Its Been Awhile in Everyday Musings of a Very Tired Mama

Lots happening since I wrote last–15 days ago! Let’s see if I can remember.

Pickle’s Assessment- October 1st. Took Babe to work and then Pickle and BooBoo and I went to Cracker Barrel. It went pretty well. The assessment was about 2 hours. The original person who was supposed to do the assessment called out, so the supervisor did it and she was wonderful. She says he is definitely showing ADHD symptoms, but she also asked if he had ever been screened for Autism. This blew me away, for a couple reasons. 1. -I have wondered before if he was on the Spectrum, so why I went in there not even thinking about that possibility, I don’t know. And 2. It makes So.Much.Sense. The things he does and says, his resistance to change, the seemingly little things that upset him and his relatively narrow interests. They gave me assessments for me and his teacher to complete that I can bring to an appointment with a developmental pediatrician. We scheduled an appointment for him to come back for some talk therapy.
Went home and put Booboo down for a nap. When she got up, we headed up to a play place called We Rock The Spectrum. It was really cool and both of them had a good time.

BooBoo’s Birthday Party-October 6th. Several people weren’t able to come because of a memorial they were going to. We pretty much rented a shelter, brought some food and threw a mishmash of decorations together because she’s 1 and doesn’t care or remember. Her smash cake was cool though. At first she cried when we put her in her little chair and showed her the cake. So we took her out and tried again a little later. And she DESTROYED that cake! Luckily there was a spigot right next to the shelter so we put her (chair and all) in there to get her clean enough to put her in the car. We got home, gave her a proper bath, put her down at 4pm and she slept until 8am Sunday morning.

The next day we went to church and learned that one of our members had passed away the night before. She was one of the ones who was supposed to come to the party. She was always at our weekly women’s group and I loved her so much. She always had something insightful to say and was so smart and wise and thoughtful. She had been with the church forever and taught preschool to some of the members who are in their 20’s now. Huge huge loss for us. She was one of my biggest cheerleaders in dealing with Pickle and transitioning to being a SAHM. I trusted her advice more than anyone’s. Yesterday we went to the memorial. I was reminded at home blessed I am to be part of such a wonderful church family.

Pickle’s behavior has been pretty good, but he still managed to get another detention this week. His teacher and I just cannot figure him out sometimes. He’ll be going along so well and then will act out…seemingly out of nowhere. Next week I have a meeting with his teacher, the psychologist, speech therapist and the person overseeing his IEP. We will be reworking the IEP based on what’s happening now and adding in a behavior plan.
We went back to the center where we had his assessment. We’ll call this DFL. This was more information gathering to get a treatment plan in place. Monday we go back for his first therapy session.

4 weeks of karate and we’ve decided not to go back. The owners have been saying that some of the kids claim Pickle is saying “mother fucker” all the time. They’ve never heard it…random kids and saying he is for what reason I don’t know. I know it’s not true because when he learns a new word, he says it all the time, especially if he knows he’s not supposed to. I’ve not heard it come out of his mouth once and neither has his teacher. Plus, I don’t really like their style and I suspect they are Trump supporters.
So today we joined the Y and when Babe gets home from work we’re going to head up there and get our ID tags and look around. They have free childcare while you work out and I need to get back to doing something for my health. They have two classes (tumbling and hip hop) that I think would be good for Pickle, but I’m going to let him do some less structured things first to get him comfortable. We were members when I was pregnant with BooBoo and he was taking swimming lessons. He didn’t really like it, but we might try it again. He loved the free swim times though and that’s something we can do as a family. They also have Mom’s Mornings Out on Wednesdays and alternating Fridays from 8-12:30 for $15.00. Definitely be taking advantage of that. And the monthly cost is less than 1 week of karate. It’s going to be more challenging because I will have both of them by myself more. With karate, three days a week I drop him off at school at 7:45 and pick him up at karate at 5:45. It’s nice to have the whole day with BooBoo, even though she continues to be a pain in my ass. She’s so close to walking and she has a ton of teeth coming in, but she is so whiny! I think she’s going to be a handful!