We’re in the house. It was official last Saturday, the 30th. Another great group of friends helped us move the last vestiges of apartment living into the house. And the joys of home ownership were fully realized.
I need to take care of the most important business before getting into the updates, and it’s the right month for it: thanks giving. The overwhelming support has continued over the last three weeks as we made the transition to the home. Our minds boggle knowing we closed on October 15th. In a mere two weeks, the house was move-in ready and immaculate. There are so many people who helped and they have our gratitude. They helped make the house our home.
Because of all the help, we’ve been able to get settled much more quickly than anticipated. The two that have had the hardest time adjusting are Autumn and Claire. Autumn’s first night in the house was a sea of tears: she missed the apartment. Autumn is a caricature of change for the rest of us. What we often feel inside and hide, Autumn displays in all its glory. Tears, sniffles, red eyes and wailing accompany Autumn’s emotions. No amount of discussion or rationale appeases her: she just needs time to get used to the new world. And when all is said and done, Autumn adapts to change faster that most of us, in part because she deals with her grief so dramatically in one fell swoop, and then moves on.
Claire’s difficulties have been more prolonged. Claire’s reflux returned with a vengeance for the first few days and is only now abating. We had to install a whole house air purifier to eliminate microbes and mitigate the possibility of airborne infection for Claire at the house. The air is clear, the environment clean; however, the volume of change has upset Claire’s stasis. She has started to calm down again and better days are returning.
Claire continues to move forward. Her eyes and focus are getting stronger week by week. She Her therapists have been so pleased with her progress that they recommended adding a day of speech therapy back into Claire’s schedule. Claire is following commands with much improved consistency and this let’s the speech therapist work with greater efficacy. We’re excited for her progress and while we still wish it was faster, we are glad it’s still forward.
Claire greeted us in a new way this morning as well. It’s been several months since we’ve seen Claire stretch and she did it this morning. Her legs were curled up, she stretched them out and then brought them back up to her chest. Stretching this way is a voluntary movement and we’re excited to see more purposeful effort like this. It seems the past two weeks have had a greater volume of these small steps than normal. It helps fuel our hope.
It’s been a couple of months in the making, but tonight was capped off with more family news: my little sister Bryanna accepted Brian’s proposal. Recall that Brian came out here with Bryanna while Claire was still at OCH. His support for my little sister and us the past several months has spoken volumes. We’re all excited to extend our family further and proud of Bryanna. We wish we could be with them to celebrate tonight and look forward to a celebratory glass of wine when they come out in December.
We hope you’re enjoying the season change and look forward to seeing many of you over the coming weeks. Thank you for your support and prayers.
Our Claire Journal 