Still Struggling!

As you can see by the lack of blog posts, nights are still really hard at the moment!  I get to about nine at night and feel like I am really dragging.  It means that I drag myself to bed and catch up a bit further on sleep.  Levi is doing a bit better than I am, for which I am extremely grateful.  I think that in the next few nights I will try to stay up longer and see if I can switch it before IO have to go on Outreach next week.

Outreach to Cairns is not ideal the week after I got back for lots of reasons.  The biggest is that it doesn't give me much time to help with the organization or planning of it all.  The smallest reason is that I am still 'off' in my timing and sleep/wake cycle.  This time it was moved because the OT that I am going with is pregnant and we had to move it so she could still fly. 

Today we went back into normal weekends.  Levi has soccer and then we are catching up with friends.

 

Kiedy

Levi has found another dog!  He called him Kiedy (rhymes with Icy).  I can see why he loves him because he is almost exactly the same as Icy, who is now about eighteen months worth of love old and is starting to show a little wear.  Icy actually has a waist now where he has been hugged at night.  Kiedy is the same feel as Icy is; or more correctly was.  Icy is still the most loved as you can see by the pride of place in his sleep, but Kiedy will get there I am sure.   

I am still pretty sore from the tooth extraction but it is getting there.  It still feels a little strange where there should be a tooth but it is just missing!  Tonight I also redid the sidebar of the blog.  I had forgotten really that there are people who don't know my story, or Levi's or Frankie's and I have added a very short story about Frankie and added a photo for those who didn't get to meet him in real life.  It is still a hard time of year. I am trying to stay positive, but the sore tooth is making that more difficult.  Now I am just rambling and I am going to bed! 

Sleep Safe Little Man

Look who finally went to sleep on his own!  OK it is still in my bed but I am fine with that.  It has been a horrible day.  I think I am tired as well but sometimes these kids lives are just so much harder than they have to be and I spend the last hour of my day holding a sweet thirteen year sobbing in my arms, whose life has been ripped apart again.  The tragedy of it all is the last word of that sentence; again.  I am powerless to help.  I feel frustrated that there is so little that I can do.  I feel frustrated that my organization, the school and the government is at least as powerless as I am, perhaps those agencies are even more powerless, because I can at least hold the tissues to dry tears.  So much hurt and pain in the world.  So much fear and suffering.  So many who will inflict that pain and suffering and so little that we can do to stop it.  I am happy that Levi sleeps so soundly and that his dreams are unsullied by this kind of thing.  I hope that is still true fifty years, a hundred years from now.  Sleep safe little mancub.  Dream happy safe dreams for as long as you can.  As much as I can I will help exactly that happen.

I have tomorrow off and I am really happy about it even though it is just a string of those little appointments that you can't get done during the week.  I needed to get things done before I go to USA in June and it just seemed to make sense to put them all on the one day.  Well, two days.  I have one on Saturday morning as well. 

The weekend is a pretty standard one, completely full and barely time to breathe.  

Doing My Head In

Levi is doing my head in!  He is so up and down with his sleeping.  I have no idea at any time what he will do at night when it is bedtime.  He went a couple of weeks happily going to bed by himself and had even progressed to his own bed again.  Given the past tense of that last sentence you can tell it has taken a definite slide again.  The last few nights he has been up a bit before bed and has been alternatively; hungry, itchy, hot; cold and thirsty.  Tonight he was hungry.  Now it is a possibility that he is hungry at times especially at the moment while he is in a growth spurt, but this is what he ate for dinner, in the order he ate it, about three quarters of an hour before he went to bed:

1 Corn on the cob

3 Sausages

1 Full bowl of pasta

2 cups of milk

4 Tim Tams

4 Fruit Tingles

1 Popsicle

and finally 1 slice of bread

Frankly I was surprised that he wasn't groaning on the floor with the sheer volume.  I didn't eat that much and as you can see by the desserts, I was running out of things to feed him that didn't require me to cook another whole meal.  I could believe that his stomach was sore tonight but I find myself unable to believe that his stomach was empty.

He tried up in his bed but I just went in to check and he is diagonally across my bed again.  I don't mind him sleeping with me.  I think it doesn't hurt them (and I know that there are some very strong opinions both sides of this) and I quite like it!  Levi knows that he can move to his own bed at any time and he also doesn't feel pushed to go.  I love that.  I love that it is his decision.  He is capable of sleeping alone whenever he wants and when I need him to.  He is very sweet and cuddly and I am happy to have him there as long as he wants!

Sleeping Arrangements

There are moments when we really should just be still and wait.  I am often not good at that part of parenting.  I am not good with allowing things to just follow the path that they need to go without trying to change the speed or direction.  Levi is back to sleeping on his own and will go to sleep happily and without stress almost immediately.  Such a change from three weeks ago when I was pulling my hair out stressing about Levi's sleeping, or not sleeping, more specifically.  The dragon made a difference but the biggest change was just time.

Time for him to work out how to go to sleep by himself

Time for him to remember the logic

Time to reconcile his imagination with reality

Time for me to just let him be and work it out for himself

I am so happy that he did work it out.  I am grateful that he did it quickly!  I can be still and let him find his own way but I am not very patient.  He still has asthma that comes at night but it has also settled down a little in the last couple of days.  I went nutso about cleaning the dust after the egg hunt in the hope that it would improve it and I think that it worked, a little.  I even vacuumed his mattress.  Yes, I know, but I already admitted that I went nutso with the cleaning.  I hope that it has the desired affect at least!

Dragons and Turtles

Turns out, I already had Levi's special night time protector!  Levi actually preferred this dragon after I told him the story of how I got him.  I nearly didn't buy this special dragon.  I vacillated about buying it.  I picked him up and carried him around the store and then I'd take him back and put him back on the shelf.  I couldn't leave without him but at the same time I was struggling with buying him at all.  I was at Disneyland, about six months pregnant with Levi.  We were in the Lego store on the avenue outside of Disneyland.  Ross and Evan were in heaven with all the options, so I had lots of time to go back and forwards, agonizing about this one little dragon.  I can't think of another purchase that I have spent so much time and emotional energy, deciding to buy it. 

 The dragon was always what Frankie loved.  It represented a gift, not for this new baby I was carrying but the one that I was missing so terribly.  The dilemma was that I wanted Levi to have a 'clean shot'.  I wanted him to be allowed to pick what he loved and what he wanted to play with.  I didn't want him to only have dragons and knight stuff because his mother wanted him to replace his brother.  I never wanted Levi to feel like the 'spare'.  I never want him to feel like he needs to live his life for his brother.  I never want to push him there either.  So that was what was going through my mind in the Lego store all those so many years ago!  I am glad that I bought it.  I am glad that Levi has now made it his own!  Mostly, I am glad that Levi is actually sleeping better with a fierce protector watching over him!

Today I found a turtle.  Actually more correctly, I found an Eastern Long-necked Turtle.  He was climbing up the road.  He was walking right up the middle of the road and every time I tried to move him to the side, he would get back onto the road.  Eventually I decided to just catch him and put him in the creek.  I did think to take a few photos of him first!  He had some sharp claws!

New Idea

Sleep continues to be an issue and I can't wait for the weekend just because it carries with it the possible solution.  I am trying to not place too much hope in the new 'Spider Protector' because if it fails the worst that happens is we are just back where we are today.  Tonight Levi moved his bed to the door where he could be very close but still in bed.  I thought it was worth a try.  He still stayed awake long after he should have been asleep and just as I was mentioning to a friend that this new experiment had failed, he fell asleep!  The interesting thing for me is that he is incredibly afraid of 'snakes and spiders' but only at night as he tries to sleep.  During the day he is a little nervous of them but not the teary shaking fear that he has at night.  Again I wish that it all just made more sense and had a clear answer.  The sweet thing stays in his bed and he tries very hard to sleep, so he is not being bad.  He is just afraid and that makes me saddest of all.

Today was a good day for him.  He came home, did his homework (well) and we went to soccer.  There were no tears (until bedtime) and he was happy all afternoon.  He loves soccer with a passion and is getting pretty good at it.  He loves the friends that he plays with and they are a different group than he plays with at school, which I think is a really good thing too!  It gives him options and more chances for a wider circle of friends.  He is doing better with coping at school and life is looking pretty good for him now. 

Now if only we could get this sleep thing organized, life would be rosy!

Sleep and Rapids

Ok, the glow stick sleep thing is still not working.  Levi is now finally going to sleep all by himself but it is taking a while.  He is sleeping in a little in the morning to compensate so that is helping with his fatigue, but not much.  Really I would like to know how to fix the fear rather than solve the sleeping problem, but if Janet is right (and she always is) he will just grow out of it.  Sometimes it is really handy to have a Child Psychologist working with you!

Tonight a storm came through and as always it is quite an impressive sight in summer!  These are iPhone photos taken on the drive home (I pulled over) so they aren't as good as they could be but they are good enough.

The sky behind me was clear blue.  The sky in front looked like this. 

And just because I was downloading from my iPhone, here is some video of Levi in the creek last weekend.  Pete would wait downstream and be the brake and the safety net, and the kids would start upstream and get washed down by the rapids!  So much fun and plans for next weekend as well!

Glowstick Success? Not!

Levi is sound asleep in the other room.  Yea!!  The glow stick experiment worked, and worked well!  Giving him a glow stick before going to bed has reduced the fears and isn't bright enough to keep him awake.  Hopefully he will be able to sleep without help before having to buy a glow stick a night breaks me financially.  I am not sure if just finding the right lighting was enough to fix whatever it is that is disturbing him, but at least it is the first step. 

Levi has started chess.  At our After School Care we have an enrichment program.  There is Chess on Mondays and a PE Teacher that teaches them games and sports on Thursday.  I love that he gets those classes for free and he loves them.  All you have to do is sign him up.  Now he wants to play chess all the time.  I am thinking I will have to go and buy a cheap chess set and play with him on the weekend.  I can see how chess is a game he'd love; lots of structure, lots of rules!  He is a follow the rules sort of boy. 

OK just now, Levi came out and 'can't sleep'.  I guess the glow sticks weren't as good as I thought.  Perhaps yesterday had more to do with fatigue than solving the problems.  Ah parenting, what do you do with them?  I have no idea at times.  My mother would just scream at him and smack him and he would cry (as I did) and either cry himself to sleep (which I pretended to do so I wasn't yelled at again) or lie awake and wonder what he had done to make me so mad at him (which I also did).  So I don't yell at him because I don't want any of those things to happen.  So what option do I have?  I am not going to smack him.  Really I am going to let him lie there and he will eventually sleep.  Hopefully he will grow out of this soon.  I am really wanting him to sleep better.

Playing in the Creek

The creek is perfect at the moment, esp if you are a five to seven year old boy!  It is running over the causeway but only about ankle deep on me.  In fact, it shouldn't be running over at all.  The four big pipes that run under the causeway are mostly blocked, making the causeway into a dam of sorts, rather than a causeway.  The two right hand pipes are completely blocked and only one of the left ones is clear.  It means that the kids can run around in the water, splash each other, mostly) and throw rocks and wood into the water.  With an adult per child and water that you can stand in, it is incredibly safe with enough of an excitement edge to keep the boys happy!

We inflated the boat that Levi got from Jo for Christmas and the boys all took turns trying to row it to the corner and back.  Their co-ordination together left a little to be desired and generally the boat went round and round in circles until they started to paddle in a modified way, using the paddle straight on rather than to the side. 

Today when I went to the grocery store, I bought Levi a couple of glow sticks.  I am hoping that having a glow stick as he goes to bed will reduce his fear a little.  I am banking on his extreme fatigue being my best ally in all that as well.  Now as I go in to check him, it seems that for tonight at least, it has worked.  I hope that I can get him to sleep in the next week because I have to go on Outreach the week after and would prefer to have a strategy before sending him upstairs for a few days. 

Tired, really Tired!

Pretty much, this is what Levi has been doing a lot of in the last week.  He has been lucky.  I wish I had that kind of luxury.  It has been exhausting to go from holiday to 48 hours of travel, and then 9 days straight of work.  I have not been able to shake this cold and I am sure it is just due to fatigue, and travel and jet lag. 

Now I am sitting here with a day off tomorrow, watching something mind numbing on TV.  In the first few weeks back you have to stay up at night or you wake punishingly early in the morning.  Trust me it is a struggle every night at the moment.  At least I can sleep long and hard tonight!

If you teach them

So this is what I found when I went into rouse on Levi for turning on the light after he had been put to bed. He is just itching to learn to read. He loves the flash cards and can read many of them now. I went upstairs and told Jane that I was happy if she wants to just teach him now as I think he is starting to get frustrated with the speed of his learning program. Maybe if we can supplement a little more and he is able to read for himself he will be happier.

The poor guy was exhausted tonight as he went on his first field trip with the school. He loved the bus ride and he loved the beach and he loved writing his name in the sand. He also wrote his partner's name and other words that he knew. The beach is a great option this time of year because it isn't too hot and there are fewer bugs. We had a chat at night and his favorite thing of all was that he could take his shoes off when he got to the beach. Back to the shoe issue. At least he wears the things without arguing, but at the same time he will take them off as soon as he is able to.

Streamers

Levi is super excited about his birthday party. Consequently he spends an inordinate amount of time 'preparing'. At the moment he is obsessing over streamers, that he cuts out and sticks with tape to furniture, walls, doors and really anything else. It is getting painful, as there are little bits of cut up paper everywhere. At the same time he has gone through a roll of tape. He has a rule for birthdays that he is only allowed to have over as many friends as he is in age. This year he has 5 friends. I want to make it fun and not so much a production line. Interestingly he has a bunch of friends that are much older, so they get to come for free.

We had a day where Levi was pretty hyped up and expected to be entertained all day. It is just not how I prefer to work, so we were a little at odds today. I don't really like days like that but I think that everyone has them. No one gets on with anyone all the time is how I see it. I gave him a big cuddle tonight and told him I would try to be less grumpy tomorrow. He said that he would try to listen more. Then I gave him 40 hugs and he went happily to sleep. It would be great if all disagreements were that easily fixed.

He has a very specific night time routine. He has a shower and then we do 2 stories, or flash cards (whatever the flavour of the month is). Next we talk about our day, mostly with his finger in my belly button. What we did, somethings bad or good. If the day wasn't interesting enough, we are allowed to make it up. We could have gone to the moon or to the bottom of the sea, if we wanted to. Then we have cuddles, a different number each night. It is a beautiful way to say Goodnight and generally repairs anything we need repaired (like tonight). I hope that it continues.