Guarding Our Time

I have been thinking a lot recently about scheduling. Lily has four different therapy sessions every week, each of them an hour long: physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT), speech/feeding therapy and developmental services. I have been trying to figure out if there is one or two we could cut out of our schedule, or perhaps change to every other week, but each one serves a unique purpose and is so helpful for Lily. The problem is, when you put them all together in one week and repeat that over and over, I think some of it starts to lose its usefulness.

Last week when we were in the hospital, I was almost elated to be able to cancel all our therapy sessions that were scheduled for the week. No, it was NOT fun being in the hospital, but there was still a kind of vacation-like feel to it because that was the ONLY thing we were doing. Yes, it was terribly boring and absolutely exhausting. But, in a very weird way, it was also refreshing to take a step back from our daily life and just focus on BEING. It made me realize that maybe we are DOING too much.

Because Lily is about to age out of Early Intervention, I don't see much point in trying to change anything there. But when she turns 3 and switches to the public school system, I see a chance to start over. To re-evaluate her therapies and what's important. And I've also come to realize that it's ok if I'm not at every single therapy session. If she needs to get some at daycare, that's ok. It's ok (and good) for her to go to daycare a few mornings per week.

This afternoon I canceled her physical therapy session that was scheduled for tomorrow. I'm just not ready (and I don't think she is, either) to jump back into our full schedule. So, we are going to ease back in as much as possible. And hopefully in the future we can cut back a bit so that we don't have to.