Hold On Tight!

Welcome to the Drew Roller Coaster!  This week has been full of ups and downs!!  

I wanted to post on Tuesday because I didn’t want to leave the blog on a negative note.  But obviously that didn’t happen.  This week has kicked my butt!  I had to take my van to the shop on Monday and they had to keep it overnight.  When I picked Drew up from school on Tuesday I still didn’t have my van.  He asked me “Did you find mommy’s car?”  I told him no but we were going to find it right now.  When we got to Honda and walked into the service bay he announces “I’m here!”  I think that’s his new thing because he did it again when we went to CarMax on Thursday.  I wish you could hear him say that in his sweet little voice…so stinkin’ cute!  He had a much better day at school on Tuesday.  Tuesday’s screen time was 30 minutes.

He was in a good mood again Wednesday morning.  I walk him to his classroom every morning and hang out until the announcements are over.  He was sitting in the floor reading his Transformers book and asked Smurfann “Is today Mr. Townley?”  Mr. Townley is the sassy gym teacher from Australia and the kids love him!  He is a great tool to get Drew to do what you want.  It was gym day and I’m not sure if he knew that or it was a coincidence.  A little later that morning, I got a text from his teacher, Ms. Gooch, that said “I just got schooled by your son.  It’s a hoot…as always”.  She called me a little later to tell me what happened.  The unit they are reading this week is about animals in the ocean.  She wanted them to pick an animal they liked and give her 3 facts about it.  He picked the Whale Shark.  She said “Drew there is no such thing as a whale shark.  It’s either a Whale or a Shark.  You need to pick one.”  He said “Whale Shark”.  She said this went on a couple of times.  She went to the board to write it down and she said “Drew which one do you pick?”  He answered “Whale”.  So she started to write Whale on the board and about the time she was finished writing Whale he said “And Shark”.  She said “Ok, if you can tell me one fact about the Whale Shark you can pick that.  He said “It is gentle”.  So one of the other sweet aide’s in the class said “We should probably look this up”.  So she looked up Whale Shark on the internet.  She said “This says the Whale Shark is the gentlest shark in the ocean.”  So needless to say he got to pick the Whale Shark.  He learned that from watching The Octonauts on Disney.  At least he’s getting something from screen time.  

Matt will sometimes take Drew and Abby with him to feed our horses that are in the field at Mr. Farmer’s house up the road.  When I was getting him dressed for school one morning he looks at me and says “Can we go see Mr. Farmer?”  That same morning I went outside to start to the car and when I came back in I said “It’s cold outside”.  I went to get him dressed and my hands were cold and he says “Mommy’s cold.”

When we got home from church on Wednesday, I had Drew do his Interactive Metronome exercises and then he went off to play with his toys.  About 8:35 he started to head upstairs.  I assumed he was going to my room for his 30 minutes of screen time before bed.  I leave the TV unplugged during the day so a few minutes later I went upstairs to plug it in for him.  I found him in his room with the door shut in his bed all tucked in with his big headphones on and reading his Transformers book.  So he had NO screen time on Wednesday.

Thursday was more of the same in the morning.  I even told his teacher and aides that I felt like he had come back better than before.  Well, I jinxed that!  Later that morning I got a call from Ms. Gooch.  I could tell by the tone in her voice that it wasn’t going to be a funny story like the day before.  Drew had scratched another little boy’s face with his pencil for no apparent reason.  Not that any reason is acceptable for that, but it made it even more confusing as to why he did it.  I think he was ok the rest of the day at school.  But that night he started to get really grumpy.  He wouldn’t eat anything but pasta and lately he hasn’t been doing that.  He wanted to be outside on the trampoline and I couldn’t blame him but I needed to fix dinner and couldn’t go out with him and Abby was at volleyball practice.  So, I’m trying to keep him in the house every 10 seconds while trying to cook dinner at the same time.  Then a little while later my neighbor calls and tells me my dogs are out and down the road.  Ugh!  I piled the kids up in the car and went looking for them.  We didn’t find them so I just had to hope they came back.  We were out front on the trampoline when the dogs come running up and Drew says “They came back.”  That shows that he understood they were missing in the first place.

This morning he woke up on the wrong side of the bed!  He didn't want to get out of bed, didn't want to get dressed.  He wanted to go to school in his Bumblebee costume and mask.  The compromise was that he could wear the mask and carry the costume in the car but they had to stay in the car when we got to school.  I'm shocked that he didn't pitch a fit when we got there.  I sure hope he had a good day at school.  No texts or phone calls so that’s a good sign.

He has gotten used to his new exercise routine and does them with little to no complaining.

I wanted to end this post with an email I received from his coach at Brain Balance to show you how supportive and encouraging she is!

“Don't beat yourself up about the screen time. It happens and it hasn't "undone" anything we have done.  It just goes to show you how quickly his left brain can be influenced and take control.  Through Brain Balance we are constantly trying to level the playing field for the hemispheres.  That doesn't mean that once we are balanced we can neglect our right brain again, but it will be much harder for the left brain to be the boss because the two brains will be a constant team.”

And again, I want to thank everyone who reads this blog and sends words of encouragement.  They mean the world to us!

Until next time…