The Lost (or I guess you could call them delayed) Manuscripts of Life (12/26/06 - 1/18/07)

Merry Christmas! Time really just seems to go faster and faster with each passing year. And like Mom has attested to, each year just seems to get busier and busier as well. At school, we are already talking about what we are going to do with the Shakespeare play this year. Even our time with Nagol doesn’t ever seem long enough or often enough. We have been enjoying our time with him even when he throwing up on Thanksgiving Day and then passing it on to Samej for the rest of that holiday weekend. For the past couple of months Nagol has been on an allergy medicine or a nebulizer to help clear him up. I’m afraid that it may be a food allergy since it hasn’t cleared up.
Semaj has also been worrying us the past couple of weeks with going to the doctor’s a few times. We have discovered that he has had a chronic sinus infection, and after some blood tests that he has hypothyroidism. Since it normally occurs in women over 40, he now sometimes calls himself an old woman. Semaj’s sister told us the other day that acutane has become illegal and that she thought that thyroid problems was something mentioned that you could file a lawsuit for.
And I guess now it is my turn b/c I have had a sore throat and achy body all day today. But life goes on and we just do what we need to do. (A few days later: diagnosis- TONSILLITIS !!! )
When we got Nagol on Christmas afternoon, Semaj set him down in the Livingroom facing the tree and all the presents. Nagol made a little surprised, excited gasp in the direction of the foam child chair that doubles as a Lightning McQueen racecar. We gave him the ok to go for it. He started that way and turned toward the box of toys that we keep by the TV, and pulled a couple of his regular toys and started happily playing awhile with them. It actually took him a couple of hours to warm up to the car, but still only sees it as a car and NOT a chair. To distract him from playing with his regular toys (which is actually understandably new/excited to him b/c they are with us and not his mom), we showed him the present which we knew he would enjoy the most. It is a 15-18in tall rubber T-rex which I had wrapped so you could tell what it was. Semaj started to unwrap it and showed Nagol the tummy and then covered it back up. We told him it was hiding and if he could find it. Nagol was then interested in uncovering the dinosaur which he knew was there after seeing its tummy. Before unwrapping the feet, he said, “Where’s the dinosaurs’ feets? We have to find them.” Then proceeded to take the paper off of the feet. He is an amazing talker, which I forget sometimes until I see another kid about his age and the big difference in the way they talk.
So I’ve been working on this blog for a couple of week now, but stuff keeps happening! Can you believe it! On Jan.5 Semaj had his wisdom teeth taken out. Before his mission they didn’t take them out b/c they could tell that they weren’t going to cause him any trouble while on his mission. Over the past 6-8 months they have been a bother, so they are now gone. I tried to tell him that even with only having 2 top teeth, he would still, probably not do anything the whole weekend. But while waiting in the waiting room right before the surgery, he was calling his brother in Lehi to see what they were doing that weekend and if there would be time to get together. We were at home the rest of the weekend. We tried an exciting excursion to Walmart, but didn’t last very long before going back to the front to get a wheel chair so we could finish our 2 tasks. Dealing with the side effects of the pain meds and antibiotics was probably the worst for him. Except for the couple of times that he’d feel ok and them actual eat food that took some chewing and then have a very achey jaw.
Last week we had our 2nd SEPs. That one terrible mom I wrote about before came again, which I was wondering if she since she apparently hates me so much. She wasn’t nearly as bad, but was still trying to blame me for her daughters’ low grades. I told her that her daughters grades are based on what her daughter knows, and that she has even been receiving extra help. She didn’t have too much more to say after that.
Monday night we had a late night swim…in our kitchen and laundry room. We had actually just gone upstairs to bed, when Semaj went back down stairs to take some Airborne. As I finished brushing my teeth, I heard Semaj exclaim something. I don’t remember what he said, or even if I had actually heard him clearly or not, but I went down to investigate. As I approached the kitchen, Semaj said, “Get me a pair of shoes and then you can go to bed since you are so tired.” I found Semaj examining the fridge while standing in a pool of water that was covering the kitchen floor. Now just about an hour before I had put a load of laundry into the washer. We have also been experiencing some very cold weather out here. My students have had inside recesses for a whole week now (below 20 degrees F). So my thoughts ran to a frozen pipe that didn’t allow the washing machine to drain. We opened the laundry room door and found more yucky water. So we spent the hour of 11-12 sucking up the water with the shop vac and determining that it was most likely the pipe and not a broken machine. On Tues. Semaj discovered that whoever installed the drain in the laundry room didn’t pop out the plug so that it could actually do its job, and that since the drainpipe for the washer is on an outside wall of the house, it was most likely frozen. We stuck an electric heater in the laundry room for a couple of hours and then tested the pipe. It worked! We know have an area of stained rug under the bar stools and a messy kitchen.