Mike

Mike took this, he takes much better pictures than I do. Anthony is having a good week, kind of. Tonight he went right to sleep, which hardly ever happens but it happens enough that Mike and I know what it means, which is that he will probably be up at 4:00 in the morning. Mike said, and it's true, of course we want him to go right to sleep, he has been having terrible tantrums at night so we are glad when he is spared those. But at what cost? Then he wakes up tomorrow at 4:00 and is miserable by 8:00? Plus we are awake then too, so we are really tired? More tired? Ugh. I wish he could just a) go to sleep without dreadful tantrums and b) still sleep until 6:00 or so. Oh well, he's not a robot - he's a human being with some funky ass sleeping patterns. What can you do? He had a great day today, his therapists said, so maybe it will continue. We'll see. You never know, as my nephew Parker says. You never know.

Three

If you look closely, you can see there are three of them in this picture. Poor Veronica is down in the right corner. It must say something about my level of exhaustion that it took me a long time to realize what was up and down and right and left in that picture. Sheesh.

Anthony is not having a great time of it here at home lately! He has been freaking out at night, and sometimes during the afternoon, and mostly ignoring all toilet training that we've done. It's beyond disappointing. It's like, if one thing was going well, we could at least point to that, but it's not, really, nothing. Allegedly he is doing well at school but ... who cares? Ha! I mean, I care, of course, I'm glad he's doing well most of the time, I just feel like ... well, he LIVES here. I wish he could be happier and more successful here and I have all these ANGER feelings of ABANDONMENT with regard to the toilet training here and how screwed he got on the home training and .. ugh. We are going to continue to plug away and face each day and new pair of underwear with a smile and hope it gets better. And I'm going to make voo doo dolls of people to play with in the middle of the night when I am up nursing and I'll get my aggression out that way, ha!

Maria, as pictured, follows him everywhere lately. He doesn't seem to love it but he doesn't seem to hate it either. I mean, I think ideally he'd want to be left alone but she is hard to resist. She loves him so much, it breaks my heart to see it.

We are coming up on our second weekend where we're all here, I hope and pray it goes better than last weekend! Anthony was supposed to go on a field trip to a pumpkin patch this week but it was postponed, we have had some crappy and cold and rainy weather. I think it's supposed to be clear this weekend, so maybe we'll go back to the pumpkin patch. We'll see. I haven't taken the baby anywhere yet but that is all outside and she'd just be in the wrap anyway so I think she'd be okay. Speaking of the baby, she is starting to scream in earnest so I have to move around again. Later!

Anthony and the Girls

All of the kids, except Veronica, have a book with their name in it.  Anthony's is called Anthony and the Girls and it's super cute.  I guess it's prescient too because now it really is Anthony and the girls around here.  Felicity Rose Beck was born on October 10, she is gorgeous and perfect and sweet.
Anthony had a great week in school last week while I was gone, I'm not sure what that says about me, I'm going to guess and hope NOTHING, ha!  We had a rough weekend for our first weekend as a family of six, but what can you do.  Saturday was our worst toilet training day in a long time, it was HORRIBLE.  We are just going to keep trying and being consistent and hope that we can start to do as well at home as we do at school.  If I think about it too much, the disparity between his success at school and at home, it makes me want to yell and scream so I don't think about it too much.  I am just determined to make it work here at home and that is that.
He seems largely uninterested in the baby, but funnily enough, Maria has been all over him lately, they have been playing chase a lot and hanging out.  I mean, it's mostly her and not him but I'm glad they have each other anyway.
Mike and I went to church on Saturday and there was a man several rows in front of us who was stimming with one hand and flapping around this pillow with the other.  The pillow had little bells and ribbons on it, I imagine it was fun for him to see those things whipping around.  I noticed him and then didn't think of it again, but then later in the Mass, that man started to WHACK his head, oh my LORD it was loud.  I mean - it was LOUD, I bet you could have heard it outside.  It was loud like the whack in the song Head Over Heels, by Belinda Carlisle, you know what I mean?  LOUD.  And I hoped, for the millionth time, that Anthony never does that.  I always tell myself that people wouldn't do it if it was really going to hurt them but there is no way that this couldn't have hurt that man.  And I know that he is older, not Anthony, not the same thing at all, but wow, it was upsetting.  He didn't really seem like a person who had a lot of options in life and I hope and pray that it didn't hurt him and that he did get some comfort out of it.  Aaaaand because I am selfish, I hope Anthony never does it.
Anyways.  I will hopefully get some pictures taken this week and we can get back on track, blog-wise, here soon.

Siblings

Anthony LOVES Maria's bed. I don't know if it's because it's up the highest of all the kids' beds or what but he loves to go in there. This is from the other morning before school, He was in there and Veronica climbed right up and I was snapping away with my phone, since they rarely appear together. I think they look so much alike here, their profiles are almost identical, to me. In the interest of full disclosure, I think he was grabbing her hand to *get rid of it*, but maybe not. We'll go with the picture, right, and say it looks like they are holding hands? Okay.

This morning Mike took the kids to get donuts (and bagels and coffees and juice, according to Maria) and Maria seemed unnerved about going. Mike has been taking all three kids in, since Maria LOVES to 'get down', and I guess it's been a little crazy at times. One time Anthony touched some older dude's beard - it's something they were working on at school. Anthony can go up to a male therapist at school and say 'beard', and then he can touch the guy's beard. Welllll, apparently, the guy at Dunkin Donuts wasn't in on this particular part of Anthony's therapy, so I guess he was surprised when Anthony reached out and touched his beard. Sometimes he takes his shoes off, last week he jumped up on a chair to jump down, etc. I guess people's reactions are such that Maria is noticing them and thinking they are strange behaviors.

I told her this morning, look - you can go get donuts and the women behind the counter will give you a donut hole, and they'll be happy to see all of you! Don't worry about what people think if Anthony jumps around or hoots and hollers - we all love Anthony and those people at the store will too. (Note: this is probably not true, Mike said the old ladies that Anthony went and stood near last weekend were distinctly grumpy about it but I don't care. Old people have their problems too, and they are probably worried that Anthony is going to knock them over or something. I see it in church, too.) Anyways, she went and I think she feels better about it, but man. I hate that her love and admiration for Anthony is getting all funkified because of some a-holes in the store. I did take the opportunity to tell her that if SHE behaved herself and held hands with Veronica, maybe DADDY could focus on holding Anthony's hand. We'll see how it goes.

Anthony has had a pretty good week. He started with a new afternoon therapist, which is great because it makes for less tension in MY life, which is selfish but true. He has been doing pretty good with the toilet training. We are not at 100% but we're probably at 75% and that's good. I read one blog of a woman whose son is a teenager and she said the other day (they live in NJ) that they were stuck in horrible traffic and her son asked to go to the bathroom. She said it wasn't too long ago that they would have had to pack a bunch of extra clothes and expect an accident on a trip like that and I thought, well, okay, then. Clearly, this is a goal that can be accomplished and now we are part of the population that is WORKING toward a GOAL and having some SUCCESS. That is a better place for us to be than when we were NOT working toward ANYTHING.

He is doing very well with his iPad. I am not a person who is WEEPING and CRYING over Steve Jobs' death, although I am always sad when a person who is so young dies of cancer, especially pancreatic cancer. I have a friend from high school whose husband died very young of it and she has really opened my eyes to how underfunded research is on this type of cancer, one of the deadliest. Anyways, I am not crying at the Apple store, but I did make a post on Twitter about how my son can now POINT at something and expect a result and that is all because of the iPad. That is truly a miracle in our time and I think it's going to make a big difference in his life and for that I am grateful.

What else. We are going to a pumpkin patch/apple picking today. We went out to dinner this week for my mom's 70th birthday and it was really, really fun. Anthony had not one but TWO accidents while we were there which wasn't as big a deal as you'd think. We changed him after one and brought him home after the other. I don't know what happened, he had peed a lot before we left so we thought we'd be okay. We decided we are going to use pull ups for situations like this in the future, why not try to have success where we can? He is so insensitive to stuff like this, I don't think he'll 'feel' the pull up like a typical kid could, and it means we can have an hour where he doesn't have to get all wet, why not? We're going to use one today at the orchard, too, it would be too crazy otherwise.

He is still getting kind of crazy before he goes to sleep. But, you know, the girls are too, maybe it's the time of year or the waxing and waning of the moon, who the hell knows. I am trying not to grade every day. Today is the last Saturday of Anthony's life before he has THREE little siblings, so we're going to try and have fun. Wish me luck on Monday and think of me and our next little baby!

Yikes

BOY he is having a rough time of it at night here lately!  He had one 'big bump in the road' today this morning and one 'bump in the road' this afternoon at school, that's what his therapists call it.  Now he is flipping the flip OUT in his room and it is giving me agita, which I already have pretty bad anyway.  I went in there and he was fine, just tense and sad and probably tired.  I don't know if I should go back in, if he is thirsty, hungry, what the hell.  This is a very challenging part of Anthony, these behaviors.  He is banging the HELL out of his door and he is sure to wake the girls.

He kept messing with and breaking every night light so my parents gave me one that I could put in his closet.  But then he wouldn't stay out of his closet and he kept SHUTTING himself in there and banging on that door.  So we turned off the light, and now maybe he's mad?  He is really kicking that door so I better stop and go see him.

How I wish I had the answer for any of it.  ANY of it.

outside/pantsless/hanger

These are a few of his favorite things, ha!

We have been having a pretty good time of it lately, overall. He still has more behaviors than I'd like, and last night he was what I can only call COMPLETELY KOOKOOPANTS until after freaking MIDNIGHT or something, but overall, he is doing okay. I am trying to adopt a brand-new reaction to his behaviors, I am trying to say less words to him and when I do say words, I am trying to make them soooothing and caaaaaalm. I am trying to let him know that I understand his behavior isn't what he is saying, it's just how he is saying it. It's so hard and crazy - to act one way with one kid and a completely DIFFERENT way with the other kids, I can't do it, really. But if I speak in a nicer tone to Maria or Veronica, that's not a bad thing, right? Trying to understand Anthony helps me understand the other ones better and in fact, it helps me understand PEOPLE better. There is a lesson in all of it, I suppose.