I am sorry to report that the cold that began last week has stuck around. Lemon developed a pretty bad cough over the course of the week. "Luckily," school was closed on Thursday so we had him at home to do extra therapy, and then decided to keep him home on Friday also since he was feeling fairly miserable. Even with all the extra therapy every day through today, he hasn't quite managed to shake this thing off yet. Which of course means a week or so of essentially zero tube feedings, since he's been coughing too much to tolerate them. Which of course means that as of this morning's weigh-in, he's lost essentially all the weight we put on him in the summer. And December hasn't started yet, never mind the whole period encompassing January-March. So, I'm not feeling like we're in a great position, nutrition-wise, at the moment.
The silver lining, if you could call it that, is that I do think Lemon is starting to turn the corner on this without us needing to resort to antibiotics. I've been hesitant to start them for all the usual reasons, compounded by the fact that he was just on them within the last few weeks, and I don't like the idea of having two courses so close together. I mean, if he needs it he needs it, but I'd rather him not need it and I am hoping that in this case, he won't. We decided to defer the decision until Wednesday, which is the first day of the kids' Thanksgiving break. If he is still in a bad way then, we will start, since we will have 5 consecutive days at home where we won't have to do the whole running over to the school in the middle of the day to administer medications thing.
Lime, meanwhile, is largely over it although he still coughs occasionally. And I lost my voice yesterday, but fortunately it is more or less back, given the number of work phone calls I have tomorrow where it would be highly advantageous if I could actually speak.
Beyond all the health things, the big event of the past week was Lemon's school conference. I'm glad to say the behavioral issues that his teacher was concerned about at the beginning of the year have lessened. Not gone away entirely, of course, but at least are now within the bounds of what can be expected of a first-grade boy. Maybe just barely within the lower bound, for some things, but as they say in tennis, the lines are in.We still have a lot of room for improvement, and I am still committed to the idea of finding someone to work with Lemon on some of these things, just as soon as I have the time. Whatever his behavioral issues are, they have not interfered with his progress on reading, where he has already achieved the target reading level for the end of first grade, woohoo!
