October 5

We just had a lovely visit with Grammy and Granddad. Sarah spent almost the entire visit glued to Granddad. In the past this used to mostly involve chin presses to his forehead and buttoning and unbuttoning his shirt (great from an OT perspective of fine motor skills). For this visit Sarah started doing a lot of what she has done occasionally post-bedtime with me. She says calmly that she wants to cry, usually while she is already being held. Then she sort of does a fake cry. I think that she wants the snuggling closeness. I keep reminding her that she can just say she wants to be held or to snuggle and that she doesn't have to be crying. With Granddad, she did the "want to cry" and snuggling a lot. She also did some snuggling on Grammy's lap. I'm not quite sure what it means and maybe I don't have to know. 

Amy was very excited about the moose stuffed animals that Grammy brought. Amy named them Moosie and Clara (she names almost everything Clara) but then could never tell them apart so Grammy would pretend to listen to what each moose said. Amy loved this. Hopefully Amy will believe that Carl and I can interpret moose-ese as well as Grammy.

Grammy and Granddad said they noticed an improvement in Sarah's language from when they last saw her in July, and in Amy's language too for that matter. For Amy this is a given, as it perhaps is with Sarah, but I want to remember to notice it as notable just the same.

Sonia has been reading Raun Kaufman's book Autism Breakthrough, which I read a few months ago. It is wonderful to get Sonia's reminders and refreshers about what he says. She has been doing a beautiful job implementing the Son-Rise suggestions of how to respond to yelling/whining/screaming, etc. While I have read the suggestions multiple times and listened to the suggestions multiple times, I have still felt challenged about actually implementing it myself. Being able to watch Sonia do it so cleanly and clearly has helped me. Yesterday for the first half of the day I totally rocked it. And then I totally didn't. Oh well. Thank goodness for help and for other people being better at things than I am so I can learn from them.

The girls have gotten so good at flipping and swinging and climbing the trampoline bar that they have outgrown it. I'm sure they would beg to differ, but yesterday we had an unfortunate moment of imbalance and the trampoline tipped over. No one was seriously hurt, but it showed me something had to change. For now, the trampoline has been put away. I am a bit sad about this since Sarah was just starting to practice doing her usual flip in reverse. However, it isn't feasible to keep the trampoline accessible when it now would need constant adult supervision to make sure only one kid used it at at time and that no one tipped the whole thing. 

Regarding my cluster headaches... I am trying a new approach. In some ways I always do a slightly new approach whenever I get them, but this feels really different. I am not freaking out. I have not started western meds. I haven't ruled them out, but I am giving myself some time to try some things I haven't. (Before being diagnosed I dealt with clusters for roughly 10 years without meds). I am taking magnesium and continuing with melatonin. I am cutting gluten and chocolate and any take-out. I am avoiding even the processed meats that I have approved of before (eg. Applegate Organics Hot Dogs). In the past I always thought that my food choices couldn't be to blame because I eat about the same all year long and the headaches only happen some of the time. But what if this is just a different time and so I need to make different food choices? What if the headaches could be related to inflammation in response to gluten? What if I get a bit under-hydrated and then when things are stressful I often do more take-out and less home-cooked food which makes me further dehydrated? What if that is enough to keep the cycle of headaches going? It certainly can't hurt me to make sure I am hydrated and eating even more healthily than usual. It can't hurt to make sure I get enough sleep, which I am now doing to the extent I can control it. Last week I got two deep tissue massages and on Tuesday I will get an acupuncture treatment. I have certainly received plenty of bodywork during past clusters, but not scheduled so close together. I am wanting to bombard my body with good care. I have found from past experience that working on my trigger points and tight muscles myself actually does not help. Someone else can do it and it will help but when I work on myself I either tense other parts of myself too much or I use too much pressure or something. When I do wake with a headache now I let myself sit up or I lie still and think through Alexander's directions. I don't allow myself to do any massage. I remind myself that it will pass. When I go to bed at night I remind myself that it will be ok to wake with a headache. I even had the radical idea of being excited to be in this cluster and that I could be excited to wake with a headache. I know this may sound ludicrous, but dreading and hating the headaches certainly hasn't worked for me. Being excited to be in the cluster so far helps me stay more relaxed overall and more joyful. They aren't taking over my life. They also have been pretty mild so far. Is the mildness because some of them are just mild? Or is it my different choices (not all of which were implemented immediately)? I don't know how this experience will continue but I am optimistic for the actual experience and for the implications of meeting such a challenge in such a different way than usual. 

Our sweet cat Flint is in the final stage of his life. I'm not sure what kind of timing this means. Any healing thoughts you can send him are much appreciated. My hope is for him to be happy and peaceful, whether he is with us or leaving us. For all that I haven't been as attentive to him as I was before we had kids, I do love him and sometimes find this very very hard. I would love for him to start eating and drinking more, using his litterbox more, and even having the tumors shrink (if we are going for the gold in what we imagine). I would love for him to sit next to me on the sofa and sit in his favorite spots in my bedroom.

As I write, Sarah is having a very screamy time getting ready for the day. While she protests about getting dressed and a million other things, she often is very eager to get ready when a volunteer is coming. I am so tired of the screamies. I want to overpower them with my own force but I keep learning that this doesn't work long term. I am trying to meet it with softness and creativity (though I often feel like a hypocrite for how often I write this and advocate it and how often I do the opposite). At the moment I am meeting it with my absence and letting the amazing, creative Carl be with her. I am reminding myself that it is ok if she isn't dressed and is still upset when N. arrives. That can be part of the program. If you are spending a moment sending good thoughts to Flint, if you could also send some thoughts towards helping us (me) have more space for Sarah and helping her have an easier time with everything that would be great. Thank you.