#microblogmondays 9

(null) This picture has nothing to do with anything except I love this little boy.

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I am EXHAUSTED but do you know what I did today…….nothing physical.

Literally, I sat all day. I took Josiah out to the psych evaluation and then sat and visited a friend. I picked him up for lunch and sat through lunch and then I dropped him off and sat and waited for the second part of the eval to finish. Then we walked for 10 mins, while we waited for Jon to arrive and then we sat and discussed the last 7 years of Siah’s life.

I was already so done even while I was waiting for the second half to be finished and I think that I figured it out……the stress is absolutely brutally wearing.

I already knew that.

And before you tell me “just don’t stress”…….it’s not a conscious thing. If I could just stop. I would.

Today felt like 6 hours of insanely intense stress……..and now we wait to hear the results of the assessment and the scoring of the tests.

Hopefully we will, soon, have more answers and a better understanding of how to help this sweet boy of ours succeed.

I Should Be Used To This By Now

Siah Today
Bear Boy
We have an appointment with Dr. Corina Brown at the Fraser Valley Child Development Center tomorrow morning to have Josiah assessed.

We will most definitely be asking about autism.

We pulled together all the reports we have for him so far…..He’s only 7 and yet, he’s seen a Psychologist at the Infant Mental Health Clinic at BC Childrens, OT’s through school, our Pediatrician……and we wrote our own list highlighting the areas that he struggles with or in…..

4 pages of struggles.

Josiah Issues

(not sure why but to see the page you need to clink on the link and then clink again on the link that opens.)

This journey of parenting special kids is a tough one.

I don’t know if we are going to get a diagnosis of Autism. I’d like to think that we, as parents, know something about our kids and there are SO MANY flags that go up for me when I look at this list and see this sweet kid….but I’m not the psychologist. I don’t make the diagnosis.

I do know that he’s struggling. His teacher knows that he’s struggling, but she doesn’t know how to help him.

Listing out 4 pages of “issues” and “struggles” and “deficits” is tough.

I’ve reduced Josiah to the sum of his faults.

And yet I haven’t………I know that in order to accurately present the challenges to someone, you need to talk about the hard things. The struggles…..the areas that are difficult….and you’d think that I’d be used to this by now. This is the third child that we’ve had assessed and probably the one I’m most prepared for. In every case, you go in and present the areas of greatest struggle. Because you’re not there to talk about the areas that they succeed in. You’re not there to talk about his sweet soul or his gentle, caring nature.

You’re there to talk about all the ways that fighting with his struggles sucks the soul out of you. You’re there to talk about how exhausting it is for both you and him to “live” on a daily basis. You’re there to talk about the incredible amount of effort that is required to stay one step ahead of every thought and breath so that you can avoid the inevitable meltdowns. You’re there to talk about how much effort every day is, in regards to getting dressed, eating, going to school, coming home from school, playing after school, eating after school, doing homework, eating dinner, doing chores, doing the nighttime routine, going to sleep……EVERYTHING!

And you know somewhere in yourself that parenting a child isn’t supposed to be like this….it shouldn’t be THIS MUCH EFFORT….it shouldn’t be something you dread. It shouldn’t be something that requires every ounce of strength you have and then some. There should be some space in your life left for you……….or your husband…..

But there isn’t…..

But, you can handle it….sort of….which makes you question everything you think and especially everything you wrote down. Maybe you are just blowing it out of proportion. Maybe you are making it seem worse than it actually is, and just then……..your child melts down……..and you take a huge breathe and push away the panic that threatens to choke you. You ever so calmly, and with so much more grace than you feel, respond to the situation…….

The second, third, fourth guessing is what does me in…..

I’m taking my 7 year old in for an assessment. He’s already been seen at BC Children’s when he was 5. And we know that there are deficits in his social development. He is a lovely, sweet boy. He is also struggling. This is not just about me. This is about getting him the help that he needs. And if we benefit because he gets that help…..that’s a good thing right?

I should be used to this by now. But I’m not. It’s hard. It’s hard to see your child struggling. It’s hard to face the areas that your child is struggling, head on. It’s hard.

One more day and then it’s all out of our hands………..I just need to keep breathing.

It’s hard.

#microblogmonday 8

So I had this bright idea that I could get up early and go for a run before I would normally even get up…….I’m not entirely certain whether it was a genius idea or the stupidest thing ever.

I hate mornings…..with a passion.

My little boys need to be at school at 8:35am. I consider it a win if I crawl out of bed before 8am.

I try my hardest to do EVERYTHING the evening before: lunches packed, backpacks packed, outfit picked out, coats and shoes ready to go…..

That way….we get up, get dressed, brush teeth, eat breakfast and head out the door.

When I run, I typically do so after I drop the kids off at school, but I find that “the morning” is taken up by eating breakfast, checking social media, dawdling around….and then there is the post run shower and by the time that’s over, it’s almost noon.

I figured that if I didn’t think about it too hard and got my running gear ready to go…..I could POP out of bed at 6am and run for half an hour and then still have time to shower and be available to help the kids by 7am.

That’s a whole extra hour than I normally have…….it’s got be to a good idea, right?

I went to bed at a decent time and managed to sleep for 7 hours – Yay me! The alarm went off at 6am and I’ll be honest…..I did not just jump out of bed. I really contemplated not doing it but finally jumped out of bed at 6:18am.

I threw my gear on and was good to go for 6:26am. Yay me. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated but it wasn’t the same as running during the day or in the evening when I’m more warmed up and limber. I’m still running really slow and taking it really easy since the whole “shin splint” episode. Things are slowly getting better and I’ll be back at it in no time, I’m sure.

I was excited to finish at 7:01am and ran up to take a shower…..I was a little later than I originally planned but still WAY earlier than usual.

During my run I had a thought flash through my mind……as awesome as it is to be done the run and to have extra hours in the day – what that really means is more hours to clean the house. While that’s awesome as far as actually taking care of my home, I hate house cleaning.

I was also a little nervous about being hungry all day or the dreaded 3pm crash.

I really wasn’t too hungry, but man!!!! By 3pm, I was BAGGED! I’ve managed to make it through the evening, and I’ve gotten a TON done today but I’ll be heading off to bed sooner rather than later.

I’m still trying to decide if I’m gonna try another early morning run on Wednesday.

Oh and I managed to freak the crap out of Jon and the kids…..NO ONE is used to seeing me up that early and it really threw them all for a loop. Throughout the day, I had different ones asking me what was wrong? What was up? And what was I thinking?

From that standpoint, it’s nice to shake them all up once in a while. Gotta keep them guessing!