Spring is Here

Darein has been doing very well since the last time that I wrote. She is still enjoying her Science class very much and actually was one of the few students to actually handle a pig and cow heart. Most of the other kids just poked at it she said but her teacher cut them in half so they could see the inside of each of the hearts and Darein was one of the first students to pick it up, handle it and then showed the different parts of it to the janitor lady who came in to the class to have a look. Darein didn't think it was gross at all and said the grossest part was the liquid that came out of it but said that was just the liquid that it had been stored in and she wasn't grossed out by this at all. She got an A on her test over this and doing really well in school overall. She is currently working on a science fair project where me, Shane and Damein have to take a bite out of an onion and then a bite out of an apple with our eyes closed and see if we can tell the difference. Her presentation is coming along very nice. She goes to get her xray on her kidney on Monday and then we will have to wait to hear from her doctor as to how things have changed or not and what our next step will be or if we will just continue to keep her on her kidney medication at this time. She has no upcoming appointments for April which will be a nice break for her.
I set up an appointment for Damein to visit MU on April 30th. I had also sent an e-mail to the MU S&T Rolla baseball coach asking what we needed to do to get him to take a look at Damein and he sent me an e-mail back inviting him to attend tryouts this year which will be June 7th. We are very excited about this opportunity for him. I did unfortunately goof up and did not get his ACT registration for April sent in so he will not be able to take that test again until June. He signed up for all of his classes for his senior year earlier this month and is going to only have to take 6 classes. He will take 3 dual credit college classes to give him a head start for college. Baseball season has started for him and me and Shane are so proud of him. He is doing an outstanding job this year, considering how rough of a time he had last year. He had just got over his Steven Johnson's syndrome last year when baseball started and unfortunately the coach didn't cut him any slack and some of the parents were quite rough on him. He got his position on Varsity taken away and was dropped down to JV and got yelled at the entire year. He kind of lost his desire to play and chose not to play Legion ball last year. We were afraid he wouldn't play again and he is so talented and just a natural at this sport it seemed like a waste of talent to us. Fortunately, he joined a team in the Fall and did quite well. We were hoping that it would carry over to his high school year this Spring and it has. It is his coach's last year of coaching as he will retire at the end of this year. He is a nice person but does not seem to care so much about the team anymore as his star player was hurt in football this year and is sitting this season of baseball out for his senior year so that he can play college ball. Damein is playing left field for some reason this year which he doesn't mind. He is a better shortstop than the one that we have this year but he is fine with playing left field and it will help build his arm strength as well so we are not complaining. He also is getting to play shortstop when the starting shortstop pitches and Damein is getting to pitch quite a bit too. He is a great closer and has been one of our better pitchers this year. He is back on Varsity and has his confidence back so even though we will probably lose most or all of our games due to poor coaching, Damein is doing well and so we are staying upbeat and enjoying watching him play as always. He is going to play Legion baseball this Summer too and then we will see if he wants to play Fall baseball again.
I have had my gallbladder taken out this month as well as a lipoma removed from my right side. The surgery went well but as most of you know, I came down with a really bad stomach bug that put my recovery behind a little and made me miserable. I am excited however, as I have lost a ton of weight due to the surgery. I needed to lose quite a bit anyways and being sick with my gallbladder and then going through the surgery on top of that I have managed to lose a total of about 24 lbs. from my heaviest weight last year. I still have a ways to go but am eating and drinking healthier now and as soon as I am stronger I am looking forward to getting back into an exercise regimen.
Shane has been working really hard as always for us. He went to get his DOT physical though and they could not get his blood pressure low enough to pass for a 2 year physical so unfortunately, he has to go back in 3 months and have it rechecked. We are a little nervous because if he doesn't pass this time then he will be disqualified and he's not sure what that entails but it will most likely cost him his job. I scheduled an appointment for him to go see his doctor on Friday so that he can get on some blood pressure medication. He has diabetes and high blood pressure but has not been taking any medications for these things as he doesn't like how they make him feel. I have talked with him though and explained that they can change the medications so that he feels like he is supposed to but he has to tell his doctor otherwise they don't know that something needs changed. I have him eating and drinking better now and he has accepted the fact that he needs to see his doctor regularly for his conditions. His blood pressure has actually been fine, though a little on the high side just genetically. However, when he went for his physical he was sick and he gets nervous every time he has to have one of those physicals anyways so that didn't help with his blood pressure. We are confident that he will get this controlled and we both are working together along with Darein to have a healthier lifestyle and after only a few short weeks we are already feeling much better and Darein has lost quite a bit of weight as well and is looking great!
I found out this month that me and Darein are going to get to go on a month long vacation with my parents to California. We are so excited. I asked Damein if he wanted to go but he has opted to stay and play Legion baseball and take part in some church mission trips and activities that they do in the Summer. Shane unfortunately, will be at home working to help pay for our trip. Both boys are just as excited about mine and Darein's vacation as we are since they will have the house to themselves for a month. We are driving and are going to get to see some beautiful places. I won't go into too much details about the trip right now as I am sure I will be blogging and facebooking each day as I am taking the laptop with me on our trip.
All in all, we have had a good month though we have had a lot of sickness. We have spent the month working on a healthier lifestyle and taking care of health problems that needed resolved. Since Darein has no appointments in April, I will probably most blog about Damein's baseball for the next month. We have got Silver Dollar City passes and White Water passes so we have already been to SDC once on opening day and look forward to spending a lot of time there as weather permits. It is good exercise walking up and down those hills and a good time is had by all :)

February

Well, it has been quite awhile since I last wrote so I thought I would write about a few things that went on in February. February was an exciting month as Damein went to visit MU Rolla S&T campus. His campus visit went better than I had hoped it would. We arrived on Friday February 5th and things started out a little slow as I had tried to set up a meeting for him to speak with the baseball coach there. I am hoping that Damein chooses Rolla but unfortunately the boy/girl ratio is a little lopsided and none of his friends are going there so I have had a little bit of troubles convincing him that this is the best school for him. I felt like if I could get him into the baseball program then he would be more likely to choose this school versus MU. It isn't that MU is a bad school, I just think that it is a little too big of a university for him and with his interest being in engineering I think that he would have more opportunities available to him if he chose Rolla instead. However, the baseball coach was in Arkansas for the weekend and was not able to meet with us. We went in and listened to the presentation which was good. It was then time for us to have lunch in the cafeteria. This is when things got a little more interesting. All of the colleges encourage you to speak with other students and ask lots of questions about the university. Damein however is not very outgoing in that respect and me and Shane were not quite sure exactly what questions to ask. So, we sat down for lunch and as we were finishing a couple of girls came over and sat down and started talking to us. Come to find out they were on the student panel and would be speaking next in the auditorium. They just started telling us about their experiences at Rolla and how they came to choose Rolla versus UCLA and Purdue, etc. They were quite interesting and Shane asked several questions based on information they were giving us. Then one of the guys from the student panel came over to our table and said that he figured Damein would appreciate a guy's perspective so he spoke about the college as well. All three kids were very interesting and entertaining and we got more information from them than anything else while we were there. I think they really helped Damein to loosen up. Damein wanted to get a shirt in the gift shop and was also given a free one at the end of the day for turning in his evaluation. The rest of the day went well but Damein learned that he is going to have to really study if he chooses to go there. It is an extremely academically challenging school but offers a lot. This past week I decided to e-mail the baseball coach and let him know how long Damein has been playing baseball, what positions, his extra lessons that he takes from a college umpire and that he had not had any exposure and asking what we needed to do to give the coach a chance to look at him. I received an e-mail back the following day stating that Damein could attend the open tryout on June 7th and to let him know if he planned on attending. After speaking with Damein I e-mailed the coach back and let him know that we would be there. Rolla is a Division II school and this would be an excellent opportunity for Damein to get to play that high of a division school baseball and he has a better chance of playing there than just about anywhere else. He has been wearing his shirts often and knows that we are in hopes of him choosing this college. He still wants me to set up a visit at MU which I will do and I asked him to make his decision this summer so that we could get started on filling out the application and starting the application process so that he would have a good opportunity of acquiring the scholarships and housing that he wants at his chosen college.
We have worked with Darein this month on going to the bathroom every two hours, taking Benefiber and Miralax every day. These things have proven to be quite a challenge. She does great at school because she knows to go after every other class period but then it is difficult to remember to tell her every two hours as we get busy and forget though she does fairly well with this since he bladder appears to trigger automatically every two hours or at least close. A month later we are still working on getting the Benefiber and Miralax adjusted. The Benefiber goes in her food and helps things to solidify a little better. However, it is a pill and therefore goes best in mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese type things so it is easier to give this to her in the evening. This leaves us trying to figure out when to give her the Miralax. This is trickier than you might think as I want to give it to her in a drink in the morning. This would work great if she wasn't so slow getting ready. However, some mornings she is worried about getting diarrhea so she doesn't want to take it prior to school and other mornings she just doesn't want to take it in the mornings or she doesn't allow herself enough time before leaving for school. It doesn't work for her to have it at dinner with her Benefiber as it is too close together and causes too many issues. I could give it to her before bedtime except that we eat rather late as a rule since Shane usually barbecues and really eat late in the summer so I am just going to have to continue to work with getting her to take it in the mornings. There really are no other options for this. She has been doing considerably well this month and has had very few tummy aches and missed very few days this month. She brought home her mid-quarter grades and now has all A's and B's except for 1 F in Word Processing. I asked her what was wrong in that class and evidently she needs to make some work up. I called and spoke with her Study Skills teacher about this and asked for suggestions and was told to write her word processing teacher a note and find out when Darein could make this up. I did that and received a phone call back stating that she had talked to her study skills teacher and Darein was making the necessary homework up in that class plus they had adjusted her IEP accordingly and she felt confident that Darein's grade would improve based on the following adjustments. The school has really stepped up and made school life very bearable for Darein. She is successful now and doing well and enjoying all of her classes. She in fact received a 138/136 on her human body bones test in her Science class which was the highest in her class. She seems to love science and feels like she is really good at it. She will get to dissect a frog sometime this quarter and is looking forward to that. Since she hopes to work with animals someday it will help for her to be good at science so I am quite pleased to see her actually interested and good in a subject other than Art or one of her other many electives.
All in all life has been fairly boring at the Blanton household this past month which is a good thing I guess :) Damein will be starting baseball this next month and we will continue to work with Darein on her kidney issues so that she will be ready for her xray in April. I will write again sooner, hopefully than later as I would like to start writing on a weekly basis if possible.