The new normal.

Mr.P is back to work, and pretty much back to his usual self minus a few pounds. It's really great that he is doing so well so soon, and as long as he takes his meds his condition should be manageable. As someone who has never taken regular medicine in life, he is lucky to have me around to remind him and keep him on track.

P5 is now weaned. It was a hard decision that I went back and forth about, but ultimately it felt like the right time for me. I have been under so much stress and his poor sleeping was having a very negative effect on me. I realized several weeks ago that P5 was not waking so much to eat at night, he was waking more for the comfort of pacifying on me. Now that he is completely on bottles, he is sleeping better and only waking 1-2 times per night the past few days (fingers crossed this will keep up!) I feel like breastfeeding for 9 months was good enough. I felt some guilt through the process because the first few days were really hard on him. He was not ready to wean (though I'm not sure if/when he ever would be on his own) so he was a bit of a wreck being separated from his beloved boobies. But within a few days he was fine and now he gets excited and crawls over to me when he sees the bottle.

In other news, we learned last week that P5 has a hearing impairment. We aren't sure yet to what degree or if it's permanent, or what the cause is, but he has some more testing coming up in a few weeks. He has been in a study at the University for autism research, and after one of his behavioral assessments the observer mentioned to me that she didn't think he was hearing normally. At first I thought she was crazy, but after observing him at home and witnessing the formal hearing testing I could see that he clearly doesn't hear a lot of what is going on around him. An occupational therapist is scheduled to come to our house in a few weeks to evaluate him and see if it is necessary for him to receive one on one developmental therapy.

M2 is busy as ever. She has figured out how to open the door if it's not locked, so we have to be careful because she will escape and run lose outside. She is still really into Dora, but has recently become interested in trains. Mr.P bought her a train set as a belated birthday present and she is loving that. Her speech is improving and she is now starting to put words together when she speaks.