He quit saying "pop"

Yesterday, after arriving home, the house was relatively sane, but the sitter had obviously had quite a workout. I asked her if it was too much for her - and she said she could handle it. With all the various therapists coming, it gives her a break, plus he napped for an hour. Today he will have all his therapists, and Sophia will be at school, so even if he is fussy, she will once again get a break. Tomorrow with my niece babysitting might be another story.

I now have a correlation, that I wish I would have documented better: every time Zach becomes ill, particularly with fever, his autistic symptoms worsen. This morning I decided to sing "Pop Goes the Weasel" with him, in which I consistently was able to get him to say "pop" before. He said it once, sort of, not at the right time, and that was it, no more, no matter how many times I sang the song and prompted him. This has made me terrible sad. Are we still losing language and other skills? I will likely try to get a call in to Yale to discuss this some more.

We are scheduled to meet with the neurologist on Friday - time I had scheduled to come in to work and get some things done. Work is particularly tough right now, I am working with some new people, who have little clue about what is going on in my life, and have been somewhat difficult to work with. They have not told me what their expectations are, yet are dismayed when I don't meet them. I find this really frustrating, and wish I could go back to projects with people I know better. I feel horrible that I am letting people down, even if their expectations haven't been fully expressed. This is not the sort of person I like to be.

Next week, on top of the 25 hours of therapy, 2.5 hours of class that I have to attend with Zach, getting Sophia situated at school and her therapy, and normal life chaos of career-work, housework, cooking, family, life, etc., we are supposed to have a meeting with the school district, which they picked without consulting me, right smack dab in the middle of the work week. I am so-o-o not prepared for this meeting - we will likely have to make the decision of keeping the home based program or sending him to school.

This also was supposed to be a day that we brought Zach out to a doctor in Rochester who specializes in pediatric integrative medicine. She is board-certified in pediatrics and graduated from the University of Rochester residency program in pediatrics. Sounds like good credentials to me, plus other families have said they like her. I still don't know whether this is junk science/a scam, or if it is real. I guess the I want to believe that at least the doctor believes this is real. I would hate if this was some snake oil salesperson scheme. Only one way of finding out.

I feel overwhelmed with things to do and what trumps what. I need to get my work done, I cannot forgo finding out what his anomalous EEG is all about, feel great pressure about the school district, and do not want him to regress any further if there is indeed something medically going on with him (Lyme disease, candida overgrowth, food allergies/sensitivities).

Sophie said to me last night: "You need to teach me how to pray." I have no idea where this came from, perhaps from God to her to me. It was a rude awakening that although my beliefs are strong, I have not turned to prayer in awhile myself, and have been lax on our nighttime prayer ritual since adding Zach into Sophie's room. In the words of the late Father Joseph Champlain, "You tried everything else, why not try God?"