honeymoon is over but the commute is not

Laura gives a much more personal account of all this HERE.

Laura called me as soon as she arrived at the feeding clinic on Thursday morning. Ira was not happy. The honeymoon was officially over. I’m glad we had two days of bliss to begin with but Ira’s no dummy. He realized in the car on Thursday morning that we were serious about this eating thing and he didn’t like it one bit. According to Laura, he cried the final fifteen minutes in the car. And for parents who aren’t used to hearing (like seriously hearing) their child cry, well, it was a big deal. And things didn’t necessarily get better throughout the day. Honeymoon periods are nice, aren’t they? But they eventually come to an end.

In related news, Laura sat down with the feeding clinic team on Thursday afternoon to talk about goals. The team was very frank with Laura and how they thought things would go down with Ira. According to the team, Ira’s got a long way to go. Therefore, it will be a long time before Ira is eating like typically developing children his age. With the help of the team realistic goals were set. As I can discern we’ve got two goals: One, hopefully we can get Ira to eat pureed foods by the end of the feeding camp. And, two, by eating I mean getting about an ounce of food into him at each meal. In other words, most of his nutrition will still come from tube feeding. This was the realistic wake-up call we needed to hear.

That news was a bit jarring and was hard to hear. We had our hopes up and so it was hard not to hear that news as bad news. On the other hand, that’s a step in the right direction so we’re ultimately happy about that. It’s just that we were hoping to shoot for the moon with this eating thing!

But to counter that news was the news that Ira got a spot in a school that Laura and I have been very impressed with. Ira will be going to a YAI school in Manhattan called Gramercy. We’re so excited about this because it’s a top-notch school with tons of services. And they seemed really excited about Ira fitting into their program.

Back to the feeding clinic, the commute is crazy. I’m wondering how some of you do that day in and day out. How do you do an hour commute one way every day? How? Doesn’t it suck the life right out of you? Is it worth living that far way from you job? I’ve heard people say things like I spend my time in the car winding down before going home to the family or I make use of that time listening to edifying radio programs or the silence in the car is good for me but every day? I’m not buying it. Someone enlighten me. Why are Americans commuting such long distances every day of their lives?