A WICKED October!

I have a white board in our kitchen that I keep track of the kids appointments on.  I took a picture to post, but it had way to much identifying information that I figured it was best not to post it! But...out of the whole month of October, a whole THIRTY ONE days, there are TWO days on the calendar that we don't have something scheduled (and one of those days has already passed!).  To say it's a busy month would be a complete understatement!!

Probably the best part of the month  so far was the Wicked Performance Zach and I went to see last night.  It was HANDS DOWN THE BEST musical I have ever seen....BY FAR!!!   It was such a special time for me and Zach to share, alone.  I took this picture outside of the theatre, but he was SO not happy with me because there were so many people around...apparently he's at the age where his mother can actually embarrass him...SIGH!

 Notice the less than thrilled, forced smile :)

I paid WAY more for the tickets than I would have liked, but when the ushers got us to our seats, it was worth every penny....we had SECOND row seats, on the AISLE....Zach had a completely unobstructed view of the whole performance.

View of the stage from our seats....plus a complete view of the orchestra, which Zach was completely impressed by!

Some parts of the play were completely over his head but he absolutely loved it.  When the final scene before intermission ended, he looked at me and said "please don't tell me it's over!"  I love that he enjoyed it as much as I did.  I was worried that it was going to be way too late of an evening for him considering he had school in the morning and the show wasn't over until close to 11PM, but he talked and talked about the show the entire way home.

Today Alex had her appointment at the orthopedist for her feet, x-rays of her hips and spine (on the plus side, her scoliosis is only showing a 10 degree curve - which is a 5% improvement since she's been wearing her DMO...which is another appointment that needs to be scheduled because she's grown so much over the summer the DMO doesn't fit properly anymore).  I tried to get a good picture of the bones in her feet while we were waiting, but I didn't quite capture it as pronounced as it is on both of her feet:

(Hopefully you notice the fancy purple nail polish on her toes and not the big red bone sticking out on the side or how misaligned all of her toes are!)

Basically Alex has VERY bony feet, and unfortunately because of her low muscle tone, she already has bunions on the side of her big toes.  She is scheduled to start intensive physical therapy in November, which means she will go for INTENSIVE physical therapy five days a week, three hours a day for two weeks.  Because that is already scheduled, we are going to try and blow out her braces so that the bones in her feet are not as irritated as they are now, but we will be scheduling a surgery on her feet sometime in the near future.  Not only does she have the bone issues, but she is SEVERELY flat footed, has a ZERO arch in her foot, and she also rolls her feet to the inside if she's not braced.  (I'll have to try and get a picture of what her feet look like if she's not in her supported AFO braces to show you how bad her feet look standing 'normally'.)  I asked the Dr. what that would mean for her and he said that both of her feet would be casted after the surgery for six weeks.  Alex is super hypersensitive to anyone or anything touching her feet so I can't imagine right now how that will play out.

On the plus side, for her....she LOVES the sound of paper crinkling or plastic bags rustling.  So while we were waiting for the Dr. she was getting a little annoyed and antsy - I figured most people sit on the waiting table and the paper has to be removed and thrown away anyway (and that you're probably getting BILLED for that paper too!) - so I took the paper from the table and wound it up like a piece of cotton candy.  Viola...instant entertainment!  She was laughing and smiling so much when the Dr. came in that he commented it was the most innovative way he has seen the waiting table paper used!  Ahh, what is it they say about necessity being the mother of all inventions?!?

 "What, this is NOT cotton candy?!?"

 "Oh well, it will do I suppose!"

I was very proud of Alex today.  Our appointment was at 2:00 ~ we got there at 1:45 and weren't called back to see the doctor until 3:20...she handled it much better than I did!!!  As soon as her appointment was done I had to race home, drop her off and load Zach in the car within 5 minutes to get him to his piano lessons on time.  By the time we left there, stopped to get dinner and work on his homework we got home just in time for him to get ready for bed.  I finally sat down after leaving the house at 7:45 this morning at 8:30PM.  What a LONG day!!  

We have quite a few more appointments scheduled this month...stay tuned!