Turtle Power

It started innocently enough. Matthew and I were up early on a Saturday morning, Joe was out running errands, and I was desperately needing a break from endless episodes of Jake and the Neverland Pirates. So, I fired up YouTube in search of cartoons from the eighties that Joe and I grew up watching. 

He was not impressed with the awesomeness of The Muppet Babies, showed a fleeting interest in A Pup Named Scooby Doo, and he flat out dissed The Smurfs.  Then I remembered a gem that my younger brother John was obsessed with when he was around Matthew's age....The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

As soon as the theme song started, Matthew was enraptured. Three episodes in, I forgot how much I hated this show when I was younger and started getting into the Turtle Power. Joe came home and got hooked too. It was fun seeing Matthew so into something, when historically, he could not care less about anything we buy or show him.

The next day we went to Nonna and Nonno G's house for Sunday dinner. While we were there they remembered that some of Joe's old Ninja Turtle toys were still in the attic, so they gave them to Matthew. It was love at first hug.

It was all downhill from there. His outfits took on a new theme.

If he was going to have the big Ninja Turtles, of course he needed Donatello and Michelangelo to play with. They would help his OT skills we convinced ourselves. 

Then I found the two he was missing at Target. It was only right that he have Leonardo and Raphael to complete the whole Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Team. 

We even took him to see another example of Michael Bay stealing our childhood by seeing the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. He laughed and squealed when the turtles came on the screen.

   

   

And I may have gone a teeny bit overboard contributing to his obsession.

Best of all is seeing this gorgeous, happy smile showing us how much he loves all of it. Seeing him into something, anything, is thrilling. For a kid with no words, the smile really says it all for him.

What are your kiddos into? Any obsessions?

Still Here

365 days...one whole year.

That's how long it has been since I sat down to write here.

In that time we had new babies born in our extended family, we lost family members we love. We started a new school year. We had a grand total of 4 hospital admissions last summer between June and September.

And on that last admission on September 13th, we darn near lost our boy.

He went into cardiac arrest while we were admitted into ICU for hyperkalemia, so I guess if it had to happen that was the best place for it to happen. The hospital team was amazing and jumped in and did everything they had to do to help him.

He was in Joe's arms smiling and flirting with nurses one minute, and in v-tach the next with people rushing into his room. They were so focused on treating him that no one realized we were still in the room watching their every move, crying hysterically.

After what seemed like forever, the doctor who had been treating him that shift came and saw us and had us step out of the room and Matthew was put into a medically induced coma for three days.

We never got a reason for what happened, every medical test done during the two weeks were in ICU and special care came back negative or normal. The ICU staff began calling Matthew the "International Man of Mystery." The closest thing we were able to come up with was that it was a side effect of his being on the Ketogenic Diet. So we stopped doing the diet which had kept him seizure free for almost a year and a half at that point, and his myoclonic episodes came back almost immediately.

Seeing what happened to my baby, and running through all the "what ifs" really messed with me afterwards. I began having panic attacks more frequently, I didn't want to let Matthew out of my sight for school, and I began even more vigilant and was afraid to sleep at night for fear it would happen again. Helicopter Mamas had nothing on me.

It has taken this long to be able to put this behind us, somewhat. I wasn't able to write out the words and wasn't even sure if I should have continued the blog. I missed the friends I made here, I missed the sense of community of people who "get it" when it comes to our kind of extreme parenting.

I hope we haven't stayed away too long, that you will come back and join us for the ride.
We were lucky, so darn lucky. Our boy is still here.