Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Life has a way....

Of preventing me from posting.  I mean I have VERY good intentions.  I actually have sat down on two separate occasions to post and voila..no post!!  I sit down and start typing and then I hear.."mom, can you..." and it is all over.  20 minutes later I have forgotten what on earth I was posting and have started on dinner.  And so it goes every time I have sat down to post in recent days.
So here I sit now with the same intentions.  I started to post, got distracted by one of the kids needing something and now I have my two little friends over that I watch on Wednesdays.  If this post actually gets posted I will be amazed.  I have had to put Ellie in time out 3 times already this morning and it is only 8:40.  3 tantrums later hopefully she will be able to come out and function with Jonah in the house.  They have days when they do soooo well.  And then there are the other days.  I am thinking that today might be one of those "other days" since as soon as she saw Jonah sitting on what she terms "her bench" it was all over.  I don't know if she hit him or not but he was crying and off to her room she went.  I am thinking that at this rate maybe she should just stay there till she goes to school and things might flow a bit smoother.  But then again a 3 hour timeout might be a bit much even for me.
She is now out of time out and talking about her bench...hmmm.  
The first time she was put in time out was because she asked for a waffle for breakfast and then didn't eat it but wanted yogurt.  My policy is that you can absolutely have yogurt but you can waste food.  So you need to eat the waffle and then I will get you yogurt.  She proceeded to throw a fit about not getting yogurt and refusing to eat the waffle.  I can't stand wasted food.  I  feel like there are kids everywhere without food and you are wasting the food you were given. It just should not be happening.  A crust on the pizza is ok, or a little crust from a sandwich is ok but an entire peanut butter covered waffle???  Too much...so she is now back downstairs from picking up her books and she is whining again about yogurt.  After carefully explaing that she still will not be getting yogurt unless she eats her waffle for the 3rd time, I think she has given up and is moving on.  For the time being that is...
We are in the process of applying for medicaid for Ellie.  There is a program that a friend of ours mentioned called the medicaid waiver program.  She thought Ellie might qualify and gave me the info a while ago.  I finally got phone call back and was originally told she didn't qualify. 3 days later I received a call saying after checking some things out she thought Ellie did indeed qualify and we made an appointment for someone to come out an do an assessment on Ellie. The assessment happened last week some time and I got a call from them saying she received a LOC (level of care).  Now it is up to me to call and get the financial part of medicaid rolling. Her LOC was for a year which means she gets evaluated every year to see if she qualifies.  I feel confident that in a year she probably won't qualify.  But I am going to take advantage of every service I can to get Ellie the necessary services to progress as much as possible.  Now we are dealing with the medicaid office.  What I am finding out is that dealing with medicaid is definitely not for the faint of heart.  I called yesterday to start this process and the first lady I talked to had NO IDEA what on earth I was talking about.  She of course transferred me to yet another woman who had NO IDEA what I was talking about.  The natural choice would then be to transfer me to yet another person who had NO IDEA what I was talking about.  After 15 minutes of being on the phone with people who obviously had no idea about the medicaid waiver program but worked for medicaid, I was about to pull my hair out!  Then finally the 4th person knew what I was talking about..thankfully!  So now I need to go in to the office in person and pick up an application.  I am going to try to do that this afternoon.  Just from my 15 minutes of experience with the office, I am confident that I am going to be in for a long process. I will definitely keep you all posted as a go along.  I hope this isn't an indication of the future because if it is this complicated and I make it to 69 or 75 or whatever age it is when I can actually use medicare services, I will be doomed.  Maybe Medicare will be radically different than Medicaid!!

So here are a few recent pics of the girls from when my mom visited last week.  We had a good visit and the girls have missed grammy since she flew back to Maine.  I have a lot of Ellie since she is one of the only ones who wants to get her picture taken.  Ainsley doesn't like it and Mackenzie doesn't mind but often is at school when I think to get the camera out.
We are looking forward to going to St. Louis over spring break.  The girls are so excited!  Jeff has a business trip and we are joining him for it.  The hotel has a pool and they are really looking forward to swimming.  St. Louis apparently has lots of free things to do so we will partake in as many of those things as possible.  They have a free children's museum, zoo and multiple other attractions.  The only one that I think we may need to pay for is to go up the arch.  But of course we can't pass that up!

Ainsley experimenting with the camera

Ellie

Ellie hanging out in the laundry basket

Reaching for the camera!

Ellie and Ainsley at the computer

Mom and Mackenzie making pizza

Making pizza take 2

Ellie

Mackenzie eating pepperoni

Mackenzie a mess after helping with the pizza


I love my new kitchen paint color...a much grayer and softer blue. I just got new kitchen curtains to go with the new paint color. They are a chocolate brown suede and look great. We also got new darker wood blinds for the windows and love those too. The next purchase I think will be the countertop. We are still not certain as to when we will do this but I can't wait to have it done! We dream of stainless steel appliances but that will probably be a long time in the future. I will keep you posted if anything new pops in to our kitchen:)

My new kitchen curtains..chocolate brown suede and I love 'em

More new paint color

1 comment:

Teish said...

I love the kitchen! The paint color is great, it's a little bit darker than my living room color. I was to scared to go with anything but a fairly light color! The curtains look fabulous too!

I hate to tell you, but in my previous experience working for Dr. Thomas, none of the government healthcare programs are fun or easy to work with. Sorry... On the bright side, if we make it to 70 Medicare will probably be bankrupt and we won't have to worry, LOL! Good luck with all of the paperwork!