eSpecially Ben

The follow-up meeting with Social Security Administration was this week. We spent the meeting reviewing paperwork, answering questions and planning for our next phone meeting. Basically, everything is still up in the air; however, I do believe that we will have to file a Waiver for Over Payment. I do not think that anything I provided will change the outcome. In order for the Waiver to be approved, I will have to prove that (1) we do not have the money to pay it back (not hard) AND that  (2) the over payment was not our fault (hard but not impossible). With Supplemental Security Income, a family may not have more than $5000 in resources. This includes any money in the bank (checking and savings), stocks and bonds, vehicles and a number of other items. One car is excluded off the bat, but any other car either has to be financed with its equity counting toward the $5000 resource limit. We do have a second car that is paid for and the value is $4500. We can have $500 in checking and

In October, I received a letter from Social Security Administration saying that Ben no longer qualified for SSI AND we owed a very large over payment for two years of SSI that Ben did receive. The letter showed that we owned two of the same car. I knew this was wrong and immediately wrote a letter. I thought it was a computer glitch. Over the past five months, I have met with Social Security, spoke with several people over the phone and wrote countless letters providing documentation to show the cars we actually owned and filed appeals for the decision to revoke Ben's SSI during the two year period they think we owned these two cars. Tomorrow I have another meeting. I am hoping we can get this straightened out. This situation has caused a lot of stress for us and has taken a tremendous amount of our time trying to unravel the problem. I have not written a post in almost a month, partially because my brain power has been consumed with this issue and the bathroom saga (qualifies

While I was making pizza for dinner, Ben crawled to the dining room and sat in his chair. This is his way of communicating, "I am hungry." I enlisted Sean's help in giving Ben a snack so I could finish cooking. Before I knew it, Sean had the NOVA Chat and was asking Ben, "YES" or "NO" to the question, "Do you want more crackers?" Ben could not stop laughing as Sean took out the device and found the right pages. He was getting a kick out of his brother using the NOVA Chat. In the end, I helped a bit and Ben answered "YES". He finished the crackers and ate his dinner too. Later that night, I complimented Sean on the help and attention he has been giving Ben lately. His response, "I want Ben to think."

Sean received a camera for Christmas and here are a few of the snapshots he has taken since then:   Happy Valentine's Day!

Snow at last! About 7 inches, which is a blizzard for us in the Carolinas. I was embarrassed to hear our area was in a state of emergency and the National Guard was deployed in our city. When I told my sister, she said it was fairly normal to call a state of emergency for something like this. Kids have had one full day of school all week. Between watching the Olympics, playing with friends and sledding, they are living the dream. Logan even declared that losing spring break for this is, "way worth it." One day, Ryan ventured out with Logan and Sean to a local park for sledding. Later, our long time friend, Brian, picked up Ben and me to check out the sledding. Although Ben was too heavy for us to get up the hill for sledding, he was very pleased to just watch the action from the warmth of the car. Impromptu snowball fight on our leisurely walk.  Today, we tried taking a walk with the kids. I pushed Ben's chair about 3 i

Last May, Ben cracked his front adult tooth on the school playground . After a visit to the dentist, we knew about our options and decided to wait and see. We did not see a reason to rush into a decision. Today, Ben had this front tooth bonded. The new one matches his other teeth in color, texture and shape. Unless you look very closely, you would never guess it had ever been broken. BEFORE We were informed that for the life of this tooth, Ben must avoid hard foods - like biting into an apple or carrot or eating a hard granola bar. We will just wait and see how long this one lasts. DURING When we were leaving in the morning, Sean asked why I was taking Ben to the dentist since we had our regular checkup a few weeks ago. I told him that Ben was getting his front tooth fixed. Sean's eyes lit up, "Will they pull this one out and put in a silver tooth?" He was disappointed in my answer. And when I picked everyone up for early dismissal because of the snow,

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy or I don't know something until I know it. Take for instance, I spend a lot of brain power and time remembering to reorder Ben's four medications and picking them up throughout the month. I tried a year ago to get them all on the same schedule, but our current chain pharmacy could not get it done due to insurance regulations. Also due to insurance rules, automatic renewals were not allowed. Then for the past three months, Ben's pull-ups were not arriving on time unless I called. Sometimes I did not realize we were on the last package until it was too late. An emergency run to the grocery store to purchase expensive pull-ups was made. In addition, the product offered was not really doing what it should have been doing, but I was told it was the only one they offered. Finally fed-up with Ben's wet bed and umpteen trips to the pharmacy, I contacted Ben's case managers to see about other options. They gave me names of other companie