.  Then she will walk across the room (with her walker) and since she doesn't steer well she will run into something and need help getting unstuck.  Then she will need to go to the bathroom so she needs help in there.  Then she will get too close to Anya with her walker and we have to watch because Anya will just push the walker out of the way without considering that it will make Oksana lose balance.  Then Anya needs something but while I am with Anya Oksana falls over again so I have to go help Oksana up then got back to Anya.  Do you get my drift?!  All Larry and I did all weekend is manage the two of them.  We were exhausted by the time we brought Oksana back!  We had a good talk last night because this can not be our new normal.  Everyone will burn out if we keep going like that.  We will adapt everything we can to help some of the physical part.  Like Larry said, Oksana thinks she can still do everything she did before and she just can't.  We also said that it is fine for one person to be alone with both of them as long as that person has nothing else to do.  No dinner, no visitors, no anything that takes your attention off of them. 

Now I don't want you to read this as complaining.  We are very excited to have Oksana home.  I cried when I dropped her off yesterday.  This is our new reality and we have GOT to make some adjustments or we will be fried.  Another thing we have to do is get back on regular dates with each other and our boys.  The only people who got any attention at all this weekend were Oksana and Anya.  That has to change.  I'm thankful for the slow transition home so we can make adjustments as we go.

On Friday we will pick her up from school and she will stay with us until Sunday.  2 weeks to go!