May 2, 2020

Once upon a time at the beach, Shannon decided to make herself a bed out of flat rocks. She thought is was quite comfortable, and I do believe she fell asleep there for a while. If I haven't mentioned it before, I will now: Shannon LOVES her naps. She loves sleeping in general, and is quite good at it. I know that's a weird thing to say, but some of us are not very good at sleeping. When I wake up in the morning and someone asks if I slept well, I usually say no. It's something I apparently do not do well. Some people can sleep through fire engines arriving at their home with sirens and lights ablaze, responding to a smoke detector going off in their own room! Some of us can hear the sound of a planet turning a million miles away, and it keeps them up all night. I'd be the latter, but Shannon is the poster child for "How to sleep through everything".

 I first heard from Shannon today at 2:57pm. She didn't have any therapies, and I had tried several times over several hours to text and FaceTime her. Why was she not responding? She was sleeping.

So to report on how Shannon is doing today: She slept well.

I teased her about getting her days and nights mixed up and she told me that she's been working hard all week long and this is the one day she get's to sleep in! ‘Sleeping in’ doesn’t extend past breakfast AND lunch for most people. But if you are good at something- you obviously excel at it.

Other than the excellent sleeping- there was this:

Followed by:

So clearly her long term memory is still intact! :D

As for the home front, we had a VERY productive day.

We cleaned the cement dust off the hardwood, vacuumed all the carpets, dusted everything, covered all the vents, fixed the garden box covers, planted the garden, held a garden netting fashion show, ate a picnic on the deck, finished cleaning out the bedroom space of the basement so work can start on it, picked up a closet organizer for the bedroom, moved all of the cement that was jack hammered out of the basement, cut down two bushes, accidentally made some robins orphans....and by then it was like 7:15. ;)  We also had some super amazing friends come over and get started on the the front walk rebuild so we can get it ready for Shannon's ramp.

 I don't know if Shannon enjoyed it, but we FaceTimed her while we were outside doing things, including showing her the nest. It was too gorgeous of a day to have slept through the whole thing with curtains drawn, and we try to include her in whatever we can.

Shannon has made such enormous progress, despite what she still needs to accomplish. It's not at all easy for her to work on her therapies to get stronger and more independent, and sometimes is super frustrating for her. I know that beyond the physical struggle, Shannon is dealing with the emotional and mental aspect of it. It's a hard thing to have to work through. But most days, she is upbeat, positive, joking around with her caretakers, and working hard without complaint. She truly is amazing.

Please pray for her to be able to stay positive and feel comforted in her recovery, to see her own progress, to help her spinal cord heal, and to be able to get rest so she is ready to work on her therapies again on Monday. Thank you for your ongoing prayers, and your love and support.

Shannon's Meme today:

"This much I know. If you are what you eat, I only wanna eat the good stuff." Remy- Ratatouille.