Laying here in bed with the kidlets on this Bank Holiday Monday, i haven't got the brain power to write a proper post, but i'm aware there's a few things that have happened i haven't posted about on here yet, so this is going to be one of those 'catch-up' posts, hope you all don't mind too much. Basically these are the things that have happened since i last wrote here 2 weeks ago:
- Finn has become even more cute, if that were possible. One night last week William was having really bad seizures and didn't seem to be coming out of them properly, so i gave him the emergency meds (diazepam) and we got ready to rush to the hospital in the middle of the night with all 3 kidlets (again) if that didn't work. Luckily the diazepam worked and he had no more seizures that night, though it really knocked him out (prolly the combination of the seizures and the meds to be honest) and poor little William was pretty much out of it the next day. Finn slept through much of the drama, but he must have taken some of it in because a couple of days later when William had one of his usual nightly seizures i went in there to find Finn had climbed into William's cot and was snuggled up next to him, squeezing his hand and saying "S'OK Wills...... Finn here" to comfort him. Which was just the cutest thing ever and so mature for a 20 month old! Once the seizure had stopped i scooped up both boys and we sat on the glider chair together, gliding and hugging until both boys fell asleep and i put them back in their beds. That incident (and some others) made me realise it wasn't such a good idea to give the boys separate bedrooms as i had been planning to, though we're still going to redecorate for them as they're currently in the nursery they first went into as babies.
- Speaking of redecorating, we've done a lot! The kitchen and bathroom we left as they were as they were both done not so long ago, but pretty much everything else has had or will have a make-over! The hallway is now an apple green with chunky cream furniture (console table, coat hooks, storage bench, etc) with seagrass baskets to hide all the junk; the lounge is now caramel brown walls with some nice sunset pictures, a new corner sofa with footstool and 2 swivel chairs with footstools (both big enough for 2 adults to snuggle together) plus oak furniture and a new 40" TV; the kids' playroom has been repainted with a 'jungle' wall scene and some bigger wooden chests to store all their things (1 each with their names on); our bedroom has been repainted duck-egg blue with new voiles and curtains, bed linen, floating shelves with nick nacks and i got a new dressing table, mirror and stool. That's where we're up to so far and i plan to decorate the loft room next to William's sensory room so that Poppy can move up there (she's so excited about being "in the roof") and then redecorate the boys' room in a more grown up theme (and get William his first ever bed as he's still in a cot). Very exciting and so nice to be in a 'new' house as Finn keeps saying!
- Speaking of Finn (again)... we had to make a trip to A&E in the week when our little scamp decided to shove a wheel from one of his cars up his nose and i couldn't get it out. To be honest i was more annoyed at the toy manufacturer because it said the car was safe for children over 18 months and it clearly wasn't if the wheels come of that easily, but i was relieved that the doctor at the hospital managed to get the thing out of Finn's nose without too much fuss, even though Finn was shouting "bad man!" at him the whole time (for some reason Finn associates doctors with being bad, probably because he's seen them do lots of things to his brother). Finn continues to challenge us daily with his antics of running, jumping, bouncing, climbing, tipping, piling, posting, ripping, flushing, wedging, banging, dropping, throwing, eating, smearing and licking. i'm going to start trying him on small amounts of weak tea each morning at breakfast to see if that has any effect (caffeine is meant to calm down kids with ADD or ADHD type conditions).
- In William news, the therapies are going well but slowly. William will now participate in some of the ABA tasks when an adult starts doing it with him and then gradually fades out their help. He has definitely cottoned onto the reward part of the procedure and seems to look forward to his daily time with Carla, so i'm hopeful that we're doing the right thing in this regard. No real breakthroughs on the 'floortime' therapy as yet but it does give us a nice bonding time together each day, so i'll continue with it. William continues to make prgoress with his sitting balance and the amount of time he can sit independently, though it is hugely affected by how tired he is and whether he is brewing for a seizure or not. He has started reaching out for and playing with toys whilst sitting by himself, which is something i could only dream of before and i now have hundreds of photos of him doing this! William is still fairly restricted in the types of toys he will play with, due to their texture, material, weight and also because he doesn't 'play' in the traditional sense, but he does love musical, noisy and water toys. It also seems to be getting easier to feed William these days, so i am going to try introducing some new foods into his diet soon, when i've got a bit more energy as i know it will be a battle at first. (BTW, thanks to everyone for their recommendations of other therapies that work for some kids with autism, but we've chosen our current therapies and are sticking with them for now. i've heard too many stories about 'this therapy is the best' or 'this treatment can cure autism' to know to be sceptical about them - sorry).
- Poppy is excelling at nursery and can't wait to go to school in September. She's already been enrolled in the 'gifted and talented' scheme in advance as she's so far ahead of where she should be for her age (she can write words from memory, sound out others in order to spell them, read whole books, recognise numbers to 100, and so on and she's not quite 4 yet!). Poppy has been watching as many animal programmes on our new Sky TV as she can and she can tell you plenty of facts about a growing range of animals. i think she might be the next David Attenborough when she grows up!
- me and Sir are doing well and going strong. i continue to follow the rules and serve Sir in as many ways as i can and Sir continues to train me once a week, so long as we can get the kids out of the house. Yesterday's session involved some quite heavy whipping with the single-tail, certainly the most severe whipping i have ever received and i was right there with Him the whole time, struggling to stay on top of the pain, yes, but not experiencing any of those feelings of worthlessness and panic that i had once before with this whip and that made it be a hard limit. So today i have lovely marks all down my front and Sir is very proud of me!
OK, think that's all for now. Hope to do another post later in the week.
