OMG! Even on the low, minimal dose, there have been things that have happened that, if Gramma and Boompah weren't here to see them, I'd have thought I was crazy. The first thing was Saturday night - after just that one day on the NV - something that, at the time, I thought was unusual but nothing more. Josh is not big on playing with toys - I have always had to take out toys and really work at drawing his attention into them, playing with him, and so on. Sat. night, we went up to his bedroom to play a bit before bed (I toss in therapy things, little does he know!) and took out a cool sticker thing to make constellations - idea was for him to learn/say the names of the constellations, then put the stickers to make them (speech and OT!). We started playing and all of a sudden, he stopped and said, "I take out trains." He turned away, took out a train set, got it all out of the box, and started trying to put the tracks together. Doesn't sound like much? Josh has NEVER taken out his train sets on his own, and rarely would play with them if I took them out (he likes the real thing!). We played for about an hour with the trains. And, while we were playing, he saw his "little yellow bear" under the bed. He tried crawling under the bed to get it (motor planning not previously seen!), but couldn't reach it. I handed him his Pirates of the Caribbean sword, he turned it on (I didn't even know he knew how to turn it on since he has NEVER played with it before!), got his bear out from under the bed using the sword to help (again, motor planning!), and then I picked up another little sword and we actually had a sword fight (imaginative play!)! It took him a little bit to fall asleep Sat. night but he slept like a rock!
Sunday a.m., he got himself up and into the bathroom. We've had a little regression lately with not staying dry as often during the night and Sat into Sun he did pee through. When he got himself up from bed, though, he got his clothes off, put them in the dirty clothes basket, and went back into the bathroom. He even took a shower without having one of the non-epileptic seizures first! Throughout the day, he took himself to the bathroom or went when I would ask if he needed to pee - no accidents all day. And, he stayed completely dry during the night last night - as Peter would have said, Josh "peed like a racehorse" this a.m., but he was dry leading up to it!
The other things that happened yesterday - 1) Josh is my recycling guy - he has two large baskets that he will shred newspapers, or put his toys in, or whatever, but he likes playing with his baskets. Normally, if they got too full, he would ask me for a garbage bag, I'd have to empty the baskets, and I'd wind up taking the garbage bags out to the garbage bin in the garage. Yesterday, Josh was playing and said they were "too full." He picked up one basket, went out to the garage, and dumped it right into the garbage bin. Then he came back in and got the other basket, taking it out and doing the same thing. (he needed help holding the top of the garbage bin open but oh well).
2) Last Fall when we moved into the house, Josh and I spent a lot of time out on the sun porch - it's lovely out there, looking out on the garden, watching the wildlife, etc. But, after Josh broke his leg last Fall, he wouldn't go out there - even in his wheelchair at the time, he would cry if we took him out. This season, even though the weather has been wonderful for it, he really has not gone out there except to perhaps get a ball that rolled out (we keep the slider door open so the cats can go back/forth). Yesterday, Boompah was sitting out there. Josh walked out, sat down, started to talk to Boompah some, and we wound up spending pretty much the whole day out there - no TV until much, much later in the evening. We even had dinner out there!
3) This has been a hard year for Josh for a lot of different reasons, and he's dealing with a lot of emotional issues (on top of whatever hormonal stuff is going on with tween years!). As a result of all of this, he's had on/off progress with staying dry at night, and has actually regressed a little with peeing during the day - we've resorted to Depends more often than I think should be done, but it's better than washing clothes all the time. Anyhow, yesterday, as I said, he took himself to the bathroom and went when I asked if he needed to (his answer to that question lately has been, "NO!" and then he'd lay down on the floor and usually pee - not fun for either of us). He stayed dry all day (no Depends at all until bedtime last night - and that was dry this a.m.), even through a little snooze (which, in and of itself was unusual - he could snooze for hours, this one was less than an hour!).
4) Josh is not what you would call a night owl. His usual pattern is to go to bed and be asleep no later than 7:30 p.m., and he'd be up, lately, around 6:00 a.m. or so. His other pattern has been to sprawl out on the couch and truly be a couch potato from about 5:30 until he went to bed at 7:30 (at that, he'd fall asleep on the couch or the floor and I'd wake him to get him up to bed - either that or we'd have a major battle about going to bed) - he get up to eat, but go right back to couch potato-land. All day yesterday, he had more energy and was up and about, outside on the sunporch, playing with his radio control train, talking with Gramma and Boompah, etc. Last night I thought for sure he'd crash on the couch but NO! He finished dinner (out on the sunporch) before us so he came in to watch the Union Pacific movie while we finished. He didn't lay down much and if he did, he'd be up sitting and watching within a few minutes. We kept looking in to see if he had fallen asleep yet, but no. We'd see him sitting up, then lay down for a minute or two, then get up and walk around, come out to the sunporch again, and so on, barely watching the movie. It got to be about 8:30 and he was still awake when the UP movie ended. He asked to watch a Blue's Clues so I put one on while we were still outside chatting. Only then, toward the end of Blue, did he fall asleep on the couch. Gramma and Boompah left a little after 9, and I got him up to go up to bed - he went in and peed, I did put the Depend on him just in case, and he was back to sleep within minutes. Maybe the staying up later was coincidence since they were here, and the late night I think is having its effect now since he was up at his normal 6:00 a.m. and he is snoozing now (it's 9:45 a.m. right now), but who knows?
I did up the dose this a.m. to the one scoop per 8 oz of milk - he's had one serving this a.m. I even did a shake with the NV this a.m. - I used milk, threw in a tbsp of yogurt, and 1/2 banana for my breakfast - it's actually pretty tasty!
So, Day 3 is on its way - and it's going to rain any second. Josh had said he wanted to take the lawn mower out to walk around and "turn it on" - doesn't look like that's going to happen with the rain on the way. He also, though, was pushing the vacuum around the living room - now to just turn it on!
Uh oh, heavy rain has started - gotta go check the windows!!!
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