I am ashamed of myself, it has been almost 5 months since I last wrote a blog. I am sorry. Life has been relatively good here. I finished school in August with a 4.20gpa and best of all I started a job even before I graduated in July. I am now working clerical at a Medical Health Centre in a town 10 minutes away from home. I have never worked in such an amazing environment before, the people are so wonderful and understanding. I was really questioning when I had the interview whether to explain about Reiko and his health issues that could effect my job or to wait and see if they even hire me, I decided to tell them the truth right away. I was hired a few days later! I do tons of different jobs there, I can make appts and sign them in when they come for their appts, I do scanning, paperwork, taking pts blood pressure (the old fashioned way, no machines for me :) ) and height and weight checks, I do tons of other stuff to. I love going to work. I work 3 days a week for the moment but hopefully will be fulltime at some point. I graduate from Fanshawe in November and I am so excited for it!
Derek has some exciting news too, in August he did an event called TOUGH MUDDER, Which is where he and 17,000 other people who did this insane event, they had to climb up Black Diamond ski hills 6 times and do 18 obstacle courses along the way that included getting zapped by 10,000 volts of electricity. The top 5% would go onto to do the WORLD'S TOUGHEST MUDDER, Derek and my brother in law did it in 3 hours and 20 minutes, so he didn't think he even stood a chance at the top 5%, especially with how many people were there that weekend. But 2 weeks later he found out that he and my brother in law did make the top 5% and they now head down to New Jersey in November to compete in the World's toughest mudder, which means they have to do the same event as many times as possible in 24 hours to win a grand prize of $15,000! He is super excited about it! Derek also has another boxing match this weekend and its in our hometown 15 minutes away from here so all our family and friends will be coming to watch!
Kai started school again and the teachers have been so impressed with him, he is much more grown up this year they said, and alot happier! I am so proud of him! He is not interested in reading though yet and I hope he can find the confidence to do it at some point this year. He is turning 5 this november and I don't even know how the time flew by so fast! He is a wonderful boy and even better big brother!
Now onto Reiko, my crazy little 2.5 year old! He has had a bit of a rough couple months, his arms are breaking weekly now, kind of how his legs were before the roddig but they won't do rodding on his lower arms because the rod has no where to grip onto and so it would migrate in his bone, which would require more surgeries, I guess they don't do that surgery to many people at all. So unfortunately he/we will just have to deal with these fractures weekly and hopefully they will ease with time. He has his treatment in Montreal in August so Derek took him since I didn't want to ask for time off work so soon after starting there, it went well he said and thankfully his bone density finally went up after a year of doing nothing! They agreed with us to allow him to get his treatments every 4 months instead of their the 6 months we tried, it was just to hard on his body. I was very upset last week though because Montreal had sent us a letter stating all their findings from his OI conference he attended the day he got his treatment, and it told us he has scoliosis with a 25 degree curve at the L3 spine. It also told us all his vertebrae were crushed again, so much so that he has lost about 40% of his already tiny stature. so I cried..but you know what? he is still smiling through it all, I had no idea he was even going through that because he just smiles and laughs and is a happy child. So I made him an appt with his pediatrician for 2 weeks from now to talk about the scoliosis and have talked to his ortho specialist and they are waiting on some spinal xrays that showes the scoliosis. But better news, Reiko is really talking up a storm now, alot of people have to ask me what he says, but its clear to me haha. He is getting better every week says his speech therapist! He is a smart little guy and really stubborn which is good and bad haha. We also finally got him off the bottle, which felt like it would be forever that was done, but he did it no problem! So I will try to update more often, I have no excuse.
Before I log off, we had some family photos done this week and they have turned out absolutely amazing! check out her site to see the pictures at http://www.hopephotography.ca/?p=3982
Take care everyone.
Jessica
