Twas The Night Before Vacation

So this will be the first time we are going on a vacation since Elizabeth was about six months old and she is currently four now. We are headed to the beach for the week with my family. We are going to leave tomorrow night around 2 am with the hopes that the kids will sleep pretty much the entire way there. My kids have never been in a car more than an hour or two so a six hour car trip should be interesting.

There are a lot of considerations when you travel with children, especially if one of them has Autism. Will they be alright on the car ride to and from? Will they sleep in a strange bed in a strange room? Will I forget to pack something important for them? I would say that the single most important worry that I have is will Elizabeth eat down there. Elizabeth is in a very picky stage, she only eats a few things. She does not have any issues with textures or anything like that as some kids with ASD do but she will only eat a handful of things and they are mostly carbs.

We will likely eat breakfast and lunch in the condo and eat dinner out. Restaurants are always interesting, typically Elizabeth does pretty well. Except when she doesn't, and when that happens a bad time is had by all. Samantha is not always a complete angel either but at least her behaviors are kind of typical 2 year old stuff and we can usually redirect her pretty easily. We usually take the iPad's with us and that seems to distract them pretty well. The other issue with restaurants is that typically we order my kids either grilled cheese or chicken tenders with fries, and they cannot eat that everyday next week. I guess we are going to have to expand on our menu choices.

There are so many things to pack and so many things to get done before we leave and naturally I have put it all off so I only have tomorrow to get it done. I am also working an 8 hour day and will have to cook some type of dinner. Wish me luck!

Puke and other fun stuff

So there is nothing like walking into your child's room to check on them before you go to bed and immediately smelling something off. At first when I looked for the throw up I did not see it since the room was dark and she had kind of pulled the covers up over it. I assumed that maybe she had a really bad poop in her diaper. No such luck! Upon closer inspection there was puke everywhere. Apparently she threw up the last two weeks worth of stomach content, ok so that is a slight exaggeration but there was a lot. I am not even sure how all of that food was still in there and not digested at this point. So we gave her a bath and changed all of the sheets while airing out her room a bit. She seems happy and doesn't seem sick, which is good since this is her week of school for this month of the summer.

She has done this a time or two before where she has just thrown up but was not sick prior to it or after it. I am hoping that is the case this time as well since we do not have a babysitter tomorrow and if she can't go to school I have to take another day off of work. I had finally saved up a pretty good chunk of PTO time at work but with several appointments coming up in the next two weeks and our vacation next week I can pretty much say adios to that.

It would be so nice to just once take off work and actually do something that I enjoy but I am too scared to do that since I am always trying to save up my time for the numerous appointments my kids have throughout the year. I can totally understand how a lot of parents of special needs children cannot work, every other week I am having to take time off. I have been very lucky in that I work from home and that my boss has been very flexible when it comes to appointments and such.

 So now here I sit, waiting on the first load of bedding to get done in the washer so I can put in the second load. I do not want to let it sit overnight with the puke on it since the smell is pretty bad. Luckily there was a mattress pad on her bed since the puked soaked right through the sheets. I doubt I would ever be able to get that smell out of her mattress.

I am also really hoping that Elizabeth goes back to sleep. She is not the best sleeper and typically wakes up over night probably about 1/3 of the time and will not go back to sleep for hours. After getting pulled out of bed and given a middle of the night bath I will be amazed if she falls back asleep.

Anyway that is how my night is going, I hope you are having a better one.

Dinners and other related adventures

So it is almost 4:30 when the babysitter leaves for the day and that means it is almost dinner time. Dinner time in our house is sort of like a contest in which it is the kids vs myself. I try to assist one child getting a plate ready and as I am doing that the other one runs out of her seat. I wrestle that one back to her chair as the first one has dropped her plate all over the floor. I finally get both plates filled and on the table but as I try to fill my plate one of them will use it as an opportunity to either fight with each other, spill their drink (we are trying open cups), or instead of using a fork shove a handful of food into their mouths. Needless to say I do not look forward to mealtimes and often when its just me and the kids I do not get to really sit down to eat.

Making dinner in itself is a challenge. Typically Elizabeth is right under my feet trying to pull me one way or another as I am cooking up stuff in a scalding hot pan. While Samantha is aggravating Elizabeth to the point where they start fighting. I am amazed that no one has gotten burned so far. At my old house I had the kitchen gated off but since we are staying with my grandfather for the summer we are not able to do that in his style of kitchen so its pretty much a free for all.

This week is going to be spent preparing for vacation. We have not been to the beach in years so I am sure I will over pack everything as I tend to do. I need to make a list or something since I am very anxious that I am going to forget something important.

While a beach vacation sounds relaxing in reality going to the beach with a 4 year old with no safety awareness and a 2 year old daredevil is probably going to be anything but relaxing. Between hauling their stuff to the beach, chasing them down on the beach, changing diapers, and making sure everyone is fed it will likely be a rough week for me. Maybe I should buy a case of wine to take down to drink after they are in bed. =)

Swimming and Spreading Awareness

So yesterday afternoon I decided to stop at the grocery store with Elizabeth (4 years old) since we were a little early for her physical therapy. Elizabeth can really be hit or miss when it comes to going into stores, typically she is really good although typically I get a cart and put her in it. This time I decided not to get a cart since really I only wanted to buy us something to drink and a snack.

So we walk through the doors of the store and the first thing we see are a bunch of balloons. Elizabeth really loves balloons and wanted to play with them. I let her for a few minutes but then told her it was time to move on. Well you would have thought I was trying to kill her because she just began to do this whiny scream thing THE ENTIRE TIME! I just love walking through the grocery store getting those evil eyes from all of the old people. I could have taken her out to the car and not bought our drinks but I thought that I should probably just stick it out because if I leave every time we have an issue I would never be able to go anywhere. We eventually found what we were looking for and went to check out, Elizabeth had almost completely stopped yelling by that point. I guess we spread our awareness for the week!

That evening after therapy we decided to go swimming at my parents house. Elizabeth loved it! The only issue I am finding is that I cannot really decide on what flotation device to use with her. We tried the water wings (floaties? not sure what they are called) and a few other things. I ended up using one of those puddle jumper things (name??) on her and it worked alright. Elizabeth decided that she wanted to drink the pool water so as we were pulling her around the pool she kept taking big gulps of it. I am really hoping to find a special needs swim class for her but so far everywhere I have called does not have anything like that.

Samantha (2 years old) loved the water as well. She is such a dare devil. We opened the pool gate and she almost jumped in on her own. We finally got her flotation devices on her, and she jumped in. She loved the water and she really wanted to swim on her own without Mommy holding her which was a problem since we could not find a good flotation device for her either. It seems like everything we try their head still does down to far in the water.

Samantha eventually decided she was done swimming so we took off all of her gear and sent her out of the pool to NiNi (my mother) but the little trickster decided to jump in without warning. Luckily we caught her and she didn't go under or anything but man we are going to have to watch her closely around water.

We go to the beach in two weeks so hopefully we will get a few more swimming practices in before we go. We are lucky that Elizabeth is still only 4 but what do you do when they get older and are still in swim diapers. The place that we stay at will not let kids in diapers in the big pool, they are only allowed in the baby pool. I guess fingers crossed that she will potty train some day soon.

Sorry for any mistakes and misspellings!

Great Article

Here is a great article that I came across. So many of have so much guilt about not doing enough. I am one of them. Sorry no inspirational message in that but it is what it is.

http://www.fireflyfriends.com/special-needs-blog/specific/priorities-change-when-you-have-a-child-with-special-needs

Selling the House

So here we are, I actually had forgotten that I created this blog. Hence the no posts in 2 years.  We have sold our current house and are now living with my grandfather for the summer. It is going to be a very long summer and things were super stressful for the last few months. On the bright side my daughters have actually adjusted to the change really well. We are building a house and it is supposed to be ready in September. 

As for the Autism thing, it has gotten a bit worse lately. Elizabeth is in this super aggressive mode where she keeps attacking my younger daughter. I am trying out various ways of handling this but so far nothing has helped. She is also doing it to myself and other adults, which makes me think that maybe it is an attention thing. Her teacher agreed with me on that. I just wish I knew a way to stop it. On the bright side her teacher did say something along the lines of doing something for attention was a higher level of thinking (or maybe purposeful thinking?) and that was a good thing.