Sheepskin Sheepskin Baa Baa Baa

I would like Sandra Boyton to write us one of her classic children's books with the above title, though the contents might disturb those young fans of her ever present sheep...

Here goes my SMA Awareness spreading of the day:

I go a little bit crazy over sheepskin rugs.  Isaac received his first little lamb in his care package from CureSMA way back in June of 2014.  They are included in every care package because they help regulate temperature (hello, wool!) and reduce pressure sores.  Ever since then, Isaac has spent most of his life laying upon a sheepskin. After a few months of using his first one, we called CureSMA to ask where we could get a second. He loved it so much that we didn't like waiting for the first one to hang dry (we are talking days, even in the dry Colorado air).  Our friends at CureSMA were very generous and sent us a second one.  As it turns out, Isaac outgrew that little sheep, and it was no longer doing the trick for playtime on the floor (especially in the winter, when I wanted to curl up on the sheepskin with him). My parents found a 4-sheep rug at Costco and brought it out to us around Christmas of 2014.  Commence falling in love with playing on the floor. We folded it in half so Isaac gets extra cushion, and so it doesn't take up the entire width of the living room (my dog is afraid of it and won't step on it, so it's better to fold it than to have him leaping over Isaac all of the time).  Isaac still slept on his little sheepskin, with his legs sticking off the end.  It was working just fine, until I went to Ikea last year (also around Christmas, this tie 2015).  Guess what Ikea had? Four-sheep sheepskin rugs!  Guess what I bought?  Another rug!  This one I brought home and snuggled with on our couch for a few days before handing it over to Isaac. We cut it in half, and lo and behold! A sheepskin large enough for him to sleep on!  And such decadence, one half for each crib (he has one in our bedroom for night time, and another crib in our living room for naps and breathing treatments). We still use his little sheepskins, because they hold up incredibly well to daily use and frequent washing.  One of them is on Isaac's chair for his stroller.  The other one, I confess, is all for me.  I put it on the floor by Isaac's crib last winter, because my feet would get so cold standing on the wood floor when I put him to bed or roll him over at night.  Forget you slippers!  Seriously though, I often had a hard time finding both slippers in the middle of the night, and the little sheepskin makes my nights so much better.

Is that all, you ask?  Oh no, no, no, no.  This just brings us to yesterday.  Yesterday, I went to Costco, just to get, you know, some kitty litter and blueberries.  And there, between the winter clothes and the mattresses, were The Sheepskins.  A whole pile of glorious white, cream, brown, and what can only be described as a grayish agouti rugs.  I walked past them to get the cat litter.  I may have stopped so Natalie and I could pet them.  I may have started to fantasize about laying down a fresh, clean, grayish brownish agouti colored rug, taking up the old one, and washing it.  It has been used every single day for a year and a half, and it could use a break.  Here I picture sending it to The Emerald City to be shampooed and dried, but a laundromat and the cat brush will have to do.  And so, I brought home another sheepskin rug, a darker colored one that I pictured accenting our carpet so nicely.  On the drive home, I was startled every time I checked my blind spot, thinking that the rug on the backseat was my dog or some other large animal.  Once home, I threw it over our chair, where it continued to startle me all evening.  Jeremiah said it looked like a giant rabbit (see? agouti!).  Jessica, the nurse, was very excited about the rug this morning, and decided to lay it out for Isaac.  He was not as excited as I was, he probably couldn't have cared less that it was new or a different color. I left for work, dreaming of cleaning the old rug, of switching the two of them out, like you might with a door mat.

I returned home, about 4 hours later, to see Isaac playing down on the rug with his Occupational Therapist and Natalie playing with some My Little Ponies she got for her birthday.  I stepped over the rug and stopped.  There, on the lower right sheep, was a brick sized spot of completed flattened wool.  I asked "What happened there?"  Jeremiah replied "Bubbles.  The entire container of Ninja Turtle bubbles. Well, there's maybe a half inch left in the bottle."  It is easy to picture Natalie, perched on the edge of the new rug, blowing bubbles for her little brother, not noticing that she had accidentally tipped over the bottle.  Jeremiah had soaked up what he could, but there was so much liquid it had actually soaked into the skin of the sheep.  Five solid minutes of rinsing seemed to get out most of the suds, and it will be dry in a day or two.  So, it had 24 hours of pure glory, and then it was baptized, with bubbles, into the fold of well-loved sheepskins.

It's likely that you just read the word 'sheepskin' more times in this post than you have in all of your years combined.  And that is just a little part of our lives with SMA.  Baa.