hide-n-(sensory)-seeking

(I apologize for the low quality pictures. I'm having problems with my phone, and am in the midst of troubleshooting. Hopefully, much better ones will be coming soon.) Our eyes are constantly taking in and processing our world. Everywhere we look we see shapes, colors, shades of light, and shadows create darkness. Sometimes our brain registers this input as soothing. Sometimes it registers it as irritating, overwhelming, or even painful. For certain individuals it just proves to be too much and their brains get confused. Suddenly, it's as if they've forgotten how to perform even basic functions or execute a plan of action. Now this can happen to anyone, some of the time. However, there are some that this can happen to anytime. This makes certain jobs of daily living very difficult. Take for example my children and their school work. A normal page of math may not present a very big challenge to you or to me, but on some days, for my children, it can be paralyzing. ...

Welcome to Wordy Wednesday! Today's subject is: STRESS Now I know I said I was going to focus on words and subjects that are new or unfamiliar. And I know that stress is unfortunately way too familiar to most of us. So that is exactly why I choose it for this week. Because knowledge is power and strength lies in numbers. I'll explain. The simple definition of stress is: physical or mental pressure. Well that doesn't sound very threatening, right? Right. Stress can be a positive force. It's what motivates us to make split second decisions that can mean life or death, success or failure. So it's actually an essential function. But it can also be very, truly, threatening. When I looked up stress on my Dictionary.com Thesaurus, it has fifty synonyms. FIFTY ! Including the relatively mild: alarm, crunch, ferment, hassle, pull, tightness and worry. At the other end, though, were words such as: agony, dread, mistrust, overextension, strain...

We received our weighted blankets a little over a week ago. Kits weighs 4 pounds. Zak's weighs 11. Wow! This thing is heavy. Resting Easier! Kit still won't sleep at night with it covering her, but sometimes she'll nap with it, so progress! What she will let me do at night is roll it up and squish it up next to her. She then has pressure from both sides, one side from the couch cushion, the other from the blanket. Also she has a cushion up top, so she can push against it if she wants. We have seen much improvement at night. She let's me put her down easily into her little cubbyhole after she's asleep. That alone is huge! A few times she has even stopped nursing and gone to curl up there and go to sleep on her own!!! Beyond HUGE!! Not enough exclamation points ever to convey my excitement! Next, all week long she has woken up just once, a few nights twice! AND...She's not crying when she wakes up! YAY! YAY! And double YAY!! I'm not eve...

I've spent the last few days alternating between anger and feeling sorry for myself. A lot of it may be justified, but for the most part it is entirely unhelpful. Almost, I do sometimes clean when I'm angry, so that's a plus. Most of the time though it just means that I'm even more tired than I started out, and have just as much, if not more work to do. Which of course just makes me feel sorry for myself, then angry, etc. Vicious cycle. So every once in a while when I'm feeling that way, I'll steal away during or right after the kids bedtime. I'll indulge in a coffee or hot chocolate, and maybe some cookies. I'll go to my 'Thoughtful Spot.'  Not as nice as Pooh Bear's, but almost always empty, and as decent a view of the stars as one can expect within city limits. I went there tonight and just breathed in the cool night air. I let my eyes follow the fog as it slowly swept the field, set aglow by the moonshine. I resented the streetlight...

    I cut up two kiwis for Kit today. One was room temperature the other had been chilled in the refrigerator. She only ate the warm ones. If she got a cold one off the fork, she'd spit it out right away. Toward the end of her snack, she started piling the cold ones into my hand. She apparently didn't want them fraternizing with her warm ones any more. Maybe they were making them cold.

Welcome to Wordy Wednesday! The subject for today: REFRAMING   You know how every now and then some average Joe finds a painting at a flea market or in Grandma's attic. The frame though is loose, chipped and discolored. He dusts it off, looks at it in decent lighting and decides it's a nice painting, just needs a new frame. He takes it to a frame shop or artist, and low and behold, he finds out he has stumbled upon a true treasure! Now, in a lovely, well fitting frame, everyone around him can enjoy this masterpiece and see how beautiful and delicate it is.   People are very much like art. Each of us precious, unique, and complex.   Sometimes though, the true brilliance of a piece is obscured by an inappropriate or ill-fitting frame. This could lead one to believe that the art itself is defective, or damaged, but that is often not the case. Usually, all the art needs is a little TLC, a new frame, and good maintenance.   This is als...

    Grace is peeling an orange.   "You know what, Daddy?"   "What?"   "When I was three, you lied to me"   "I did?"   "You told me these would make me happy."   "How is that a lie?"   "Well, these do NOT make me happy. So, it's a lie."   "Maybe you're just not eating enough of them."     Thank you for sharing, Grace.  When she was three...

"I'm not upset." "You seem upset!" "Sorry, I'm not upset at you. I know it was an accident. I'm just frustrated about how much work it is to clean it. It takes a long time and a lot of work, and it's been a really long couple of days is all. I promise, my upset is not at you. You're a good boy." "I'm really sorry, I tried to clean it up. " "I know baby." Clean what?   This. Yeah. This. This gruesome scene is not murder, nor gore. It's wax. Lots and lots of bright red wax splattered and spilled ALL OVER the bathroom walls, counter and sink. Why is this everywhere? Because everything Zak does, he does big. He starts out with a toe in the water and ends up way over his head. Every attempt to make it better made the mess bigger. Poor guy.  He may lack a measure of common sense, but he makes up for it with tons of heart. If I were watching this in a movie, I would be laughing. Because i...

  Even though he perpetually leaves his shoes in the exact spot he took them off...   He often leaves wonderful little surprises too...     I love rifling through his notebooks and seeing where his imagination has taken him. Here are some samples I recently ran across. Enjoy!   Square cartoon robot guys with flailing arms seriously ROCK!   DRAW SOMETHING!

  "Her feet are cold. The floor is freezing. You need to put socks on her." This line, delivered in Spanish, is repeated to us multiple times a day, but especially at night. "Yes, Grandpa. I'm putting her socks on in just a minute." I do put socks on her. In front of him, so he is satisfied. Knowing full well that in a matter of minutes (usually), Kit is going to yank those things right off and run across the "freezing" floor pleased as punch with herself. As soon as he notices, the whole thing starts over. Occasionally, she will leave them on longer if there is enough distractions that keep her from noticing her feet. And if the socks are well fitting and have grips on the bottom. But how many times do toddler socks ever fit well? It seems like they are always sliding off because they are either too small or too big. As for grips, I should be out buying puffy paint and then applying it in cute patterns to the bottoms of all of her sock...

I'm going to try something. I'd like to introduce a weekly post that focuses on a word or phrase that might be unfamiliar to many, myself to begin with, in order to expand as many horizons as possible. Any and all feedback is welcome as are suggestions for investigation. This week on Wordy Wednesday:   PROPRIOCEPTION Did you know that we actually have SEVEN senses, not five? It's true and in fact, the two so often omitted are quite possibly our two most important. If these two don't work right we are a "hot mess of fire!", to quote my niece. This week we will focus on one. The proprioceptive sense. This sense is perhaps the most difficult to explain. So I will do my best. The five most common senses are known less often by their scientific names, but rather by what they enable us to do. Auditory = hear. Tactile = touch. Olfactory = smell. Visual = sight. Gustatory = taste. If I were assigned the task of labeling the other two this way, they wou...

In our house we are trying to wake up our sluggish systems with various activities. Heavy Work Zak has chores that include heavy work, such as taking out the trash, and hauling baskets of laundry to their respective places. We also have a play set in the backyard which allows him to climb, slide, hang, and dig. We also allow him a digging hole. It is in a place in the yard that does not have a lot of traffic, is not obviously visible to those driving by, and must be covered at all times when he is not actively digging in it. Victor let him pick out his own shovel, and when he feels like it, the boy can just DIG! The interesting thing is, we have provided all of these thing for him before we ever knew about SPD or suspected he had it. They just seemed like something he really needed to be able to do, and they seemed to make him more mellow. Only for a while though, then he needs another wake up call.     Kit gets her proprioceptive needs met by pushing anything she...