Christmas... a bit late

As always, life has been crazy this holiday season.

Right after my last post, a dear neighbor/friend's son died. No words can express the pain and grief we feel for our friends and for the loss of a young man we have known for the past 17 years (since he was 8 years old). He was a positive influence on both my girls and Melorah absolutely adored him - she would sleep with his picture under her pillow when she was younger. Evan, you will be greatly missed...

Christmas... in all its glory..

Christmas started at 1:30 am... well, Melorah tried to start it at 1:30. We didn't let her get up until 6 am. She sang Christmas songs to us for 4.5 hours until we gave up. LOL

Coming down the stairs Christmas morning... always exciting... well, maybe just for Melorah.. Amelia is pretty tired.

My folks came over and brought a puppy they were watching for the week. The girls of course had a blast. "Jack" the puppy, LOVED Amelia and LOVED to be held. :)

We had a nice Christmas. It was chaotic as usual but Melorah didn't require going to the ER so that was a huge plus! It is such a wonderful season to celebrate the birth of our Savior and to be with friends and family. Hope everyone had a blessed Christmas!

Shopping and Melorah

This time of year highlights the issues of "shopping with Melorah." She doesn't like the crowds, noise, etc... let's face it, neither do I! Here are a couple of strategies that I have started to use:

(1) I start to make a general Christmas list (for the next year) January 1 and look for sales all year long.

(2) Homemade gifts are usually appreciated - again it takes planning with a Dravet child. When I sew, Melorah loves to press the power button to make it go fast - usually when I am not ready!

(3) Picking up unusual small gifts at art fairs.

(4) ONLINE shopping!

I use to dread online shopping but I have discovered to that you can find coupons for almost anything you want to buy. Amazon has a wonderful shipping service that you can purchase for $79 per year called "Amazon Prime." Most everything you buy on Amazon qualifies for Amazon Prime. This means you get FREE 2 day shipping! LOVE it!

This past fall I have discovered several other online discount sites (oh my!):

http://www.plumdistrict.com/

https://www.onekingslane.com/

http://doodledeals.com/nationwide

Not only do they have fantastic deals but occasionally these sites have additional discounts! I have been very please with some of the deals that I have found. :)

So there you have it... how I avoid shopping with Melorah. LOL

A Reason to Throw Away the Iron

Melorah!

In the brief time (less than 5 minutes) that I was distracted, Melorah disappeared upstairs and started ironing the carpet with the iron turned "on". OH. MY. GOODNESS.

This is such a hard time of year. I am more distracted, trying to get holiday things done. Melorah is more impulsive (seizures, Dravetness, Melorahness,???). I am praying that we get through this season without any incidents. As she gets older, she is able to get into more things. I try to have things for her to do where I am at but there are times she just doesn't want to follow Mommy from room to room. I totally get that, so once again I am going through the house trying to "Dravet proof" it. The iron is now hidden. Now that she is 5'2" (!!!) at 11 years old, we can't just put things up, we have to hide. Personally, I think we should just throw away the iron but if we go that route, we would also have to throw out my flat iron. I can't give up my flat iron, it is much more fun to iron my hair than clothes! LOL

Hiding brings such an interesting problem to John and I. We seem to "hide" things too well at times, so now we have a running list of where things are hidden. This is one of the very, very few times I am grateful she can't read.