Woolsey Family Chronicles

I started to write this blog two weeks ago and here I am on a Tuesday night in December trying to finish it.

I dyed my hair a very dark brown with red accents. I needed a change and I was tired of watching my roots creep back to my natural brown color only a month after paying all that money to get the highlights done. So, I did it. My hairdresser was reluctant, but in the end I won the battle for dark hair. The red highlights are secretly just a small attempt to be red-headed enough that people won’t constantly ask me “where did your kids get their red hair?”, but it probably won’t work.

While we were still in Southern California, we took Ava and Violet to the park. I hopped in Coffee Bean Tea Leaf quickly. Violet was standing right beside me as I put cream in my coffee. I could hear Chris calling my name while standing only about 10 feet from me. Then he called Violet to come over to him. I turned to look at him and that is when he realized that I was his wife and Violet was safely standing next to her mom. Chris didn’t recognize me. It felt kind of liberating to be so incognito and unrecognizable even to my own husband. For now, I am embracing the new hair color, as change feels good in my life right now. Next I am going to get a nose ring. Just kidding. No I’m not. Okay, I am.

We had a very nice time in Thousand Oak with Chris's parents. The weather was about 75 degrees the entire week which was so very pleasant. We took the kids to the park every single day and played. We took everyone out to dinner twice which is quite and undertaking but manageable with four adults. I am always proud that the kids can hang in there through a sit down dinner and we make it out with an acceptable amount of food on the ground. Ava went ice skating and loved it so much that she told Chris "I am not coming off the ice until the man gets on the loudspeaker and says we have to."

Back home it was business as usual with our Monday morning starting off at a neurologist office. I decided that I was fairly frazzled at the first neurologist appointment where Violet was initially diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. It was only four days before out big trip to Paris and I was trying to pack and get my kids situated for having missing parents for seven days. Plus, the front office staff are such a bunch of . . . well, let me just be nice and say that they are very incompetent . . . and after waiting an hour and a half with Violet we finally got in to see the doctor. I feel that I didn't get to ask him all the questions I wanted to ask him. I got the CP diagnosis but I didn't know anything else about it really. I figured instead of subjecting myself to the office staff again I would get a second opinion from a different neurologist and get my questions answered at the same time.

The thing about Violet is that she is so smart and does everything that her brother and sister do, and more, except for talk. I suppose the talking is going to come in handy one day, and shouldn't be downplayed, which is why a speech therapist comes to our house twice a week to help her. But if Violet did have CP, it must be a very mild case, which is why we got the second opinion done. The new neurologist we saw did a very nice job of explaining cerebral palsy and why it occurs and what it means. He observed Violet and tested her reflexes. We got through 95% of the appointment with the neurologist thinking that Violet does not have Cerebral Palsy. The last 5 minutes of the appointment he observed Violet walking a little forward on her toes and he determined that she must have a very mild form of CP - nothing that will slow her down in life with the right kind of parenting and speech therapy. Shoot, I thought, we almost made it out of there without having that terrible cerebral palsy phrase attached to our Violet. But, Chris says that it is almost a relief to know that she does have just a mild form of CP because as her parents, we knew when she was 18 months old that some things were just a little more challenging for Violet.

I told the neurologist that Violet has amazing empathy for people that seems unusual in a child her age. I like his response very much. Very quickly he said, "well, she learned that early on from everything that she has been through." It is so true. It must have been tough being crammed into the upper right quadrant of my abdomen, probably being constantly kicked and elbowed from her brother and then being born so tiny and having to learn how to eat from a bottle and try to grow so big so quickly. Then to get home and have to share all the attention with three other little people in the house. And have had to work so hard all by herself to get up and walk, and muster up enough might to say the few words that she says. She is a hard worker and we admire her very much. All three of the triplets have great empathy and I know 100 percent for sure that this is because they have grown up amongst each other and Ava and have learned how to love and feel from very early on.

Preston has really blossomed over this past couple weeks. He says new words each day and is mister happy-go-lucky. He is playing nicely with his sisters when he isn't banging them over the head with his toys, and being a mischievous little boy. I don't know what to make of him sometimes. He is definitely different from the girls and I find he plays independently of them a lot, but is much more social than he used to be. Instead of running for his mommy's lap when the girls are all roughhousing, he has decided to join in and get crazy. Although tonight about 10 second into the roughhousing Ava didn't see him and ran full force body slam into him and he flew across the room and face planted into the ground, so I am not sure if he will want to continue to partake.

Chris is gone to Miami this whole week. We miss him very much when he is gone. Ava mentioned about a dozen times tonight how much she misses him and wishes he was home. It is hard on us when he is gone but someone has to bring home the diaper and food money.

Ava is officially reading. In about one month she went from just knowing about 10 site words to literally reading books. It is amazing and exciting and I am proud of her. School is just going to come easy for Ava, just like driving me crazy also comes easy for her. Oh Chris and I have paid a price for Ava's intellectual power over the years, but I know there will be great reward down the road when she is running a Fortune 500 company and buying us a vacation house on the San Juan Islands. A mom can only dream.

Until next time, the mothership is signing off.