It's been a few months since I've posted, but life has been pretty weird lately on the eat-it-or-go-to-your-room-don't-bite-your-brother front.
For starters, my lovely family practice doctor finally decided I was deserving of some Celexa and Xanex (YAY!!! I can SLEEP again!) because my blood pressure was skyrocketing in conjunction with some pretty hefty anxiety attacks which was leading in turn to lovely bouts of insomnia. When she asked if anything was stressful in my life at the moment I stared blankly at her while my three children took turns poking each other in the eye while attempting to tear expensive medical equipment off the office wall. Here was my list:
1) 9, 8, and 5 year old boys have taken over my house/world/life. They're ADHD, ODD, PDD, and every other 3 letter mental health acronym you can think of. They enjoy gnawing on one another and trying to hit each other with sticks.
2) My husband is legally blind and both of us work 30 minutes from our home. In opposite directions. I wake up at 4:30 every morning to take him to work and pass back out for a few hours once I get back home. Then I drive to pick him up again at 2:15 just to immediately turn around and leave for my evening shift job. I get home around 9:30pm, stay up til 11 because I have to wind down, then get up again at 4:30. We drive about 1000 miles a week. And my car's AC is broken.
3) My best friend is no longer talking to me because I called her out on standing up me and my kids for the THIRD time in one week. Apparently *I* was rude to her by saying I was upset that she had inconvenienced my family and had set my kids into howling fits.
4) I was promoted at work which is both good and bad. Good because I get SLIGHTLY more money. Bad because I do a LOT more work training all the new trainers for the entire district.
My doctor's advice was to "stop doing something because when you're burning out that's the best thing to do." Long drawn out pause followed by pursed lips and a nod on my part. Which, I should have asked, should I stop doing then? Just give me the drugs, lady! So she did. And here we are.
Unfortunately after the meds started kicking in after 3 weeks a vague sort of lethargy started taking over my life. What's that? You locked the cat in the dresser? Okay, just make sure you give her air. What? Braeden is running around the front yard naked? Grab the sun screen....Everything became very ho hum, which is very odd. I think the meds have finally evened out because I'm back to being a little frantic again, but that's my explanation as to why I couldn't find the energy or will to post for so long.
Anyway. Begin frantic sequence of OHMIGODWHAZGOINON?!
Today was pretty blah. George, our psych caseworker came over this morning to do his quarterly visit. The house was a mess, I was wearing a shirt that was still covered in some sort of food from the other day and my house jeans that won't stay zipped any more and he just smiled. We spent about 40 minutes discussing Caleb and Matt's medications, the possibility of George taking the boys for a few hours next week to give me a break (CALGON, TAKE THEM TO THE PARK!), and dodged flying pieces of paper as each boy tried repeatedly to be the center of attention. You'd think my children were kept in caves and were NEVER exposed to humans. I can almost see them contemplating what would happen if they poked George with a stick.
Their counselor came over the house after I left for work, which is our typical Tuesday afternoon routine. My husband says it was same ol', same ol' with nothing huge happening. So WTF happened between then and when I got home that made my two eldest decide to crawl out their window at 10pm and attempt to walk to the mall??!?!
Yes, you heard it right, my 8 and 9 year old have decided that they are indeed monkeys and while I was laying in bed reading managed to escape through their bedroom window around 10pm-ish and made it a little over 2 miles away and past a semi-busy road when the cops found them. Naturally, when the cops said "Hey, come here" they took off. Caleb clung to a telephone pole and threatened to bite the cop and said he had a "poisonous bite." Should I laugh at this? On one hand it amuses me, on the second hand, I want to seriously take all of his dinosaur possessions and BURN THEM.
Around 11:50 I had just turned out the lights and had settled down in bed when I saw lights pull into the drive way and then someone was knocking at the door. My husband had fallen asleep on the couch earlier and I left him there (don't hate--I had the bed to myself for once) so he got to the front door first and lo--there was a cop lady. "Do you have two kids?" she asked and I thought "Who the hell hotlined us?" And then she said, "They're in the car." So we all tromped out to the car where Caleb was screaming in the back of the cop cruiser like someone was sawing his leg off with a dull spoon. Matthew, naturally, was just sitting there stoned on his drugs. I'm actually quite surprised Matthew had the bodily capacity to get out of bed, crawl out a window, and walk that freaking far on 500mg of Depakote ER and a full mg of risperdal in his system (usually that cocktail knocks him out cold for a good 10 hours). The cops explained the situation and suggested that we lock our doors. Well DUH. "Our first priority is the safety of the children," the older male cop grunted and though I nodded calmly (cops automatically put me into polite mode) my brain was muttering "douchebag" to me. What, you mean it's not good for us to kick the kids outside at night without shoes on? I thought it would help keep the hardwood floors cleaner.
We get the kids out of the car and Caleb immediately says "I want to go to bed now" all nervous like and starts mall-walking his butt back inside. We sit them on the couch, sans cops who have left at this point, and tell them to explain themselves. "I just wanted to go to a quick walk," explained Caleb. Did I mention I hate ODD? Matthew apparently was just along for the ride but still needs to be held accountable for his actions. My husband made sure the windows were closed and latched and we're leaving their bedroom door open for the rest of the night and hubby has decided to stay awake in the living room the rest of the night as well.
What the hell do we do as a consequence for this? Obviously we're going to go get the magnetic window alarms for the windows because we're not allowed to use locks on indoor doors or windows in case of an emergency. But consequence-wise, NOTHING seems to work. We withhold the good things that we have scheduled each day (movie time, dessert, drawing time, etc) and it doesn't seem to phase them past the inntial outrage. They lose reward points, same thing. You can sit each child down, explain to them what the consequence will be if they proceed with a certain action and have them repeat it back to you using different words and they STILL turn around 2 minutes later, do the action, receive the consequence and act like OMG HOW CAN YOU DO THAT TO ME?! What is a consequence that fits this situation?
It's now 1am and the xanex has kicked in (this counts as an anxiety attack for me) so I'm going to go pass out. Tomorrow morning will be filled with multitudes of phone calls to our three caseworkers, the counselor, psychiatrist, my mother (who will undoubtedly say what a horrible idea this was, blah blah), and anyone else that wants to hear my woes.
Any advice? I need a vacation. Respite here we come.
distressed