Summer Livin'...

...Is not so easy.

Elise thrives on scheduling.  Which I really like, myself...most of the time...but not like Elise loves it.  Elise loves school and spent 3 weeks asking to go back. I felt a little badly, that she couldn't go hang with her friends...but a smidge hurt that she didn't enjoy vacation with me...

I keep wanting to do another Esther serial.  Car Etiquette.  Because, wow, do we need it!  But every time I turn my back on her, Elise is dumping stuff out, eating hand-over-fist out of the pantry, or smacking her sisters.  And so, unless I do it at night, which makes for some bad lighting, it's not going to happen until school starts back.  And so I sew and read and clean within arm's reach.

Charlotte and Amelia are playing really well together...and as Elise has never really gotten the "hang" of playing, she finds herself shut out.  She mostly stands around, and after a while, starts whining that she's hungry...or watches 1.75 minutes of a movie over and over and over.  Right now it's Astroboy and Wallace and Gromit...and we still like the Halloween shorts of Shrek...STILL...Why has Netflix not taken this down???

Behaviorly, she is having a hard time, too.  Elise has been off her ADHD medication for a month or so.  And we can REALLY tell.  She is skittery.  She is hitting.  She is volatile.  But she had taken to twitching and several ticks.  It was one of the side-effects listed on her ADHD medicine.  She had a follow-up with her neuro who got to see a couple of her ticks.  I was paranoid-ly worried that the ticks were side-effects of her medicine or indicative of seizures.  But thankfully, the neuro thought not.  She is pretty sure that they are actually out-growths of OCD.  She told me that ticks usually manifest between ages 6-10 years old.  Ticks are not too foreign to us.  Both her father and myself have dealt with them ourselves.  Back to that old apple and the tree again.  And Elise loves to organize her toys by color and size.  She delights in anything that "match".  And so I am starting her back on her medications again this week.  And so we shall see.  I keep hoping we will see the end of them sooner rather than later...because unlike most of the time, I am less worried about the ticks for her, now that I am reassured that it is not a red-flag for a big baddie, I am worried for me.  There is nothing like ticks to activate a dormant issue.  I used to really have issues with it myself and was able to beat it back..but when Elise starts ticking, I feel the compulsive need to move come back...like when someone mentions ticks (the bug) or lice...suddenly you have to itch your head...tell me you didn't just run your hand through your hair just now, right?  But back to my selfishness...I need her to stop ticking, so mine doesn't return and make me CRAZY.  Because for me, I am aware of my ticks and the inability to stop really makes me nuts.  I really don't need the power of suggestion, frankly.

In related news, Elise is now getting speech therapy from a private entity.  First time, ever.  We should have done it sooner, but this is the first time since she was 4, that I don't feel like I am drowning in commitments.  Elise and Deidra are working on feeding, sign language again, and social give and take conversation.  The sign language is as much an independent form of communication as it is a physical marker to slow Elise down and remind her all the parts of a sentence.  The therapist also gave us a referral to a speech device specialist.  This specialist will do an intake with Elise and assess her strengths and weaknesses and will recommend a device that will help her best.  I have been forced to wait out everybody's vacations, but eventually we will get some new answers.  And hopefully, Elise will qualify and she will get her hands of something that will help her communicate with her peers...and it won't be such a guessing game when she tells us all about her newest obsession...Like a few weeks ago and it took me several days to discover "Sare Bot" was "Dinosaur Max" from Dino Squad...which she LOVES...and she was SO frustrated that I could not figure out what she was talking about!!  It's one thing to not understand and be sad for her myself, it's a whole 'nother when she is aware of the communication breakdown and is depressed on her own.  That breaks my heart.

If she could tell you, she'd probably be counting down until school starts.  Right now (for once) she is playing with her sisters...School.  With their dolls.  :)