It was so gray and grim today. But even with the weather, it was a great day! Tuesdays are The Days around here. We already had a lot going on, but since the new year it’s gotten even busier. This is a good part of my view every Tuesday, just out the car window. And not always raining.

Her regular, incredible apraxia speech therapist is back once a week from maternity leave, and she’s working with her other speech therapist (she goes twice a week) to keep H from having a transition crisis. That child does not like change. So we’ve struggled a little on Tuesdays, with her newer therapist, but today her therapist pulled out genius moves and got a great session out of her. And in OT she’s doing a full tripod grip with markers and crayons! High fives for everyone! PLUS, since we got Hamilton she has made HUGE strides in a lot of her sensory issues around everyday tasks, like using public bathrooms. And the new addition to her Tuesday schedule, a switch in her play gym class, worked out beautifully.

We try to squeeze as many of H’s therapies and activities as we can into the fewest days possible. This school year that means Tuesdays and Wednesdays are full to bursting, but Tuesday is the real bear. Work at home while she’s at school, pick her up from school, feed her, drive 30 minutes to speech therapy, work some more during speech, get a donut after because Tuesdays are Donut Days (a trick I began years ago to motivate her that stuck…it works, they’re her favorite food). Then drive 40 minutes to hippotherapy (her OT on horseback), where I usually spend the 45 minute sessions hiking behind her and the team through the woods (must remember to wear or bring the right shoes for everyone each week). Then it was drive 45 minutes back home, but now it’s drive 45 minutes to her play gym in town for her class, and then drive home.

We get home around 5. Everyone is exhausted, but it’s working for us. Adam works at home on Tuesdays now so Hamilton isn’t in a crate the whole day. H has a lot of motivators to keep her going, and I’m not gonna lie…she spends a good deal of that time in the car with her iPad. If we do anything on the drive to school in the mornings, it’s listen to readings of fairy tales on Spotify. And again on the way home if we don’t have a long car ride ahead of us. But it’s tough to do all that driving every week (Wednesdays it’s just 30 minutes to back-to-back OT and speech in the same place, then back home). She needs the relief, and I need to be able to listen to audiobooks (always at 1.5x or 2x speed to churn through them) or podcasts of whatever I want to stay awake. It’s a lot of work getting her to all of her therapies, that’s the job. And it’s a lot of work for her, so getting to watch her “stories” in the car is fair.

So far this year I’ve finished audiobooks of The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton and The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson. I’m on a streak, I thought they were both fantastic. But I’ve just started my next audiobook, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman, and it is EVERYTHING. It’s just glorious, and I can’t get enough. This is what helps push me through these long Tuedays especially to make sure H is getting what she needs where she needs it.

And then at 10pm I’m ready to pass out, which is what I’m going to go do right now. Possibly with a little Midsomer Murders on the telly, the early seasons of that show work better than a sleeping pill on me.