Thank Goodness Its Over

Firstly, let me start by wishing you all a very happy new year. Here’s hoping all your hopes and dreams are granted this year.

We may only be in the first few days of 2013 but what an eventful few days these have been… Well in our household anyway! With the children still off school it sure hasn’t been quiet!

Little man’s routine has gone totally off course and once again as a result I have a child who sleeps all day and is awake all night. Yes, I do drag his backside from his pit most days but when you’ve spent most the night awake yourself it is kind of tempting to let him sleep. One, your able to get stuff done and two… Have you ever tried dragging a 12 year old boy from his bed? Especially one who has the tendency to wake in a super foul mood? I rest my case!

Still, its to be expected I guess! Christmas and New year does tend to interfere with the body clock of a child on the autism spectrum. OK, he isn’t the best of sleepers generally, its just that bit worse these past few weeks. That’s why I’m kinda glad its all over now… Well it will be once the children are back at school. I don’t wanna sound all ba humbug, I actually love this festive time of year though I also love a little normality in the house (not that we are your average family on most days but I guess you get my drift).

So… Let me tell you a little about our Christmas and New year…. There was lots of fun in our house. Christmas itself was really pleasant. Yes, dinner was a tad later than expected, but it was actually really nice and chilled. That’s as chilled as Christmas can be! I know for some it can be a really stressful day. Especially when you have a child on the autism spectrum who likes everything to run like clockwork. However, this year we managed an almost stress free day. Keeping things small really helped. There was no huge family dinner, just me and the kids and their father. We briefly popped to my mums in the morning which was really short and sweet, then we sat watching Christmas TV with a load of Quality street within reach. Dinner did ran a little late as mentioned but I blamed the Turkey! It had clearly been living in another time zone when living as it had no intention on playing by the rules and cooking in accordance with the timescales so clearly stated on the packet. Little man did get a little stressed at this point but so did I. Maybe it was a mix of his Aspergers traits and that of hunger. I’m guessing it was more of the latter as I know I was close to starting on the pudding I’d prepared at some point.

As mentioned in a previous post, that of Boxing Day didn’t go so well. With no schedule as such little man was handed a dose of the post Christmas blues and handled this in the only way he knew how… With a Good old fashioned meltdown… Little man style.

As the days passed, Little man kinda felt as if he was in limbo. The week between Christmas and New Year is a hard one for little man and I can kind of understand why. I swear, even I was unaware of what day it was occasionally. With money spent up on Christmas I found myself with nothing else to do but watch television and even I was getting pretty bored of this. What with one day being a holiday and the next day not, supermarket opening times still up in the air and not knowing if the rubbish would be collected or not (not great when you have a bin full of turkey bones, rotten veg and a truck load of gift wrap) you can’t blame him for the confusion… or me for the lack of schedule planning.

As for New Years Eve, well, this was spent with my mum. Just myself, mother and the children. So again a pretty quiet family affair (that’s if you don’t include the noise that was coming from little mans direction)!

You see, little man gets somewhat excitable when it comes to New Year. He is petrified of fireworks, but only when stood beneath them, so the prospect of watching them on the television is one of great excitement for him. As the stroke of midnight grew closer little mans excitement was growing off the scale. He had come up with this wild and somewhat bonkers idea to do his own countdown for the benefit of his youtube channel (have I not yet mentioned his growing fascination with creating videos for youtube? Another time maybe). Anyway this meant that he wasn’t only sat filming the mental piece clock but that of the TV. As the stroke of midnight finally came we were not only greeted by the sound of the fabulous London firework display on the TV as well as a somewhat loopy firework hating barking dog running around mums living room but the sound of little man as he commentated the whole thing in his own unique style (sweet you may thing but you were not the ones reaching for the Paracetamol so early on in the night)!

So… There you have it. With all the festivities well and truly over I’m just about ready for the year ahead. I have our holiday to butlins in April to look forward to but before that I have a monster high themed sleepover/party to organise for a very excited 9 soon to be 10 year old daughter…. The joys of being a kid!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too…. Heres to a splendid & wonderful 2013.

Dream location – The Land of Nod

Drip-drip-drip…. The dripping tap that echo’s throughout the otherwise deadly silent house!

 Tick-tock-tick-tock…. The noisy seconds hand on the grandfather clock that drives you completely insane, so much so you jump from your bed removing its batteries!

 Buzzzzzzzzzz….. The dull jarring buzzing you hear coming from the fridge freezer, just as you’ve almost arrived in the land of nod.

 Have any of the above driven you to hold a pillow over your head in the hope of drowning out the annoyance of white noise or maybe even snoring? If you happen to answer “YES” then I envy you, I really do!

 No, the above is not a typo, its true, yes, all of the above are annoying, that I do not deny, but all three of these scenario’s can be easily fixed (even the added addition of somebody’s terrible snoring)! OK, you may lose a weeks food shop by switching off the freezer, but you can do it all the same!

 I however, cannot switch of my children, although I have sometimes wondered why on earth god didn’t make them with batteries? Some nights are better than others, it’s the others that are currently driving me to write this post which I’m guessing consists of nothing more than rambling, the kind that likely makes no sense! Please bear with me, last night was actually one of those nights!

 Anyone would think I was used to it by now, after all Little Man is 11 already and hasn’t ever really slept an entire night, well not properly anyway. Since his been on the slow release Melatonin, his engaged in a lot of sleep walking and talking so his often up and about even when he is a sleep, which is often not in till some point during the early hours anyway.

 Although I try to embrace Little Mans Asperger’s Syndrome, seeing it more as a gift rather than something disabling. Sleep (or lack of it) is most defiantly one of the hardest issues we have had to deal with for as long as I care to remember.

 Generally I deal with the lack of sleep reasonable well, discounting the time I fell asleep queuing in the supermarket (and yes I was standing)! My head, well that’s somewhere else altogether, seriously, I can’t survive forever with my brain functioning as if it belonged to a chimp ! My point is, I guess I’m used to it and although I don’t get the average amount of sleep many manage, I get by with  grabbing hours here and their, well this used to be the case at least!

 Harley is my youngest son, he was 2 in December. I was blessed with a child who slept throughout the night pretty early on. Day time napping was now however out the question, unless their father was around and when he wasn’t I was basically #•@#@• Then something much worse started to happen, Harley started sleeping less, a lot less! This finally came to a head last week when he demonstrated his stamina in withstanding an alnighter… yes, he stayed awake the entire night falling to sleep at an unforgivable 6am, I was broken, no not physically (that comes in later) but emotionally… was it not enough to have the one child sleep in such a crazy manner… but two… come on give us a break! Of course I explained it away to myself as “His coming down with something” but he hasn’t and its been 5 whole long sodding days and nights. Actually as I type this my eyes are partially closed…. God help me if my Mac ends up on the floor.

 I don’t know why the toddler is suddenly like a child on red bull, but me, I don’t like it one little bit! Of course his then hard to wake and this is when tantrums come into play as his over tired and I get tempted to let him just sleep! It’s an extraordinarily difficult situation to be in when your tired and feeling like you’ve been smashed in the face by a double-decker bus! However, I will try my best as I fear it may lead to more nights like that of the night before. To make matters worse regardless of  him becoming extremely tired, often resulting in him falling into an uncontrolled heap between 8-9 pm (which I note is still reasonably late for him) he still somehow manages to wake up before the clock strikes midnight! Oh… and guess what? He only goes and becomes the life and soul of the party. I’m in trouble if Little man than decides to come out his room engaging in some weird activity as for some reason he’ll suddenly acquire a very sudden interest in his brother, the same brother he screams at to get out his room everyday!

 This was what happen Monday Night Tuesday early hours… I wanted to scream, correction… I did scream… Loudly! Closing the bedroom door, I laid Harley done beside me, however sleep wasn’t on his crazy toddler agenda, he had more exciting things planned, like demonstrating how well he can jump on mummy’s bed and the lovely art of body slamming, with myself being his chosen victim (you know, like those over grown and over weight men who pretend to throw each other around a ring).. Worse when your eyes are closed and it completely takes you by surprise… Ouch…

 I pray to the lord that this is some kind of toddler rebelliousness, one that Little man nor their sister luckily never experienced (through little man more than made up for his lack of tantrums by age 7 and continues to today)!

 Now feeling like a sack of crap, I have important business to attend to! Oh, how I wish that business was in the role of a mid mornings nap…. Sadly it’s tending to the cat litter tray, a sink full of dirty cups and with a bit of luck a ten minute soak in the bath (I hope)!

 Quick Note: If anyone has any tips on helping both an 11-year-old boy diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome and that of a toddler of 2, learn the unwritten rules of sleeping and remaining that way, please do comment! Plus I would love to hear from anybody who has a child on the autism spectrum who happens to sleep walk, sleep talk or both (this is as though  they are literally always on the go)! Even more so if such behaviour is happening while taking a slow releasing Melatonin (only this is when the sleep walking and talking increased for Little Man)?

 Thanks for reading my ramblings and I bid you all goodnight… Oops I mean good-bye!

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