Sunday, June 9, 2013

Please Save Me From the Wild Monkeys

*So, I've been going through some stuff on the blog, and I found this draft (as well as a few others that I will get to at some point) that I had written back in December  2011 and never posted.  I hated for you all to miss this glimpse into our crazy, lovely life, so here it is, a year and a half late!  I wanted to explain all of that so that everyone would understand that my kids were younger when all this happened, and that when you read the part in this one about Christmas coming up, you will understand that I wrote this 18 months ago and I'm not (completely) off my rocker.*

Today was a doozy.  It started off with Korban wheezing and barking at 4:30 a.m.  I got up and gave him a breathing treatment, which thankfully helped and we went back to sleep.  (Sort of.)  He was supposed to have OT and Speech at 8:00 this morning, but I canceled those appointments and made a dr's appointment instead.  Brad needed my van for work today, so he had taken it and left me his car.  Unfortunately, he also took his car keys with him.  Since I don't really know how to hot wire vehicles, that sort of left me in a bind.  He felt really bad about it, but I wasn't planning on going anywhere except to the dr, and by then I could tell that it wasn't an emergency, so I just called and rescheduled the appointment until tomorrow.  Matter of fact, if behavior was any indicator of future asthma issues, I wouldn't worry with going at all.  He certainly had enough breath to scream, screech, holler, etc etc.  But I'm afraid if I let it go, he will be worse during Christmas, right when all the dr's are closed and we are wanting to have fun.  So I think I will just get him checked out and get a prescription of steroids to hang onto in case the need should arise.  Which, hopefully, it won't.  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.  I learned that one from past experiences.

So thankfully Korban didn't seem too sick, but oh my word, I do not know what got ahold of my children today!  It's always a bit of an adjustment for Korban when he is on break from school.  He asks about school, but he doesn't freak out and pitch a fit about not going. He is just out of his routine.  And just in case you don't know, routine is a VERY big deal for kiddos with autism.

 Additionally, Selah will NOT nap when her brother is home.  Like I mentioned before, he's very loud.  He also cannot stand to not be directly where he can see me, which really limits me being able to take her into a quiet room and get her to sleep.  No matter where you go, it ceases to be a "quiet room" if there is a little person beating on the door and screaming at the top of his lungs.  You can't reason with him.  He doesn't understand that if he will just let us be for just a little while, he will have me to himself for two whole hours.

Selah is not the world's best napper anyway.  I thought that was pretty normal for most kids, but I am starting to doubt that fact.  Recently I had the privilege of baby-sitting one of Selah's sweet little buddies a couple of times.  His mommy explained that to get him down for his nap, all you do is put him in his crib, turn on a crib toy, walk away, and shut the door.  I've heard of this, but never actually seen it put into practice.  So the first time I kept him, I tucked him in, told him we loved him, and slipped out the door with Selah.  I braced myself for screams, but none were forthcoming.  His family has a video monitor (best baby invention EVER!) and I immediately dashed over to the screen to see what he was doing.  I gawked at the image on the monitor as he picked up his blanket, laid down, and went right to sleep.  "Dat's pretty cool," Selah said.  I think she may have been talking about the screen that allowed us to spy on her little friend so effectively, but I was more impressed by his napping abilities.

Until that moment, I thought children who could put themselves to sleep were mythical creatures, like, you know, unicorns and such.  So it sort of had me rethinking a lot of things.  I know those parenting books say not to nurse your babies to sleep, that you should just nurse them until they were sleepy and then lay then in their crib and let them fall asleep alone.  But I never actually did that.  Do you know how hard it is to keep a nursing baby awake?  At least in the early days...  But I fell into that habit and it was hard to break.  Korban was a HORRIBLE sleeper.  (Thank you, Autism.)  But he is much improved now.  (Thank You, Jesus!)  I didn't wean Selah until a couple of months before her 2nd birthday.  She sleeps quite well at night, but fights the nap.  I read to her, sing, and rock, but it takes a while.

 I would actually be willing to try letting her cry it out in her crib--since apparently that method works really well for some kids and they don't even cry!--but we took her crib down to a toddler bed months ago because she's such a proficient little climber.  So I'm not too sure how to approach that.  At any rate, I think her friend may have rubbed off on her a little, because we were actually approaching something resembling a decent nap schedule.  And then Christmas break happened.  So after an hour and a half of fighting the nap today, I gave up.  I was hoping that she wouldn't be too cranky this afternoon and would go to bed early tonight.

After deciding that nap time wasn't going to be a reality, I moved on to the next item on the list:  snack time.  I opened the fridge and let the kids pick whatever they wanted from the snack drawer.  Korban immediately said he wanted an applesauce, so Selah handed him one and went back to debating the merits of yogurt vs. a fruit cup.  So I left her to decide that one and went ahead to get Korban settled at the table.  Big mistake!  As I turned back toward the fridge, I hear a sound like water running.  Ominous.  I looked around the bar to see Selah with a measuring cup, Brad's pitcher of Kool-Aid and my pitcher of tea.  You know that commercial where the kid tries to pour a glass of orange juice, and it misses the cup and goes into the floor?  Yeah, you know where this is headed.  So that took a little minute to clean up. 

Then they had a very energetic play time, that involved Selah dragging out some of her dance gear to dress up in.  At some point in all this, right as it was starting to get dark, I decided I needed to go get something out of the van.  I didn't shut the door behind me because I didn't want the kids to cry.  That was a mistake.  They both bolted out the door and took off running across the yard like they had never seen the outside of our house before.  So I'm frantically running after them, yelling at them to stop, and all I can think is that they are going to get away, and I'm going to have to call the police and report them as missing.  And when they ask me for their descriptions, I will have to admit that my beloved daughter got loose whilst wearing a t-shirt, sweatpants, and TAP SHOES!!!  Maybe the thought of being the mom who let her kid get loose in tap shoes spurred me on, because I was able to apprehend my little fugitives at the edge of the yard and escort them back to the house. 

They aren't really showing any signs of fatigue yet, but I certainly am.  Our house is an absolute zoo more often than not, but I sure do love these little wild monkeys!

*Just wanted to say that I had honestly forgotten this day, and I'm glad to get the chance to go back and read about it.  It's interesting to see how much things have changed and how much they stay the same.  My children still love to bolt away and scare me to death, but Selah can't fit in her tap shoes anymore.  Although now that I think some more about it, it seems like tap shoes would make a kid easier to track so maybe we need to invest in another pair!  On the bright side, reading about Korban waking up with an asthma attack made me realize just how much better that has gotten.  It was so scary when he was really little.  And looking back, this post was written in December 2011, and we had just started his IViG infusions the month before in November 2011.  His asthma and health in general has been so much better since starting them. I hate for him to have to go through that each month, but they have truly helped him SO much.*

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