1st Quarter, 2009

4 months into 2009. Things have been chaotic, stressful, extremely hard to deal with and there has been a few glimpses of fun. I have tried so many times to write a new blog, but the emotional side of Marce took over and I couldn't finish. This is going to be scatterbrained and terribly wrote. I'm running on 4 1/2 hours of sleep, a whole lot of stress and just plain exhaustion. This has taken a few attempts to write and get across right.

January and February:
Kids behaviours started to spiral downwards. Keely became very angry, hard to even talk to. She would temper tantrum in her room for over an hour at a time 1-3 times a day. She wasn't the same child. She started talking about ways to kill herself (and for those of you who think "She's 7, she is looking for a reaction out of you..." NO.)

March:
The spirling Keely went from depressed with huge outbursts to the kid who pulled away from my hand in parking lots and running in front of moving cars. The kid who tried to get out of the house to lay down in the street and wait for a car to run her down. The kid who in the middle of eating dinner looked up and said, "I wish I knew how to get over the back fence so I could get hit by the train right now." SO... March 04, I took her to the pediatrician and told him how far down she had gotten in the past 3 weeks. He wanted to have her admitted to a Mental Health Hospital about an hour a way. That was one of the hardest things I have ever had to hear or do. During her week there, I saw her every day and talked to her on the phone every night. It was good for her to be there. The psychiatrist said that she has a mood disorder but didn't want to do a full diagnosis on her. Now she is on Prosac for her depression and Concerta for her ADHD (which has also made a huge difference on her behaviours). She started seeing her pediatrician weekly. She started seeing her counselor weekly. Although she seems so much happier, the counseling has seemed to bring up A LOT of emotional issues regarding me.

April:
Keely is continuing to see her counselor once a week. She had an evaluation on the 6th; I get the results May 4th. Colin has started weekly counseling with a FANTASTIC man who is a Certified Anger Resolution Therapist. On the 23rd, he had a full evaluation; I get the results May 12th. He started a new dosage of Concerta the first week of April and it has made an AMAZING change in his attention span. His teacher has reported that all of a sudden with the change of medication dosage he has made leaps and bounds. He has started to grasp sounding out words and started trying to write. The lightbulb turned on in his head and he grasps simple addition and subtraction. The best part is that when he starts to count, he does pretend dots in a straight row. Nobody can figure out how he knows when to stop the straight line of numbers, but in his head, he somehow does. It's rather impressive to watch.

During the first week of April, we added a new hobby to the mess. It's been a great new hobby on many levels. We have become owners of chickens. How? Why? Well, it all started like this... Mum and I were talking and joked about turning the garden area into a chicken coop and turning the doghouse into a henhouse for fresh eggs. 3 days later, construction began. We started with 3 fluffy day-old chicks and four day-old ducklings (the key word in that sentence is "started"). So, the girl with an absolute fear of birds has found herself loving ugly chickens.

The moral of the story, I've been pretty damn busy with going to doctors appointments and counseling appointments. I also take Mum out all the time due to her needing double knee replacement; I'm the chauffeur. More to come soon...