2 Weeks, Briefly (11/18 - 11/30)

I truly work hard to be positive, even as I record the very hard.

I couldn't do it last week.

So I didn't write at all.  (If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.)

But, my depression/anxiety meds have been increased; I'm starting to feel the effects; and I've had a miracle or two that I've been able to identify.

I think I can say something nice.

We did, in fact, share ever-so-may things to be thankful for this month.

We are blessed.

Very little formal schooling has been happening.  Quite simply, I ran out of the emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical reserves that I've always been able to call on to keep going in spite of the challenges around us.  Not even our beloved routines were enough in the power of the exhaustion that took me down.

We did keep morning, meal, and bedtime routines intact, however.

But that was almost all I could manage, and that was due to the fact that Sir Walter Scott has been home on FMLA for a full week.

As far as formal schooling, we did some individual subjects and Symposium.

Then I would collapse.

The teens completed their The Good and the Beautiful Unit 4 booklets.

Belle's end-of-unit art project

Super Star's end-of-unit art project

We also finished reading The Old Man and the Sea for our upcoming Teen Book Club meeting, and we made it half way through the assigned book for The Good and the Beautiful Units 5 & 6.

Mister Man finished the first of 5 booklets for his arithmetic study this year.

We had our final show for this semester.  We don't go back to dance until mid-January.  It will be good to have a break, and we will simultaneously miss it very much.

Polka

Chinese Scarf Dance

We've had a couple of church grandmas come over to help with Brother.  Their visits have lent us 2 hours of peace, but Brother is even worse when they leave.

I tried an outing . . .

 . . . that was lovely while it happened.  I was quite nervous about losing Brother, but we catered to his whims in order to preserve the peace.

However, when it came time to go home, we ended up in a crisis.

How grateful I am to Super Star and Belle for coming to our rescue.  How grateful I am to Belle and Nature Angel who endured Brother's non-stop abuse during the drive home.  How grateful I am to all of the children for pitching in and helping us survive these hard, hard episodes.

It was at this point that Sir Walter Scott started his FMLA.

Here's how we handle individual school subjects after breakfast each day.

Little Princess works diligently at her individual school.

One day Rose Red surprised us all by voluntarily spending an entire afternoon playing Uno with the young ones.  They reveled in her attention.

We celebrated Thanksgiving very quietly at home--no company, no formality, no expectations.

We played a bunch of silly minute-to-win-it games in the late afternoon, and after we had pie/treats we settled into jammies and a family movie.

It was right for us.

We fielded a great many mental health appointments, phone calls, and challenges.  I convinced Brother's psychiatrist that one of his meds had been given a fair chance to work and wasn't working.  It took the entire appointment and much emphatic talk on my part to do so, but he's tapering off that med and tapering higher with another med to see if we can better help him.

And Ladybug is tapering off her anti-anxiety med because her psychiatrist increased it, and we noticed a decided increase in her defiance and violence. 

Our little crew is neurologically atypical, and they don't react to meds as hoped/desired. 

We are finally making progress with starting ABA therapy for Brother, and we got the letter approving him for Regional Office services.  Perhaps we'll have ABA by Christmas and Regional Office support by the New Year?!?

We've also gotten Super Star started on anti-anxiety/depression meds, gotten her a new set of thyroid tests, and we've completed the intake appointment for starting therapy for her as well.  She's been managing on too few resources for too long.

With Sir Walter Scott home, the rest of us are resting from the constant strain we've been under for so many months.  I worried that I was forming a habit of slothfulness or wallowing in my misery, but I don't think that's the case.  I am very slow, very unproductive, and "wasting" a great deal of time each day, but I'm starting to feel rested and hopeful again. 

I'm seeing it as a sort of convalescence.