Nerves

I dropped off my application for the nursing program today.  Right now, I am pre-nursing.  This application was for the professional (read:clinicals) portion of the degree I am pursuing.  I feel like I have a good chance of getting admitted, but I won't know for sure until late October.  Talk about stress!  Even though I think I am at the top of the application pool, the reality is that in life there are no guarantees.  Just because I think I have a good chance of getting in does not guarantee that I will get admitted.  And that just keeps running through my head, over and over.  If I don't get admitted, I don't know what I will do.  The last year and a half will have been effort expended for nothing.  I can always apply to other schools, I suppose, or even this same school again.  But I've worked so hard to follow this pace, I really don't want a setback.  Ugh.  I am a worrier by nature so the next two months are going to be pretty long here in the Mac household.

Monster Boy is back at school!  So far he seems to be doing well.  We've had a couple hiccups - but, he's a seven year old boy.  I don't expect perfect behavior from him all the time - I just expect him to do his best.  Yesterday and today he hasn't been doing that, so we are going to have to revisit this issue.  We had a long talk this morning, but I'm not sure it made much impact.  I guess time will tell.

Miss Sunshine is as crazy as ever.  With my new work schedule, she's had some adjusting to do.  She's doing fairly well with it so far.  She cracks me up on a regular basis.  Tonight, I had some grapes after dinner.  After seeing the grapes on my plate, she promptly went to the fridge to make sure I hadn't eaten all of the grapes.  When she didn't see any grapes in the fridge (there was a whole bag in the crisper) she promptly ran to her daddy and fell to pieces because "Mommy ated all my gwapes!".  When Monster Boy informed her I hadn't, she immediately responded with "Well, you go look in the fwidge then, because I looked and I didn't saw any more gwapes!".  He wound up carrying the entire bag of grapes in to her room to prove to her that there were grapes left.  See?  A mess.   An awfully cute one, but a mess all the same.

I need to call and set up our follow up with the local ENT.  She's been complaining about her ears "itching" a lot lately - usually a sign of wax build up.  At least she isn't complaining that they hurt.  I know he will look at her ears, check the tube placement, clean out some wax and probably do another tympanogram and possibly a booth test.  I am always nervous about this because of our past difficulties with the tubes not wanting to stay in place.  And because she already had signs of scar tissue in her right ear, and that's the tube we've had the most issues with, I get nervous.  The ENT at Shriner's felt that she may not need any more sets of tubes, as when he replaced the last set there was no fluid in her ears - but that could have been an air bubble from anesthesia too.  The only way to know if she needs another set or not is to let these fall out and see what happens.  Part of me is hoping the tubes are no longer in place now, so we can monitor and see rather than waiting for them to come up.  The other downside is that because she's had the tubes for so long, there is a chance her eardrums have scarred around them, meaning once the tubes DO come out, the holes in her ear drums may not heal.  If that happens, she will need a graft surgery to correct that.  Of course, we had no choice but to risk that possibility because of her cleft.  Hearing is just such a touchy thing, anything to do with her ears makes me apprehensive.

So, that's where we are for now.  I'll update after we see the ENT.  September is Craniofacial Acceptance Month and I am hoping to have some good posts about our cleft journey to coincide with all of that.