AUGGGGHHHH!!!! Un-be-freakin'-lievable!
Our babysitter gave her notice! Basically she can't afford to work
for us. I've been worried about this from fairly early on, actually,
when it became more obvious what her circumstances were, but she
reassured me that she'd be fine. UGH...I knew I shouldn't believe
her...
Meanwhile, I tried calling our second choice from the last set of
interviews, but she's not home which doesn't seem like a very good sign.
And after more thought we decided we really weren't comfortable with
choice #3 (had too many ideas of what kids should do) and they fell off
pretty quickly after that. So unless I get lucky and choice #2 just
happened to be out shopping, we are back to the drawing board and the
question of do I stay or go at work. And they have been being so nice
this week, too...and I was really actually pretty excited about working
with the disability services board and also with a stream task force
that I was nominated for recently and was starting to feel more psyched
about work again...argghhhh..... 
We're just kind of bumbling along right now...
Bob seems to be feeling a bit better for now, says his heart has been
skipping a lot less. He attributes part of it to going back on Atkins,
and I think the other part is that it's been a few days now since he was
up with Laurel for any length of time - after that night I made more of
a point of being the one to get her (as opposed to alternating) and
also, the last couple of nights she has managed to put herself back to
sleep without our having to get her. He did say the next day that he
didn't really mean what he said. She is still crying a lot though so I
know that's still hard on him (me too). And to top it off our
babysitter's been out sick all week, and he's been staying home with
Laurel so I could get ready for a public meeting tomorrow (not to
mention that he has a lot more leave than I do, and a laptop so he can
work at home when she naps and at night). And, for some reason her
g-tube has started leaking massively around the edges - we have a
surgeon's appt for her tomorrow to see if changing it out will help. I
tried suggesting that maybe we should pay another visit to the GI doc
too just to make sure he wouldn't have any ideas the ped didn't have
regarding her discomfort but DH was very negative about that. I also
tried scheduling her for Botox for her ankles (which have gotten really
tight lately and we're thinking that might be part of the problem) but
was told that it would probably be six weeks to get it approved by
insurance because it is experimental. ("You're kidding!" I
said - Botox was well-established as a treatment for CP when Laurel was
born. Her early intervention case manager [who has CP] had been getting
it for years when we met her. There are appearing to be some issues with
its long-term effectiveness, but short-term, IT WORKS. Arrrgghhhh....)
I called that number I was given for the "Blue Ridge Care
Connection for Children" and they were supposed to discuss our case
on Monday and call me, but I haven't heard anything so I guess I'll have
to call back. Respite is not their main thing anyway. Meanwhile I did
some research on my own and the most likely bet for respite that I found
was to send her to a special-needs camp. Believe it or not, some of them
actually take 4-year-olds (and lots more of them take 5-year-olds). Who
knew? We figured she'd have to be a lot older. We're not ready to send
her off for a week but there's one about 5 hours away in PA that offers
weekends and has an opening the weekend of Feb. 25-27. I talked to a guy
there this morning, he says they can handle her needs and he's supposed
to send us an application. If it goes well we may consider the week,
although it's awfully expensive. Once she turns 5, she'll qualify for
the Easter Seals camps in Virginia - or we may try something farther
afield and just spend a week vacationing in that area ourselves.
Assuming she likes camp. BOY I hope she likes camp. I have to say that
just having the prospect of respite has helped my mood.
On the babysitter front, it turned out our #2 choice had signed a
contract for another job THAT MORNING. We decided to gulp and wait till
after the holidays to advertise. We felt that 1) the pool of people
looking for a job may not be that great right now and 2) we didn't want
to trash our holiday season by spending all our (read: my ) spare
time returning calls and interviewing. We are putting the word out at
our church now (not something we've tried before, seemed like it was
worth a shot), but holding off on the ads. Who knows, maybe we will get
lucky at church and not need to run any. 
So that's where things are...I don't feel like they're good , but
they're out of crisis mode for now. Hoping they can stay that way for a
while - at least till, say, after the holidays... 
Laurel has been sick AGAIN (that makes 5 colds, a sinus infection, and hand-foot-and-mouth disease since the beginning of September) and the babysitter was out again the last couple of days so I haven't been at the computer much. It was some awful stuff Laurel had, she pretty much screamed continuously for three days no matter what we did. She is recovering but still a ways from 100% and now Bob is coming down with it (oh, joy). We were supposed to make a trip to PA for her therapy program Thursday night/Friday but I'm going to try to beg out of it. Wish me luck (we lose our $250 deposit if I'm not sufficiently convincing).
[Note: Guess I never posted a follow-up to this, but I did succeed in postponing the trip.]