First Night Was a Success! – Sunday, August 20 2017

Mom hasn’t been here quite 24 hours yet, but I am calling her stay so far a victory. We got her home and rested for a little bit before heading out for a little shopping trip to Walmart. It was nice being on our own schedule. We ended up being gone for more than two hours! Of course when we got back I was already so far off of her “normal” schedule. I wouldn’t exactly call her schedule normal though. Most evenings she was put in bed as soon as she finished dinner. That meant she was tucked in before 6:15! I don’t even think I fed her dinner that early last night…

After dinner she got ready for bed and hung out in the living room for a bit. Her bathroom isn’t ready yet so we had to do everything in the half-bath/foyer on the main floor. No one else was home so it ended up being completely fine. She was pretty tired but I wanted her to stay up a little longer than normal. I know that if she goes to bed super early, she will also wake up super early. I want her to be on something closer to my schedule to hopefully maximize the amount of sleep I get. I don’t function very well when I’m overtired. I could tell that she was really sleepy though. I gave her her nighttime meds and it didn’t take her long to doze off. Thankfully I was smart enough to get her upstairs right after medicine-time. We got her tucked in and she was out in no time flat. I didn’t know how well she’d sleep and/or if she’d wake up in the middle of the night needing anything. I was pleasantly surprised that she slept through the night! If every night is like it was last night I will be so happy. I have to say – I’m glad that we’ll be getting some help. It took me over two hours to get her ready for the day! In all fairness, that did include breakfast. 🙂

We still have a lot of work to do in here to make things just right. Mom told us not to do too much. She didn’t want to give us an opinion on things and said that we should choose because it’s our house. Chad and I are trying very hard to convince her that this is her home now too. Her opinions are very important. She’s going to be here for an indefinite amount of time. Could be a year, could be ten. We’ll just have to see. But even if it’s only a month we want her to be as comfortable and happy as possible.

UPDATE – Yes, the day is still good but had to mention this. First – mom is totally OK but this was bound to happen sooner or later… I dropped her in the bathroom. “Dropped” is probably an exaggeration. She finished up and I was transferring her back to her chair. She was standing, went a little crooked, and started to lean toward her weak side. She hit the tipping point and there was no going back. Luckily I was there to hold her so we had a nice “controlled descent”. She told me she wasn’t hurt. Might have scared me more than it hurt her but that was no fun. She’s trying to rest now. She’s got her earplugs in since the guys are here doing tile work today. Not the best afternoon but it’s about to get better since Cyndie and Wade are less than an hour away!