Solving the Sleep Issues

Dawson's therapist came today, bright and early at 9am. Dawson has been getting out of bed by then usually, but today he had a harder time. Thankfully once he saw his therapist, he smiled, gave her a hug and proceeded to lead her to the playroom. He had a great session, his longest yet, from 9-noon.
At 12:15, Dawson's teacher came for a home visit to discuss how he's been doing. She said he's enjoying school and does well. She brought up Kindergarten and said sending him in the Fall is a good option for him. We'll be having a meeting with the Special Ed department of the Elementary school sometime after the New Year. It's so weird to think about starting real school! He's had a teacher since 2.5 and has been going to school on the bus since 3, but Kindergarten sounds so official!

I mentioned wanting to do a velcro board schedule for him at home and she thought that was a great idea and even offered to make it for us. The school often provides that stuff at home, and she said she already has an extra one sitting around that she's not using that's just like the one he uses at school, so that should be easy. We went over the different things we do and she made a list. She'll be sending it home with him this week. I'm excited!

After his teacher left we left and met up with a friend at McDonalds to play. I hadn't been in there since the day Tyler was diagnosed. It was where I recieved the call about the bad lab results. Tyler was sleeping in his infant carseat while Dawson played. I remember the day like it was yesterday, I'm sure I always will. It was nice creating some happy memories. Dawson chased the girls around saying "I'm gonna get you!". It was so great hearing him interact with other kids. They are older too, 7 and 10. He usually doesn't pay much attention to the older kids.

I also got to meet someone who followed Tyler's story at the end and realized she's in the same town. She did a Scentsy fundraiser for us and even gave us some wax to burn in our warmer that I got from another friend.  There's just a lightbulb in there, so no flame to worry about and the wax really doesn't get that hot, I can touch it and it's warm, but not going to burn you. I turn mine on for about an hour and turn it back off again since the aroma stays around for a while. The warmer holds a picture, so I used a wallet of Tyler's 2 year picture and when the warmer is on, the picture glows and it's so neat. It's so hard to be without him and I'm grateful for all the amazing people I've gotten to know because of him.

 We can see it glowing even in the daytime, it's really neat

 All the bars she gave us! They're $5 each and last a very long time. Each one has about 8 little cubes in them and I'm still using the first little cube! It re-hardens when I turn it off for a while, but I've been using it for a while and haven't noticed the level going down at all. When I'm done I can pour it back and try a different scent. It's nice freshening the place up a bit, especially with the boy's room right off the living room and I sometimes notice that slight diaper pail smell.

 Here's the lady I met up with. She didn't ask me to advertise or anything, but she was super nice and I thought my local friends might be interested. You can order online too though. I never thought I'd be into anything like this, but it's nice to have. I'm looking forward to the "cookie" and "baked apple pie" smells. Right now I have Black Rasberry Vanilla going.

Since we got back home, I got these 3 necklaces. I love them! This first one was engraved and we have 5 necklaces and a keychain of this picture. Dan wears his everyday.

This one was hard to get a picture of, but it has the 3 boys' names around it

 I wore this one to the funeral, it arrived at 8:30 that same morning, just as I was wondering what necklace to wear. The one I'd planned on ended up being too short. The big circle says "always our wild thing", it's from his online group, we were all due the same month and have gotten to know each other well. The group is called Wild Things. The gem is his birthstone.

Dawson got a haircut! He was looking pretty shaggy before. He did great and only needed verbal reminders to sit still. A couple times I had to ask if he needed me to hold his arms, but he quickly said No and held still. He's getting so big! Here he is playing with his playdough. The therapist had made lots of balls that he's been taking in and out of the containers, so I gave him an egg carton and he loves putting all the balls in that.

The teacher and I talked about Dawson's schedule and his sleep issues a lot during our visit. I've been struggling with his bedtime for a long time. As a baby he was colicky, around a year he started getting out of his crib and hasn't really stopped. He goes to bed ok, he knows it's bedtime and doesn't put up much of a fuss, but he stays awake for 2-3 hours after I put him to bed. He'd crawl in bed with Tyler, who just wanted to sleep. Now he crawls in with Gabriel, or goes over to his crib and it annoys Gabriel too. He just wants to sleep. His teacher recommended a Melatonin suppliment. Naturally, your body makes Melatonin. It's what triggers your body to be tired and fall asleep. Autistic children often don't produce their own, so they have bedtime issues. So I went to the store and found it in the vitamin aisle. Gave him 1/2 pill about 30 minutes before bed. It was weird cutting and dissolving pills again. It was Tyler's bedtime routine, 1/2 chemo pill.

We made other changes to his routine also. She said no tv/computer/electronics an hour before bed. Those things stimulate the brain too much. So to occupy him we did playdough, coloring and books. We usually do those earlier in the day and relax with computer in the evening, so I wasn't sure how he'd deal with the change, but he did great. He's been playing with more toys lately anyway, so it's nice seeing him get comfortable. He even got out the trains, which is the first thing he's played with since we got home that Tyler used to do. She also said nothing with lights or animation while going to sleep either. He had a Baby Einstein fish crib toy in his bed, he watched the fish swim by and listened to the music. So I removed that and put on a baby lullabye cd instead.

At bedtime he went to bed ok, but when the lights went out and I turned on the quiet music, he wasn't happy. He screamed "music off!". I decided to let it go a bit and see what he'd do. After a couple minutes he was sounding tired, but still protesting a bit. He went to bed at 10:15 and fell asleep at 11pm! That's the earliest he's been to sleep since we got home over 6 weeks ago. Usually it's midnight-1am. Hopefully it will go well tomorrow also! I'm going to bump the bedtime back more and see how it goes.

Six Weeks

Life has been very busy this week! We've had many ups and downs. We just passed our 6 week mark without Tyler yesterday. Sometimes I'll be fine and then suddenly start thinking about something that will make for a very tough day. Yesterday I had just parked at Walmart and suddenly out of the blue I started thinking about Tyler's last moments, the way he looked and sounded taking his last breaths, all that he had suffered through in those last weeks. The way he cried when I started crying. It's just so horribly unfair that anyone should have to go through what he did.

Dawson admitted the other day that he was sad, which was a huge deal! I've heard him say twice now that he's sad, though he refused a hug both times. He often asks me how I am and says when he's happy. Usually after we do something fun he'll be grinning ear to ear and say "I'm happy mommy!". He's still struggling to deal with his emotions and sorting them all out. He did some hitting and kicking this morning during a tantrum. He even said "I kick mommy" while he was doing it. He started his Autism Center home therapy this week too. He's doing great once he gets into the swing of things. Sometimes he has a little tantrum because he wants to go on the computer, one of his habits I'm trying to break, but he has lots of fun once he starts. They do playdoh, writing and other things. Today's therapist is new to us. She brought a tote bag full of stuff, but found that we already had everything she brought. They were excited about how many development toys we have. I just need to finish organizing it all. I'm close, I have the art stuff and fine motor toys put away, I just need to go through a lot of the other toys and get rid of some things we really don't need. Dawson is loving his therapist time so much, when I peeked in to see what he was doing, he told me "go away mommy". I guess I'll take that as a good sign. I think he's afraid I'll tell him his time is up or something.

Gabriel has been crawling all over the place. He has now learned to crawl with a small toy in his hand too, so he grabs something from Dawson and crawls off with it. It's so cute. Dawson has a hard time sharing some things, but we're working on it. Gabriel is also loving to walk around holding someone's hands. I've also heard some mama and dada, but I'm not yet sure if it's random sounds or specific people. Earlier today it seemed to be aimed toward me. He also sometimes says "uh huh" when I sit down to nurse him, or lay him down to change his diaper. It's like his 'whew, I'm getting what I need' thing. He's been having a harder time going to sleep lately. Sometimes he'll get up and nurse a bit more before going to sleep. Probably teeth bothering him, or his brother. Dawson likes to have his fish crib toy going in his bed. Sometimes he'll turn on his My Pal puppy too, which gets to be too much noise having 2 musical things in his bed. Gabriel can barely stand having 1, he'd rather skip the distractions and go to sleep.

On Saturday I watched 4 toddlers, they were 4, 2, 2, and 11 months all day (9:30-5:30). It actually went quite well! It was chaos, but for having 6 kids 4 and under in the house, we had no tantrums, the only toy and meal arguments were from Dawson. Go figure. So other than some extra mess it was super easy. We even did paint and playdoh and non was eaten and it all stayed on the table! We even had some friends stop by for an hour with their 4 and 2 year old, so they got to play for a little bit too. It was fun!

Sunday we went to my parent's house for my brother's 18th birthday! He's the baby of the family, but at 6ft 5, he's way passed all of us up! Dawson loved being at Grandma's house. I was a little nervous about how the Christmas tree thing would go, but Gabriel was ok about it. He didn't obsess about it like he did at home, though he went over once and I showed him the ornaments. I was kinda hoping it was a pokey tree so he wouldn't want to touch it again, but it was actually kinda soft. We have a fake tree at home, apartment rules.

Dawson and Gabriel with my mom. Gabriel looks like such a little boy in this pic! Where'd by baby go?

Dawson by Grandma's Christmas tree

Tuesday we went skating while the boys went and played with the kids we watched on Saturday. He loved being over there. Today I told him we were going to play with some friends in our moms club and he said "play with girls?". It was so cute, he thought we were going back to their house. Wednesday night was Moms Night Out. I brought Gabriel and there was another baby there too, but we had pizza and snacks, chatted and had a White Elephant gift exchange. Gifts you have laying around but aren't going to use, so you re-gift them at this exchange. They were all wrapped, so the box I ended up with had a Liquor Dispenser. We all laughed about that one, since I don't drink. I think I'll be putting that up at our fundraiser auction next month. ;)

Today we had a mom's club playdate this morning, which had some tantrums about her dog, but otherwise went ok. Dawson doesn't understand that you can't drag animals by the tail, or pick them up by a back leg. We showed him how and he just wasn't listening today, so she put the dog in another room and that caused a big tantrum because he wanted to play with the dog. At the end she did let the dog back out and he did play a little nicer once he calmed down. I think he just had some anxiety being at a new place, we hadn't been to her house yet. After his therapist we're heading to ECFE class, where he can run out some energy! They have the indoor gym, which is great with our cold weather. Gabriel will love it too. I'm excited to see what he will do since he's crawling around now.

 This is the painting from the HopeKids people that they gave us on Thursday.

Dawson Head Update & Silly Pics

Dawson has been doing great. I put ointment on the wound everyday and I kept him on pain meds for 3 days, which he took very willingly. He finally isn't flinching at me touching it so I stopped the meds. It's healing, but I'm sure it'll be a scar, it was pretty deep and still looks like it's healing pretty wide. It's a little hard to tell though, there's dried blood there. Haven't really tried to get it off yet, I didn't want to hurt him.

He was being really goofy the other day, wanting me to take pics of him. It started by him catching me take this pic. He does this all the time, climbs in, plays a while and then throws all his toys out.

So he decided to start posing for me to take more pics

I guess being halfway across the room wasn't good enough, he had to come over to where I was sitting instead, wanting me to keep taking pics. And no, he didn't just hit his head a bit too hard, he's always a goof!

Tyler had come over to see what was going on, so Dawson was playing with him a bit too.

I asked him to give Tyler a hug....awwww!

It's hard to get a decent pic of them both. I'm lucky if I can even get them in the same pic and see both their faces too! Dawson cooperated just for a tiny bit so I could get this one.

I never said he was enthused about the situation, but at least he sat there.

Today we went to Jess's house for a MOM's Club playdate, the boys had fun, played, had a brownie and made a craft. Afterward we went to the library and then played in the hallway and stairs after we got home. They really wanted to go outside, but it was raining and snowing (yes, there were flakes in MAY!!!) so it was too wet to play outside. We did bubbles, rolled a ball down the stairs and walked around the hallways for a while. At least we all got some exercise.