Sarah Breakin' in the New House, Party All Night and the Lead Foot Lucy Busdriver

Oh this week has been a crazy one!!  It has been parent teacher conferences--need I say more?!  Anyway, we had Matthew's on Monday afternoon.  I always have to prepare myself for that one because it never is rosy.  However, I was very pleasantly surprised this time!  He is progressing and has come a long way from the beginning of the year.  In all the testing they have done he is currently functioning on a level between a 2nd and 3rd grader, but that is up from the beginning of the year where he only tested in the range of a kindergarten to 1st grader.  The teacher also told us that he is now used to the routine and is able to do better.  You have to remember that the beginning of this school year he had to change everything about his school routine with changing grades, elementary schools, teachers and rules and that is one tall order for an autistic child who THRIVES on routine.   We are still going to be transitioning him to the functional skills next year, but he is doing well, all things considered.  His teacher did bring up one area she was concerned with--lunchtime.  The past few months Matthew has been requesting to eat home lunch instead of school lunch--so every morning I get up and make him a school lunch consisting of a juice or milk box, applesauce, chips and a peanut butter sandwich--all the things Matthew likes to eat (or so I thought).  Every day after school he would come home and show me his empty lunch box so I just assumed he ate the lunch.  I was WRONG.  His teacher tells me he tries to throw the whole thing away before even trying anything, but she attempts to make him eat at least a little bit of it.  So Matthew takes the most microscopic bite of everything and then throws the whole thing away.  His teacher was concerned about this and wanted me to see that he wasn't eating so she told him to not throw anything away and to put all the uneaten food back in his lunch box to bring home.  Every time they wouldn't let him throw anything away he would have a complete and total meltdown.  The teacher would occasionally get him to save the uneaten food, however, when he would get on the bus to come home he would throw everything away on the bus garbage so I still never saw the uneaten food.  However, I did happen to be outside the other day when his bus pulled up so I got to speak with his bus driver and she told me about him throwing all his food away.  As this was news to me I was interested in talking about it with his teacher.  Luckily, we came up with an awesome solution.  His teacher has a fridge and a microwave in her room so I can send leftovers for him to eat the next day.  Once Matthew heard that he could bring lasagna to school and eat that for lunch he was over the moon.  The next day his teacher and bus driver told me they couldn't get him to talk about anything else, but eating his lasagna for lunch.  He told anyone and everyone he could that he got to eat lasagna for lunch because he was so excited.  It also helped me for when he came home because he was a lot more calm and willing to do his homework without a fight because he wasn't starving.  When Matthew is hungry he gets very agitated so him actually eating a lunch at school has helped a lot.  Now I just got to make sure we have plenty of leftovers of food that he actually likes eating.  We also got a call when we got home after the conference from his principal.  I HATE getting calls with the 402 prefix!!  Anyway, this call was a good one.  It told us that Matthew has been selected as a Tenacious Tiger of the month (a student of the month) because he is so courteous.  He holds the doors open for people, always says please and thank you, helps the duties at recess, is always willing to vacuum at school and is polite.  To celebrate he gets to have a cupcake party with the principal on Friday.  Way to go Matthew!!

As for his bus driver she must have a lead foot or Matthew gets out of school early every day! Since it is early out all week Josh and Matthew get out of school at 1:25pm.  Yesterday I was out running errands and drove up to  my house at 1:22pm to find Matthew sitting on my porch freaking out because the front door was locked and the bus driver parked and waiting for me to get home.  What in the world??!!  He wasn't supposed to even get out of school until 1:25pm and then ride the bus home!  Either his bus driver drives so fast that she can go back in time or Matthew is getting out of school early every day because he is walking through the front door on average of 4 minutes after school lets out.   Matthew's school is about three miles away from our house, too.  I am a little concerned about this, but I don't know if I am concerned enough to make waves...I guess I just need to make sure I am home 10 minutes before he is supposed to get out of school because you just never know when or how early he is going to get home!

We had Josh and Daniel's parent teacher conferences yesterday.  Daniel is doing superb (despite all the allergic reactions he's had at school that his teacher apologized profusely for).  His teacher is under Daniel's charm spells just like the rest of us are.  He is doing well enough in everything that he is able to start the reading program--Wahoo.  Josh is doing good.  He is still struggling with his hand writing as well as not covering his mouth when he coughs.  His teacher also told me to make sure Josh has some tissues in his pockets because when he sneezes he gets double snot rockets out his nose and, instead of wiping them off with tissues, he uses his sleeve or attempts to walk across the room with the aforementioned snot rockets hanging precariously from his nose while he is trying to find a tissue to use--ewwwww! Other than that he is doing well.  He is reading above his grade level and his comprehension is great.  We do have some stuff that we have to work a little extra on at home--his typing speed and math, but otherwise he is doing ok.  I took a big sigh of relief when the conferences were over because I hate going to them, but these weren't as bad as last time--phew!!

The night before last I got to have an all night party thanks to my kids.  Noah started screaming at 11 pm.  I tried to let him just scream it out, but he kept going and going and going.  To help everyone else get their sleep I decided to stay up and hold him for a little bit to calm him down.  Sure enough he calmed down and fell asleep, but every time I stood up to try and put him back to bed he would start screaming all over again.  Finally he fell in a deep enough sleep about 1:30 am that I was able to put him to bed without him waking up.  After putting him to bed I went to bed and got all comfy only to have Daniel come upstairs crying at 1:40am.  He said that his foot was hurting really bad.  I had to get back up and give him some ibuprofen and hold him.  He had to snuggle until 4:15 am until he felt better.  After he went to bed I tried to sleep and was able to sleep until I was woken up at 6:45 am to the crazy morning chaos.  I tried staying in bed and letting the kids take care of themselves, but you can imagine that didn't go over well at all.  I had to get out to break up the fighting, help someone find their shoes, sign someone's homework, help someone find some pants, etc.  I must admit I was a little on the grumpy side as well and I wasn't the only grumpy one.  It appears that Noah kept quite a few people awake, too.  That was one day I was glad I got to send the kids away to school and hope they got their grumpiness out there instead of at home!!  It was early bedtime for everyone that night including me!!

Yesterday afternoon we were walking through the new house and marking all the stuff that needed to be fixed or repaired.  While we were doing that the blinds guy and the hardware guy were busy at work.  A few minutes later the blinds guy came over to me and said, "Uh....umm....So do you have any toilet paper to help your little girl out with ?"   I looked at him strangely and then he said, "I think your little girl needs some assistance in the master bathroom."  I thought, "OH NO!!" as I ran over to the master bathroom to assess the damages.  I could smell it before I saw it.  As I opened the master bathroom door I could hear the movie Psycho's shower scene music playing in my head.  It was bad!  Sarah had decided she needed to go potty, but she had already done half of it in her underwear before she could make it to the toilet.  She was in the bathroom and had worked off her poo smeared pants and was trying to pull off her loaded with poo panties when I saw her.  When she saw me come in she knew she had done something wrong so she hurried even faster to get her poo underwear off.  In her haste she kicked and smeared poo all over the bathroom and toilet before I could stop her.  Also before I had even gotten there she had already attempted to go potty as her evidence was smeared all over the toilet.  It was BAD!!  I made Aaron come and keep her contained to the bathroom while I ran out to the car to find something to clean it up with.  I could only find an almost dried out pack of wipes and a spare pair of panties.  I brought them inside and tried to clean everything up.  We had no toilet paper or soap to use only the half dried out pack of wipes.  NASTY!!!  We left shortly afterward, but not before the hardware guy and blinds guy got a good laugh about it.  Aaron just joked with them saying at least our new toilet has been broken in by Sarah!!  The hardware guy then replied, "Hmmm why don't we break in your new master bathroom fan right now, too?"  Did I mention the whole master bathroom reeked to high heaven?!  Sarah only wore panties out to the car and on the way home because we didn't have any spare jeans to put back on her.  I am sure she was cold, but that's what you get when you try to take care of your poopies without help!!

In other happenings a few days ago Sarah found her hair headband and put it on the way she thought it was supposed to go.  After she got it on she came over and told me she was ready to go running.  What a funny girl!