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.