Updates...

I've been doing a piss-poor job at posting things in my blogs recently, and whether that's going to change or not, I can't say, but here's a post for today...


Joey's doing well, about to finish his first full week on Ritalin. I've noticed that here the past 3 weeks or so, I've really been making a conscious effort to keep myself in check and not get upset with him, but calmly ask him to do things that I would like for him to do, make sure to ask him politely so that he understands that is how he is supposed to ask for things. When he starts getting out of line, I ask him in a calm voice to stop what he's doing. When he's not paying attention, I will say "excuse me" and get his attention. I have noticed a major improvement in his attitude towards things. He has only had a couple incidents in the last week to 10 days where he has had to be put in time out, which is amazing considering there for a while, he was doing things 2 or 3 times a day.

As I've said before, I'm not a big believer in medicating children to fix problems (other than illnesses, of course), but when it came to Joey, I realized that something HAD to be done, that something had to take place to help him calm down and to help us to change his behavior. I know, especially now after talking with my parents about it, that I had the same kinds of problems when I was Joey's age, pretty much up until I was in 2nd and 3rd grade, when my parents took me to a behavioral therapist. I was one of the lucky ones, though, I was not put on any kinds of medication. However, Cindy has been on Ritalin, and several other drugs, since she was a kid to help keep her ADHD in check. And, I think that Joey's got both things from us. He has my intelligence, because much like I did when I was a kid, he gets bored with things easily, and he jumps from thing to thing to thing, trying to keep his attention. He's also got the ADHD from Cindy. So, I think for Joey, it's going to take a mix of the two, the medication and the behavorial therapy. I am glad that things are starting to turn around for him.

My grandfather's surgery went well last Friday. His surgeon was able to bring the murmur back in check and my grandfather is doing MUCH better than he was at this time last week. I saw my grandparents this past Tuesday night, and my grandfather looked the best that he's looked in months, maybe even in years. I'm so relieved that the surgery went well for him, and that it was able to help him. It was nice to see my mother again, so soon after their last trip here, especially. It would've been nice to see my dad too, but he has been pretty busy with work, so I understand why he couldn't. My aunt (the one who hasn't really been talking to me for the past...oh.... 5 YEARS!!!) actually talked to me, gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Maybe the whole situation with my grandfather made her realize that family really is more important than her petty ass issues that she's been hanging onto for years and causing problems in the family. Who knows. I know that I sure as hell don't, but oh well.

I think that's about it that I want to update everyone on for right now. If I think of anything else, I'll let ya know. :P

ya know....

Raisinettes are good, then again I like chocolate, and I like raisins. It almost doesn't make you feel bad for eating a bunch of them, cause they've got raisins in them. :P

And so we wait......

Wait for what, you ask....

Well, I found out Wednesday that my grandfather has to have heart surgery today. Apparently the surgery that he's having is a pretty common procedure, but still, it scares the crap out of me. He's supposed to be at the hospital at 9.30am this morning, and the procedure that he's going through is supposed to take about 4 hours. I'm working 6am-2pm today, so that I can be home to get the news about what happened during the surgery. I'm worried that something is going to happen, but I've got to stay upbeat and hope for the best.

I don't feel like talking much today because of that. I'll post more later.

So.....

I'm sure that people are probably wondering how things went with Joey yesterday. Well, here's the update....
Yesterday, I worked from 6am-10am, so that I only had to use 4 hours of sick time to be off for the afternoon for Joey's appointments.

10.30am ...
We show up at Old Westpot, which are ear, nose, throat and allergy specialists. As a matter of fact, they are the place that we took Joey to initially to have the tubes put in his ears when he was an infant due to the amount of ear infections he had gotten. The doctor that he saw, is a fracking crackhead. Joey was sitting there, playing with the stethoscope listening to his own heart. Joey looked at the doctor and asked him if Joey could listen to his(the doctor's) heart. The doctor looked at him, and without missing a beat said "No, I don't have a heart, at least that's what I've been told". We end up being there for all of about 20 minutes. The doctor wants us to record Joey's snoring so that he(the doctor) can determine if Joey is a candidate for having his tonsils and adenoids removed, or whether our pediatrician is smoking crack and that Joey's tonsils and adenoids are not really the issue issue. The whole reason we went to them was because our pediatrician thinks that maybe Joey's sufferring from sleep apnea, and so he's not getting a good night's sleep, and that's why he's been acting out so much. I, personally, think that idea is a bunch of bullshit, and that maybe the pediatrician WAS smoking crack when he suggested it, but I've no type of medical background, so I don't know for sure.

1.15pm...
Our meeting with the child psychologist was....interesting to say the least. She had a very easy time connecting with Joey on his level, and then explaining things to us as well. It's apparent to anyone who spends some time with Joey that he's pretty intelligent, and that he gets bored with things very easily. Apparently the child psychologist was at the end of her ropes with trying to get Joey to pay attention to her, but she was getting him to calm down and pay attention and listen to what she was telling him, so that's a good place to start. We also got a prescription for Ritalin for Joey, because I think at this point it's going to take a mixture of medication and behavioral thereapy to get him back to where he needs to be. Today he gets 1/2 a pill (5mg), then tomorrow he gets 1/2 a pill in the morning, then 1/2 a pill in the afternoon, and then we're supposed to try a whole pill in the morning and then 1/2 in the afternoon. I think we may trying the 1/2 morning 1/2 afternoon for a while, and see how he adjusts to it, and then maybe move up to a whole pill in the morning 1/2 in afternoon, or vice versa. The child psychologist said that it may take some tinkering around with the dosage, as far as whether he gets a whole pill in the morning, or in the afternoon, or maybe split up and gets 3 1/2 pill doses throughout the day.

Now, I'm not real big on medicating children as a way to solve problems. However, I also realize that something drastic is going to have to happen for Joey to calm down and learn the things that he needs to learn, to learn that there are things that he cannot and should not do, and how to change the behavior to the way that it needs to be. I'm just hoping that this actually works and things can get turned around for him.

Sheesh....

Yet again, a long stretch of time without any posting. What the hell is going on with me, I must be slacking in my old age or something. :P

Actually, to be honest, life in general has just kept me away from posting much more on my journal, for reasons that I will go into shortly...

Friday... I took the day off to spend the day with Joey, trying to teach him a bit of discipline, as he's been completely misbehaving, almost all the time, at Kindercare. He's been doing things like hitting other children, talking back to his teachers, running away from his teachers, causing a whole ruckus when it's naptime, and a host of other things. The long and short of it is that if his attitude at Kindercare doesn't change dramatically, and soon, he's not going to be able to go to Kindercare anymore, and then things are going to get bad for a while. So, to help perhaps change things around, I am taking Joey to see a behavioral therapist today, to see if maybe through some work with them, both educating Cindy and myself as his parents, and Joey himself, we can help to change this behavior and get things on the right track before they get much worse. Only time will tell, but at this point, I don't think it can make things much worse off than they already are.

There is so much more going on right now, but I don't really feel like talking about it at the time being. Maybe someday soon I'll release it all to everyone.

I hope you all have a good Tuesday, maybe mine'll be better than my Monday was.

Wow....

Three consecutive days without posting anything substantial to my blog. Either something's seriously wrong with me, or I've just been too busy to do anything. :P And no, I don't consider the huge ass meme post I made on my livejournal something of substance. It was just something to pass the time while I was bored that morning.

Not a whole lot has been really going on, just work taking up a large part of my life, as per usual. :P

Joey's become a major pain in the ass at Kindercare, apparently talking back to his teachers, he broke a toy, even hit one of his teachers. Cindy and I have a feeling that Joey has ADHD, much like Cindy does, but our pediatrician thinks that Joey's too young to diagnose that in him. So, we're going to take Joey to see a child psychiatrist and see what their determination is. Our pediatrician thinks that Joey's not sleeping well at night and suffering from sleep apnea, so he wants us to take Joey to an Ear/Nose/Throat specialist and see about having his adenoids and tonsils removed. I don't know that is really the case, but I suppose it's certainly possible. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the specialist says and what the child psychiatrist says. Hopefully they can get it figured out and we can get Joey some help, or at least some help in controlling him.

Other than that, a grand whole lot of nothing has been going on.

I signed up for an account with Google Adsense this morning, and was approved in about the span of half an hour. I'm using it primarily for the blogs that I have on the Blogger network which you can find here and here. The first link is another blog, basically, that has a lot of the same posts that this one does, plus a few from the digg.com stories that I find that I like. The second link is where I send pictures that I take with my camera phone to. A lot of them, so far, are pictures of the boys, but every once in a while I'll find something cool that I feel like taking a picture of, and I'll post it up. Figured I might get a click or a pageview every once in a while and maybe, eventually, make some money on it, highly doubtful, but it's worth a shot, eh?

That's it for today...have a good Thursday, everyone.

What a weekend.....

Pretty much nothing fun happened this weekend. Cindy had to work all three days, so I stayed home with the boys, and we didn't really go out and do anything. Mikey started getting sick Friday night, so it was pointless to take him outside and risk making him worse.

Watched some of the news coverage of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. I don't have a whole lot to say about it that hasn't been said.

I'm just kinda out of it today. Maybe I'll feel more talkative later.

Have a good Tuesday, everyone.

Three day weekend.....

Yes, it's true, I have a three day weekend. It'll be kinda nice to not have to be at work for three days, especially considering some of the things that have gone on around here recently. Let's suffice it to say that there are times now where I REALLY don't want to come to work anymore, all because of one certain person and the fact that she's a condescending, self-centered drama queen that only thinks of herself, but I'm not going to get into that right now.

Don't really have any big plans for the weekend. Final Chiefs' preseason game is tonight, so I'm sure that I'll be watching that with the boys. Cindy has to work all three days this weekend, so it'll just be me and the boys for the majority of the weekend. Might try to take the boys to the park either Saturday or Sunday, depending on what the weather is like. I've heard so many different reports of what the weather could be like that at this point, that it's pointless to try and plan anything, so we're just going to wing it.

As I'm sure that most of my friends know, Cowboy Mouth is one of my favorite bands. I've seen them a couple times in concert, and I plan on seeing them several more times in the future. What some people may not know is that they are from New Orleans, which EVERYONE knows was one of the areas effected by Hurricane Katrina. Of course, their website is currently down. If I remember correctly, it was hosted there in New Orleans. Fred LeBlanc, the drummer/one of the singers for Cowboy Mouth has his own website, of course, and he has his own personal blog on it. I've read through his most recent posts, and it's interesting to see how it's effected him and how strongly that he feels about the town that he is from. I mean, it's no different than how I feel about Kansas City and how I would react if something catastrophic was to happen to Kansas City, but I just find it interesting.

In recognition of Cowboy Mouth and the fact that they are from New Orleans, I have nominated today, at work at least, to be Cowboy Mouth day, so I'm spending the day listening to Cowboy Mouth songs while I take phone calls. ^_^

That's about it for today, unless I can think of something else to post today. Not sure if I will make a post this weekend, but I hope that everyone has a great weekend, and that everyone is safe out there this weekend.

Official Movie Site for Serenity is on-line

After months of just an image, Serenity, the new Joss Whedon movie based on the canceled Fox sci-fi western is finally able to be perused. Included is a full flash website with small clips from the film plus other activities.

I'm pretty excited to see that the website is finally up and running, especially since I loved the TV series and was sad to see it cancelled.

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