Hello everybody!!

Hopefully you haven't given up on me altogether, but I wouldn't blame you if you had. Long time, no post!

Long story short, due to my medical problems, we had to decide how to proceed with life. I could not do all the things for all the kids, and properly unschool them. I could do most of the kids, if I didn't have Breanna home, or I could do Breanna's very time intensive stuff, if I didn't have the other kids.

In the long run, we decided to put Bre back in school. She wanted to go back, while none of the other kids did. She needs a pretty strong routine provided every day, and I couldn't do that when I'm fine one day and completely swiped the next. Honesty, recovery from this issue has taken much longer than I expected. The drs have all said to expect recovery to take three to six months! SO I'm looking at next year to be back to my regular energy, with no pain.

Anyway, so Bre started back to school, and is now in the high school. There have been a few bumps in the road, but overall she is very happy. There are typical kids in the classroom that she happens to love, and they seem to do okay with her. She has a one-on-one aide, and takes her own lunch and snack every day. They do academics every day, and provide skills training as well. She knows the household chores, but she loves the predictability of practicing. Probably the only kid in the world who does!

Going slow, one step at a time

Sorry I haven't been updating, things are CRAZY around here. I don't even have pictures uploaded from my camera. Bre started taking medicine, which is a first.

From the time she was small, I've been adamant that we would not use medication to change who she was...autism is not a disease. We tried all kinds of diets and supplements, and had not seen a noticeable reaction. However, over the past six months she has gotten increasingly distressed and sometimes violent. Mostly towards herself, but to others as well. This obviously isn't a way we can live...something had to change. She's not emotionally or mentally capable of making those changes herself, and I have worn myself ragged trying to control everything in her surroundings to help. Staying up all night to keep her from targeting Avari in her sleep, to preventing Nathan from playing like a normal two year old so the noise and chaos doesn't push her too far.

Kids shouldn't have to grow up afraid. They shouldn't have to grow up with hidey holes in case their sister gets mad. They shouldn't flinch when someone raises their arm because they're used to violence. It would be irresponsible of me to not take care of this, and it's downright abusive to lock up the offender or sending her away rather than providing a medicine that helps regulate the way her brain works.

So we've started a low dose of risperdal, and it has helped tremendously. Not only has the hurting stopped, her language has increased. It hasn't changed who she is...she still tells her favorite jokes, she still gets frustrated and angry, she still laughs and cries and IS. However, she has a little doorstop that keeps her from flipping into a uncontrollable rage, and she has enough time to really THINK about what she's about to do. She doesn't WANT to hurt anyone. She doesn't WANT to have anyone angry with her. She wants to be happy and to feel loved. And she deserves to feel that way too.

On to the dentist...

A few months ago, our dentist said with surety that Breanna needed braces. We're not big on cosmetic reasons, but she has an impacted tooth, and the others are cracking from being too tight. So, the one kid I cannot reason with, is the one who gets a mouth-full of hardware.

The first appointment went really well, but it was just a consultation. She really loves the orthodontist, he knows her favorite music. We made appointments, one a week, to get settled into it. The first appointment was making impressions, which her very sensitive sensory issues did NOT do well with! However, they used the impressions to set up her brackets so that they just slide the brackets on and use the UV gun to harden the glue. The next week, it only took about 20 minutes to do the brackets and the wires.

(sorry about the bad pic, my camera is broken, so all pictures are via camera phone!)

Unfortunately, the girl is insane. Within half an hour of getting home, she ripped all the brackets off the top row! We had to make an emergency appointment and spent over an hour getting the brackets glued back on, one at a time. Fortunately, she left them alone after that, and has done a great job for three weeks. She's really good about asking to have her teeth cleaned, or for wax to cover the wires.

Last week, new impressions, because not only does she need braces, but she'll need a palate expander for at least 12 months. We'll see how it goes. She was to have it put on yesterday, but today is her day for surgery, and the orthodontist decided to wait a few weeks to let her heal.

So today is surgery. I'm a little nervous. We're not big on medical interventions of any kind, even painkillers, so the idea of general anesthesia makes me wiggy. The idea of BRE on GA makes me even more wiggy. Long story short, wish us luck. Not sure how she'll do, but I'm hoping that she'll sleep a lot (her usual response to pain or sickness)

Random pictures...

Nathan has teh Gift...he's been accepted to the Jedi training program.

if he could just stand up, it'd be easier

"Judge me by my size, do you?"

Omni building room

shuttle was open

as was the segway training floor

and just for fun, Bre playing with makeup

Water party traditions

Every year Breanna has a water party for her birthday. We don't have an above ground pool this year, but we do have lots of water...water balloon fights!

Babies in swimsuits...
and a little tie dye, but with spray bottles instead of squirt bottles
Aden
Ava
Breanna loves the water!
Dan too...
and Sam...

Long autism day...

or week. Or month. You name it. Since puberty hit, i guess. Part of it, I'm sure, is me being pregnant and tired, and pretty much done with crazy for now.

Fortunately we had a Mobley appointment yesterday, in which we could discuss some of the more recent problems. I'm labeling them as regressions. Her stimming has gone sky high, she's hurting herself more, she's yelling and almost tic-like in her verbal stims (which the Mobley had mentioned previously that she's a tetch touretty. Really loud and deep, gruff barking, clearing her throat, grunting, etc) At the museum on Monday she bull-dozed a few elderly people over, with a weird, stomping pace that she just couldn't stop. And if you tried to look in her eyes, they just rolled away, she couldn't cope with it. 

I'm reassured that some of this is normal, with puberty in autism (I think I blogged about that before, adolescent regression of autism?). Part of it is that she's been sneaking the corn. She's allergic to it, not in an anaphylactic way, but very behavioral. She also craves it, much like any addict craves the item to which they are addicted. Zane and I finally managed to talk about it and realized that nearly every day she'd been sneaking something, she even snuck out to the truck and ate a cup full of sonic mints, which she HATES. She has regular peppermint, corn free in the house, and she still snuck out there. She was caught eating store-bought cake out of the trash at someone else's house. She's been eating the lotion she got for Christmas (and yep, pretty much anything that smells purty has corn-based carriers, lotion, soaps, cleaners) 

There isn't much we could do about it. I'm very much opposed to medicating for behavior. In the long run, it doesn't help because behavior needs to be replaced by more appropriate behavior. The Mobley agrees. I'm opposed to getting rid of all the corn, because we have kids with other allergies and it limits THEIR food. The Mobley agrees that even if we got rid of all the corn in our house, it wouldn't help, because it's a big freakin world out there. We can't do that her whole life. So, we're filling her spare time with LOTS of stuff, mostly chores because she does not like most hobby type stuff. She doesn't play. She might ride her bike for ten minutes, but she won't just play with toys or jump or swing. She LOVES to do dishes and laundry, so before she gets overwhelmed, we're directing her to check on those. She's taking the trash out alot. She's not coordinated enough to knit or crochet or sew, so I'm trying to find some other useful crafty type of hand filler. She's not coloring as much, just small artworks for friends when they come over. She's not writing much anymore either. She does love to listen to the Muppets CD she has, and she's been singing along.  

Haircuts today

Edit: Duh, add the pics already. These don't do them justice, they just look so cute!

Got some hair cut today. Not me. Not yet. Mines short enough, although I think I might get it trimmed into something sassy. Maybe some color as well.

But Josh and Bre got their hair cut. Bre's was growing out from the last time she shaved it, and she was starting to trim it back herself (she really cannot stand hair on her face or over her ears), so I asked the lady if there was ANY way she could make it look a little feminine, give Bre some pride AND get it off her ears. So we have....



Josh, who has also always hated hair around his ears, has had a caesar cut for as long as I can remember, opted after his last birthday to grow it out. So it's been growing for nearly ten months and was really wild. Not only bushy thick wiry hair, but frizzy from all the dead parts. So he got his hair trimmed and thinned and looks like....


Sam wants some kind of haircut. I only ask that he wait until after Thanksgiving so I don't have to deal with making all these allergy safe foods and figuring out what he wants. Kind of a mohawky thing and he's the only person I've ever known to request a mullet, with an extra long tail. I'm confused, and he's not quite getting it into words I understand. Maybe I should just give him the scissors and let him go for it, but after Thanksgiving. I get enough crap from family about my kids. :-P

Psych appointments

First of all, we love our psychologist. Not just because she's the coolest ever, even though she is. Not just because she affirms me, even though she does. Not because she builds up my kids without tearing them down, although she does every single visit.

Not just because she's fair, she doesn't take the side of parent against child arbitrarily, she keeps her cool, breaks stuff down so that even I can understand it. But because she knows stuff.

Stuff like Adolescent something-or-another of Autism. Yeah, I'm so smart, we just left and i can't remember what it's called. Could be the four hours of sleep I got last night, since Ava isn't sleeping nights and Bre is up at 6am each morning. Add to that the burning flames of hades I have (some people call it heartburn, whatever)  every night until about midnight, my sleep pattern is not good. 

That's neither here nor there, but what Adolescent S-O-A of Autism consists of is a big, fat regression. Living with Bre right now is like living with the feral monkey that we knew at the age of two. She's having accidents again. She's incapable of using words to ask for what she wants. She's not eating food outside of rice and McDonald's nuggets. She *is* eating leaves and other wild plants at the park. I caught her sticking mistletoe berries in her mouth. She's running and screaming and mumbling in strange voices. She's biting her hands and eating the cuticles from her toes. It's a little frustrating and a lot scary. 

I've been blaming myself a lot...maybe I'm not maintaining enough of a routine. Perhaps her heavy work isn't regular enough, she needs more movement, jumping, swinging. I've been encouraging her, but she's really not listening. Maybe she's getting corn in somewhere...we've been very careful, all of her favorite foods have added dextrose or corn syrup lately, so I'm busting my butt making stuff from scratch to fulfill those needs. i can't make honey nut scooters from scratch however.

But I learned something great today...like most kids with autism undergo this when the flush of prepubescent hormones washes through their system. Drives their systems crazy, and they just can't regulate it. It's so well known (How well known is it?) well, it's so well known that even back in the day (haha) when drs just recommend you stick your kid in a closet or sanitarium after diagnosis, that they even talked about it back then. sigh. I never heard about it. 

Bad news, is that it can last 18 to 36 months....just long enough to make me insane, I'm guessing. Because I love this child desperately, but the screaming and moaning mutters. must. stop. now. I can handle about an hour before. i. need. a. drink. And I'm pregnant. and. can. not. drink.

Edit: To be fair to Bre, she really *is* doing good in some places. She really did buy a pumpkin at the patch. She will hold a book if I give it to her and actually read some of it. She's not hurting other people, which was a horrible part of her younger childhood that I am thankful we're not revisiting.