and miles to go before we/they sleep...

today is a short blog. the morning was uneventful. R spilled water on his bed last night and had to change his pj's and have his sheets changed. he was certainly tired this morning and reluctant to wake up. everyone got to the center at a reasonable time. R seemed happy to be in engineer's and happily perused his magic school bus books next to other kids who were drawing or reading. linda the teacher explained that he had his own journal that he could write or draw in if he chose. he declined to draw and chose to read. K had another difficult drop off and sat in leann's lap for a while getting settled in.

both seemed to have good days and R's cubby is now on the engineer side so it feels official. the outcome of our behavioral ped appt was a little unclear. we know the sleep-tantrum correlation, but it is not clear what we are to do pragmatically to help the situation. R slipped into a tantrum phase when it was time to leave the appt. i could not tell if it was hunger or fatigue or both.

our new strategy is to have a tangible rather than verbal consequence to his infractions. so we did our best to explain an outcome for his behavior. i am unsure of whether or not it worked but i explained a consequence and he was disappointed and frustrated and struggling but somewhat compliant. but of course at this point everything was a trigger for further tantrums.
we made it through some dinner for both of them and then had to go to a farewell party for ruskin's officemate lyric.

we could tell that they (and i say they because K is a mimic and will try whatever R does) would be volatile or labile at the party. i thought that a change of routine and place might also help them veer in the other direction and be somewhat silly and giddy. and yes that was the outcome.

in some ways, it was an entirely predictable evening. when he is tired, he alternates between extreme silliness and extreme disappointment. luckily the party at aunt katie's had inside and outside space for running around and playing. they both got to burn off some energy. after an adequate amount of running around, nibbling, and socializing, we took advantage of a quiet moment and whisked them to the car. everyone managed to get home without too much difficulty. R was quite chatty and talked about harry potter, magic, the st paul waterworks, and all sorts of ideas about animal rescues. it is just great when he is not whining or screaming.

bedtime rituals were quick. it is 10 pm and i think he will be asleep soon -- say 10:30. if we can tackle earlier sleep times, then the next challenge is shorter mealtimes with less nagging. both of these would improve our quality of life greatly. we are tired.