Cobra Starship was playing on the radio, when Izzy threw her head back and screamed, at the top of her lungs, “La la la la”.  She grabbed Nathan’s hand, who was standing up held in between Owen’s lap, and started dancing with him.  Her head gyrated, hips rolled, feet bouncing, eyes beaming as she danced with her brother.   Gryffin wanted in on the fun so held him up next to Izzy and Nathan.  Izzy let go of one of Nathan’s hands, grabbed one of Gryffin’s hands, and started dancing with them both.  Gryffin belly-laughed, full of joy and excitement, which made Izzy laugh, which made Nathan laugh.  The moment continued for a while until I thought my heart was going to burst with joy.

There is magic in 3.  They belong together.  They love each other so much.  There is an amazing chemistry between these 3 kids.  Nathan anchors Izzy.  Izzy entertains Nathan.  Izzzy loves her baby brother and tries to hug him, feed him, hold him.  Gryffin belly laughs at his sister’s antics.  Nathan reaches out to touch Gryffin whenever he’s around.   And Gryfffin…he just takes it all in and smiles.  He’s our love boat.

Nathan is in great spirits.  He’s eating well, happy, wanting to play and interact with his brother and sister.  Perhaps the 3 days in the hospital helped cure something that had been bothering him for a while because he is doing so well, you’d never know that less than a weeek ago he was in the hospital. Perhaps it’s being back home with his brother and sister.

There’s magic between those 3.  And I… I love watching it unfold.  I love watching the many ways they love and support each other. It’s magical.

People often tell me, “I don’t know how you do it.  You have so much on your plate.”  The thing is, to someone looking from the outside there’s a facade that looks pretty good.  It’s like one of those fake houses at Universal Studios, the ones you see from the tram tour?  They look like these perfect beautiful houses.  But when you go around the back you see that there’s nothing there, it was just a facade, all you had was the APPEARANCE of this perfectly beautiful house.

When you come around to the inside of our lives you see all the cracks, chips and creases.  You see all the things that don’t get done.  You see all of the compromises that have to be made in order to make it all work.  You see a little bit of chaos, a little bit of insanity, a lot of busy-ness, a lot of juggling of needs.  I keep it together.  But there is always a cost.

Like all of those things that I don’t get to do.  Like reply back to emails.  Like talk on the phone.  Like vacuuming the house.  Like making it to all of our appointments.  Like being on time to appointments.

I wish I could do so much more for my children.  I wish I could be better about staying in touch with people, replying to emails, phone calls, text messages.  But my brain can only handle so much.  Pre-chronic fatigue, I could keep up with it all, my brain had so much more computing space.  Post-chronic fatigue, I can only handle about a fifth of what I used to handle.

I wish I could keep it together better, I really do.  There’s so much I wish I had the energy to do, especially staying in touch with so many of you who I truly love, admire, respect, appreciate.  But I just can’t do it.  Mentally, physically, emotionally.  Do you remember your old old computer, the one you first got 10 years ago?  The one that would sporadically give you the blue screen of death?  The one that would shut down if you tried to do too much too fast?  The one that was VERY SLOW and took forever for every command?  That’s a little bit like I feel these days.

I do appreciate your feedback & support, very much.  Everyone’s comments about nutrition and medicines were very helpful.  I really took them into consideration and came up with some conclusions.

I decided to give Singulair a try.  It seems like a benign enough drug, and I figure I can try it, and since I know Nathan so well I should be able to notice a difference in him if it is having side effects, at which time I can just stop giving it to him (I don’t have to wean him off).  I consulted Nathan’s naturopath and she felt it was worth a try.

As for nutrition, I decided to apply the 80/20 rule.  So long as 80% of the kid’s intake is healthy, I’ll let them have some not so healthy stuff the rest of the time.  Seems like a good compromise.  I already started this week by buying more gluten casein free snacks, more fruits, and slowly changing the snacks I give the kids.

This was a good week for us.  The kids have had lots of health checkups.  We saw the MD, naturopath, and homeopath.  Friday we see a new chiropractor.  Izzy is getting tested by both the naturopath and MD for her chronic diarrhea, which both believe is affecting her behavior.  Nathan is getting some new supplements (Transfer Factor, Colostrum) as well as getting a few more tests to see if we can find ways to improve his health.

We are keeping it together.  Sometimes it’s not pretty.  Other times, like today, when I am in total overwhelm, I simply have to call in for help and walk out to a yoga class so I can de-stress and recoup.  I am grateful for my support system, both physical and online.  That’s how we keep it together.