Why I sometimes use the TV as a babysitter.

Sam has a lot of meltdowns. To anyone who ever met him as an infant this probably comes as no surprise. Thanks to severe reflux, he was screamy for the first seven months of his life.* Thanks to sheer cussedness, he's a screamy toddler. He has spent most of this week screaming his heart out because his cruel and unfeeling mother won't do things like let him play with the stove, carry around my best cooking tools and climb up and down stairs at will while I am not looking. Instead I make him do things like wear shoes outside, have his diaper changed and eat something other than blueberries for dinner. The horror!

I know that every child has meltdowns, especially when they're toddlers but I want you to believe me when I say that this is beyond normal. 90% of every day this week has been a mental breakdown of some sort. When the Child Watch coordinator called me to set up Sam's speech evaluation appointment (Feb 4th) she mentioned that I would need to drive him to their office for the evaluation, which is about 45 minutes north of us. I expressed my frustration at the fact that no one will come to the house (apparently they don't do that for evals which I guess I can understand) and mentioned that Sam + carseat = nothing but screaming the whole way. I explained that we can listen to about one song between our house and the Wal-Mart and even that's enough to make him scream most days. The lady on the other end of the phone was lovely and very tactful as she suggested that Sam might have some sensory issues as well. I think she's right on the money. While I don't think Sam's got full-fledged Sensory Processing Disorder, I can see that he definitely has some sensory issues that other kids just don't. That's probably the reason he loses it for every diaper change (and now you know why we're trying potty training so early.) It seems like every day brings some new challenege to my boy that he can't handle, whether it's making himself understood or suffering through a sensation that is uncomfortable to him, he clearly needs help.

And I need him to get help too because a screamy child all day makes for a very shouty, bad-tempered mother. I want to give him what he wants but so often handing him the object he's been desiring simply causes him to collapse on the floor and scream until tears are streaming down his face. He is a bright and beautiful little boy (maybe too bright) but he's never been a laid back kid. If we don't get some help now, I'm afraid he'll be completely out of control in a few years. Right now, Feb. 4th can't come fast enough for anyone in this house.



*One nice lady at our church remarks on how big Sam is every time she sees him. Then she follows that up with a wide-eyed expression and says "I don't know how you made it through his infancy. I really don't. That was horrible!" It makes me feel kind of validated.

Okay, give me one more day and I promise something coherent and semi-meaningful.

Oh so tired

I started back to work today and I am beat. Please accept my apologies and this picture to look at until tomorrow:

[caption id="attachment_347" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="Yeah he is!"][/caption]

A day in the life

Today Jeff went back to school which means that Sam and I swung back into our regular routine. Regular for us means:



Golfing with a backscratcher....



FORE!



Story time in the reading corner (which is surrounded by toys.) Current favorite: Once Upon A Potty. Is potty training upon us? I don't know but we read that book 15 times today (no exaggeration) and Sam sat on the potty twice. He was kind of freaked out to have his little bumpy hanging out in space and even more freaked out when we flushed the toilet. I think he needs his own little seat. I know it's early but I'm hopeful!



Sometimes we read so much I go cross-eyed. Oh, the sacrifices I make!

Not pictured is time spent in the "fort," aka my pots and pans cabinet. We took Twilight Turtle in there and looked at all the stars and enjoyed a drink and a snack.  Also not pictured is Dinnertime Madness where Sam tipped his chair backwards, managing to pin both feet and legs underneath it in such a way that I was not at all sure he hadn't broken both legs. Luckily he's fine, not even a bruise, but we've decided that he's eating in the highchair from now on, screaming or no screaming. He'll adjust. And he won't have broken legs.

After all of that, including being up at 5:30, I'm beat!

A year ago today

Can you believe that it was only a year ago Sam was this little? We took this picture because despite the fact that he'd been crawling (up steps, even) he'd refused to sit for us. Here he is sitting for one of the first times. What really blows my mind is how high up his mattress is and that there's no crib tent over him to keep him in there. I used to be able to sneak in and cover him up in the middle of the night, something I can't do now because the sounds of the zipper has him on his feet, arms outstretched, ready to egress the crib despite being mostly asleep. Also missing in this picture are the million and one stuffed animals, five blankets and musical elephant that he likes to play with in the morning. Where did my baby go? How did he get so big so fast?

Just another Saturday here at our house

Sam is what you might call a messy eater. For dinner, we mostly strip him down so that he eats with just a diaper on because skin is so much easier to clean than shirts. I got tired of stain removal awhile back! One of the problems we have is that over the summer, Sam decided he didn't like being in his highchair while Jeff and I were seated at the table. He wanted to be there with us too. So I put away the highchair and took out the travel booster seat and put that on a kitchen chair for him. Unfortunately, because our table has a lip and our chairs are small and Sam is large, he can't bend his knees while he's sitting. They just kind of stick straight out and dangle over the edge. A little bigger and he'd be able to bend them so that at least he'd be able to rest his heels on the top rung of the chair. But as it is, his knees fall in a weird place and he winds up squirming and crying the whole meal.

While we were trying to figure all this out, I had to break out the highchair again for nebulizer treatments. (Yes, Sam is back on Pulmicort twice a day for the rest of the winter.) The highchair has a five-point harness which was useful for restraining Sam until he got used to the nebulizer again. He has a tendency to fight it with all his strength and neither Jeff nor I could hold him without being in danger of inflicting bruises. Because, you know, in addition to BIG he's also STRONG. All of this resulted in two baby chairs in my kitchen, neither of which my son would use. Aaargh!

For the past few days we've just been letting him sit at a regular chair at the table with us. We're using one with arms so he's relatively contained.  While he was a pretty neat eater while strapped into a chair, he's become very messy again in the absence of any restraints.

[caption id="attachment_328" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Exhibit A: peanut butter in the belly button."][/caption]

 This has meant a lot of baths after dinner. Tonight's bath led to this:

 

[caption id="attachment_332" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Bad to the bone!"][/caption]

 Even so, he's not too much of a toughie to pass up a snuggle with Daddy:



He was practically comatose while snuggling with Jeff. We haven't heard a sound from him since we put him down.

Freaky Friday

You all know that Jeff has spectacular luck...either it's really good or it's really bad. He's been known to win huge prizes like a computer and a flat-screen TV but once he was cuffed by the police and thrown over the hood of his car because he happened to be wearing the same color shirt and driving the same color and model car as an armed robber. We never know what's going to happen to him next but it sure is interesting living with this guy.

Today he volunteered to take a few bags of stuff to Goodwill for me while Sam napped so that I could have lunch and relax a little. He was gone a long time considering that Goodwill is only about five minutes from our house and when he came back he was shaking his head. When I asked him what the deal was, he told me the most incredible thing had happened to him. When he pulled up to Goodwill, a little old lady was in front of him, unloading a trailer, one slow item at a time. Since there was only one employee working at the time, Jeff decided to help her carry everything in to spare her both the weight of the load and the freezing cold outside. They were nearing the end of the trailer when Jeff picked up a wooden chest. As he did, he felt something slide around inside and figured that there had to be old family photographs or letters inside. He asked the old lady if she knew what was in the chest, not wanting her to donate it with its contents unkown. She replied that she had no idea what was in there because it was locked and she just liked it so much she couldn't bear to destroy it. Jeff persuaded her that she needed to know the contents of the chest and she finally allowed him to pry it open. Upon examination, the chest was full of over $30,000 in government bonds, all at least 20-30 years old. With appreciation, she had easily $100,000.00 in that chest.

Mouth agape, she told Jeff that she and her husband had been poor their whole lives and she had no idea where all these bonds came from. She offered him some as a finders fee, which he quickly turned down. He strongly advised her to go to a bank and call someone from her family. And then he made sure that she got in her car and drove off unharmed. (Our Goodwill is in kind of a shady neighborhood.)

I think my husband is a superhero on a regular basis but today he really was a superhero to a stranger. What an incredible thing to have happen on a random Friday!