He's Doing His Job!

He's doing his job, and it's working!  Look at that happy girl!  Sarah has been fighting pretty severe depression and anxiety for a while now and that includes an inability on her part to sleep.  Boy, nothing makes anxiety and depression worse than never sleeping.  While we are working with several doctors including a sleep doctor, we decided to try using a dog to help her.  The reason we got Achilles was to see if having a dog and training it to do some emotional support or service dog services could help her.  The medications she can take are addictive and interact unpredictably and we would prefer to use as few as possible.  If Achilles can calm her enough to sleep without taking more meds, then we will be thrilled!  I am happy to report that Achilles is happy to be Sarah's buddy and sleep with her at night (and sometimes during the day too).  Sarah has been falling asleep before 10 pm and waking on her own around 7 am.  She is feeling much better and we are so excited.  I was hopeful, but did not expect such quick and perfect results.  I hope this continues!  This guy is such an answer to prayers for our family.  He has even started noticing if her mood starts to go south and immediately goes to her and nudges her with his nose.  That is something we were hoping to train him to do in the future so we are so giddy about him showing a natural instinct to do that on his own.

Sarah is feeling ill today.  We are weening her to a lower dose of antidepressants as she has been having some pretty severe sores showing up on her body and has periods of swift mood swings where she is inconsolably sad.  She is on the maximum dosage of her antidepressant now that her ADHD medication has been changed and working well, I think it is causing more harm than good to be on such a strong medication.  It is an addictive medication so decreasing dosage must be done slowly and there is some pain involved.  She is handling it well and if you know her, will definitely recognize that even though she is in pain, this is the happiest we have seen her face in 17 months.  

On another note, it is Sunday and I think it is an appropriate time for me to express how grateful I am for my family.  Heavenly Father knows me and knows that being bored is torture for me.  We have been blessed with such a fun family.  I love all of their personalities so much!  It isn't easy keeping up with them, but what excitement and joy they bring to my life everyday!  Even though it is a bit warmer out today than it has been, I still don't want to go out much and I'm blessed to be inside with these guys and their loving personalities.  I'm never short on excitement or kisses in this house.    

Stuff To Keep Him Busy

Just a short post about my most recent attempt to keep Leo busy.  Colored Rice!

Cars love it!

Superman is a fan!

.....and at least sweeping the kitchen is more colorful.

Public Humiliation

Anytime we go out in public, it is a given that one of my children, usually Leo, will do or say something that ends in my public humiliation.  Many years ago before Tripp was medicated he took his favorite toy to the store.  It happened to be a plush toy from the movie Toy Story and its name happened to be Woody.  Tripp also had a hard plastic toy of the same character.  He distinguished between the two toys by calling the plush toy, "wiggly Woody", and the plastic toy, "hard Woody."  Anyway, we were walking through the grocery store and Tripp starts running off with his toy.  I start yelling, "Tripp, Tripp, Tripp!" and then received the normal disgusted looks of other shoppers who assume that I'm such a bad mother that instead of trying to stop my running child, I merely cheer for him to fall.  About this time Tripp rounds the corner to the next aisle and Leo, who was about a year old, figures out how to stand up in the cart.  Fearful that Leo will fall out of the cart and hurt himself, I decide that for the time being I have to let Tripp go and attend to Leo.  I get Leo all strapped back into the cart and we went looking for Tripp.  We found him in the next aisle over chasing down a nice elderly woman frantically waving his toy at her yelling, "do you want to see my wiggly Woody?! Wanna seen my wiggly Woody?!"  And the looks of disgust from the other shoppers turn into looks of horror as they expect to see a 5 year old flasher.  (Or so I imagine, I'm too ashamed to look at anyone's face at the store.)

This was Leo at the grocery store today.  He was a dog.  It required crawling around and barking.  I noticed that this particular store had a nice floor.  I looked at it a lot as I was avoiding eye contact with everyone else in the store.  But, Leo wasn't the major humiliation of the day, it was Sarah.  My father recommended we try watching this British show "Black Mirror" on Netflix.  It is very interesting.  Kind of like a Twilight Zone for technological savy times.  The episode last night had an English princess being kidnapped and the ransom was for the Prime Minister to have intercourse with a pig on live TV and then the show revolved around whether or not he was going to do it and if anyone would watch.  At no time did they show a person having intercourse with a pig.  But as our supper guests were getting ready to leave the house tonight, my daughter says, "are you going to watch that show where rich people have sex with pigs again?"-----by the way......my guests.......were church missionaries.

The Daredevil I Can't Control (and neither could you)

Today Leo is a ninja!

Leo is 3 1/2 and a daredevil.  Of all my kids, he is most likely to end up in the emergency room.  I'm grateful for the trips to the ER and urgent care, because the alternative would be my worst fear.  We can't keep Leo from being a daredevil and getting hurt but we do our best.  Leo has ADHD but is too young to be medicated for it, but he also has sensory issues.  He is "sensory seeking"  here is a list of symptoms found on Brain Balance Center's website: 

Hyposensitivities to sensory input may include:

• A constant need to touch people or textures, even when it’s inappropriate to do so

• Doesn’t understand personal space even when same-age peers are old enough to understand it

This is Leo right now telling me, "watch, watch, watch, watch mom!"  He's totally in my face.

• Clumsy and uncoordinated movements

• An extremely high tolerance for or indifference to pain

• Often harms other children and/or pets when playing, i.e. doesn’t understand his or her own strength

• May be very fidgety and unable to sit still, enjoys movement-based play like spinning, jumping, etc.

• Seems to be a “thrill seeker” and can be dangerous at times

I don't think Leo is more clumsy than other 3 year old children, but he definitely exhibits all of the rest of the symptoms.  Leo has gotten staples in the top of his head after falling off the arm of our Lazyboy recliner and hitting his head on the heat register, had surgery for getting an infection where he had his hand smashed in our car door, and we are watching him now to see if we need to take him to the ER for a possible broken foot.  Last night he was standing on one of our kitchen chairs (the tall kind) facing backwards with his feet pointing down through the bottom rung.  He leaned over too far and tipped the chair over.  It looked like he landed directly on the tops of his feet which were smashed under the weight of both him and the chair.

This is the chair

I really expected to see bones coming out of the tops of his feet from the looks of the fall.  He was screaming very loudly and rolling round.  I could tell his feet were in extreme pain.  We live 40 minutes from urgent care and it was snowing and the roads were 100% covered in our area.  I watched his feet for a while.  There was light swelling on one of his feet but no bruising and he was able to bear weight on the other foot.  I decided not to risk the roads to take him to a doctor last night.  This morning, I'm wondering again if I should take him.  He needed ibuprofen for the pain last night as he could not sleep.  This morning he is telling us that it hurts, but it isn't slowing him down much.  He is limping, but is definitely a ninja.  After a quick Facebook poll, I have wrapped his foot in an Ace bandage and given him more pain reliever.  He is happy to be a ninja right now and I'm happy to not expose him to dangerous flu germs at the doctor's office.  I hope I'm making the right decision.  

Leo waiting for emergency surgery after the cut on his hand got infected.  Daddy was TIRED (and scared)!

Leo getting help from a wonderful big sister after surgery.  

Leo is such a danger to himself that as I typed this, his daddy removed both a knife and an extremely sharp cheese grater from Leo.  Tripp already experienced a cut from the same grater.  It was suggested to us by a psychologist (a wonderful one that I love) that Leo should be medicated as soon as possible for his own safety.  Unfortunately, we have to wait 4 more months until he is old enough to take the medications.  Pray for us to help him stay alive until then.  Our biggest problem now is that he gets overwhelmed at stores and will jump out of moving carts and run in to the parking lots.  He is fast and has outrun 4 adults trying to catch him in a busy parking lot once.  He runs unpredictably darting here and there.  I imagine his head exploding like one of Gallagher's watermelons when he is eventually hit by a car and it terrifies me so much, I have decided to not take him to stores until he can be medicated.  After watching a video about sensory overload and stores, I understand why he runs from them.  Here is the video I saw.  It affects at least 1/2 my family including my husband who breaks out in a cold sweat seeing just seconds of it.  

Tip of the day - we learned the hard way from Leo's older brother Tripp, that you should not name a child Tripp if they have ADHD and tend to run from you in public.  Imagine the looks I got from strangers and other parents as I spent 2 years running after my son in public places yelling, "Tripp, Tripp, Tripp!"  They all thought I was cheering for him to fall.

Second tip of the day - never judge a mom who puts a leash on her kids and never say, "can't you control your child" to a mom.  Sometimes they can't and as much as you think that you could, you wouldn't be able to either.

New Addition

We got our newest family addition last night - Achilles the dog.  He is a 7 year old red/white Siberian Husky.  So far all has been going well.  He has been wandering around trying to get acclimated.  He would like to play with the cats or the dogs down the street and I think he has been contemplating jumping our fence to do so.  As of right now he is not allowed outside without supervision so he doesn't get to adventurous.  The main purpose of us getting a dog was for Sarah.  She can't sleep at night and it is our hope that Achilles sleeping next to her will help.  She did sleep better last night, but there were complaints of Achilles sleeping in Abby's bed too much.  Sarah is working on training Achilles right now which includes a 2-mile walk every morning.  Today they did well practicing stepping off the path and sitting and holding on to the harness as runners go by.  Both Achilles and Sarah did very well and I was so happy to see Sarah take a walk.  I also used the time to walk my Leo and run off some of his energy.  I think the walkers/joggers might enjoy if I had a harness on him as well as he has been known to jog after a couple for a quarter mile.  Luckily Abby was a long as well and she kept Leo busy playing "eye spy" and learning how to skip.  Unfortunately, Achilles is not worn out from the walk and seems a bit bored.  I know eventually "bored" can turn into "destructive" so I'm trying to keep him busy.  He is not too interested in his toys right now.  He did bring a giant braided chew bone with him, but isn't wanting to chew it.  I've been shoving things in the grooves of it hoping to get him started, but so far he just licks them out.  I tried bacon grease and peanut butter.  I need to find a chew toy he likes.  Hmmmm.........  I wonder if a chew toy would keep Leo busy as well.  Or maybe I could get Achilles into Minecraft.  That seems to keep my other ADHD children busy.

Excuse the messy floors.  We've had lots of toys out for everyone this morning!