Double Movie Review: 12 Years a Slave and Gravity

First, I want to thank everyone for their encouraging comments on my last post about Trent's therapy. I love the support I get from the blogging community!

Now...onto more important things... In my quest to see all the Best Picture nominees, I have stayed up entirely too late 2 nights this week watching 12 Years a Slave and Gravity.

12 Years a Slave

Plot: In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.

Review: A piece of me didn't want to see this because I knew it would be hard to watch. And that's totally pathetic because someone actually LIVED this story. {Not to mention the millions of other slaves} But I'm really glad I watched it. This is a story that I wouldn't have believed if it weren't based on a true story. I thought all the acting was superb. Everyone deserves an award! To have to put yourself in the mindset of a slave would be hard, but I also think being in the mindset of the slave owner/racist would be hard too I think. All that hatred. Ugh. Several of the characters made my skin crawl. Overall, this movie was hard to watch. But it was amazing. I really thought it was well done, I have no complaints.

Gravity

Plot: A medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive after an accident leaves them adrift in space.

Review: I really enjoyed this film but wish I had seen it in the theater {and maybe even IMAX}. Allison and I almost went this fall and I chickened out because I thought it was going to be too intense {Sorry Allison!}. But I think it would have been much better {but not too intense} in the theater. Sandra Bullock was amazing. I absolutely loved her performance! It did kind of remind me of Castaway because you spend a lot of time watching 1 person do stuff without much talking. And when it keeps you entertained, that's saying something about their performance.

I still need to see Her and Wolf on Wall Street, so hopefully I can accomplish that before Sunday!

The Latest on T

I haven't blogged about Trent's therapy in an eternity, but it's high time to do an update. I'll try to not make this super long, apologies in advance as I'll likely fail.

T today during our appointment

About 9 months ago, Brent and I were really frustrated with his 'special school' because they weren't working on the areas we felt were the problem areas. Trent was also acting up a lot more in anticipation of going. We decided it would be best to take a break for awhile. 

I don't feel like we did this in denial, but we all just needed to catch our bearings. Drew was still a baby, I was battling post-partum, and it was just all too much.

After about 5 months 'off' Trent wasn't any better or worse {not that I thought he would be}, but status quo for him isn't exactly ideal. Still lots of tantrums and out of control behavior ... and now there's a new little person in our house to protect. He is such a sweet and fun little guy. He loves to tell jokes and snuggle and read books and play. But when he loses it? He LOSES IT.

B and I were also debating a lot the right thing to do for T in numerous areas. We were still having some issues with our daycare - did we need to change schools? Would he be ready for kinder next year? {B said yes, I said no.} If we did decide to do kinder next year, where would he go - private or public? We were back to square 1 and it stunk.

Through a mom at church, I found out about programs offered by school districts for early childhood intervention and set an appointment for Trent to get evaluated through our district. If he qualified, the services would be free through our property taxes. We set an appointment for November and Trent promptly got his leg infection and spent a week in the hospital. Our appointment got rescheduled for January.

At the appointment, the therapists were pretty upfront that to qualify for treatment, Trent would essentially need to be pretty bad off. I immediately figured he wouldn't qualify and I was right. Thankfully, my kid isn't autistic or a danger to others, but it's pretty frustrating to be told there's nothing wrong and how ready my child is for kindergarten when I know these things are not true. No mom wants her child to be different, but when you know something isn't right and to be told by THERAPISTS that he's great...disappointment didn't begin to describe how I felt.

I decided to take a step back and set an appointment with our pediatrician. I put together some information about sensory processing disorder for the appointment {I don't know if I ever mentioned here before, but that's what I think T has and if you click on the link and look at the bullet point details...90% of that is T}. She decided we should see a behavioral/developmental pediatrician, and/or a psychiatrist, and/or a new OT. Brent and I discussed these options a lot and decided to start with a therapist. There are numerous delays/conditions that OT wouldn't help, and we still don't have an official diagnosis, so we didn't want to go down the OT path again just yet. We did set a developmental pediatrician appointment but due to their backlog, that appointment isn't until April.

Today was our evaluation with the therapist, Ms. Lauren. I came armed with a letter from our school Education Director about an evaluation she did with Trent, a letter from my parents about what they see from him on the days they keep him, a checklist on sensory processing disorder, and the original evaluation results we received from the first OT. Whew.

Ms. Lauren was great to talk to. She said she thinks we'll get to an official diagnosis and doesn't think it's something on the spectrum. We're going to officially start treatment next week and go from there to see what all this is going to entail.

I'm a little overwhelmed when I think we could end up in OT again in addition to therapy, and we still have to tackle his lisp. I feel like he and I are at doctor's offices non-stop. But I'm excited. For the first time in a long time, I feel hopeful and optimistic. I'm tired of not knowing how to help him and losing my cool more times than I'd like to admit. I'm ready to look forward and focus as a family on how to best help our wonderful, adorable, SMART, fun, and funny little boy.

Here's to the journey...