Waiting....

I am not a patient person. I am always laughing in the back of my head when I am trying to teach my kids patience and talking to them about it- and getting annoyed with them. Right now, I have been sitting at the Honda dealership for over 3 hours and I know it is going to cost a minimum of $570. Ouch. I am losing my patience. I have cleared out my yahoo email so it only has 6 messages in it, pretty good.

This is not how I pictured spending my first day of freedom in over two weeks. But it is quiet, and I am thankful for that. I drive past one of the Honda garages to the one in Hopkins which has an awesome waiting area with plenty of comfie seats, tables, TV's and free coffee and cookies. At least I am comfie as I wait. And wait. And pay.

I now have some time to blog some of my thoughts from the last several weeks. They will probably finish as I am typing, that would be OK!!

One morning last week, Akila though she had a tooth that was loose. She wanted me to pull it. It was barely wiggley, as a matter of fact, I didn't even notice that it wiggled. I told her that I wasn't going to work on it as it wasn't loose enough. She went up into her bedroom and worked on it for over an hour, it was very quiet and peaceful.

When Hezekiah has a loose tooth, he will wait until it is hanging on by a thread before he will let me touch it or try to pull it himself. And if he does let me wiggle it, with practically making me swear on the Bible that I won't pull it out, he cries and cries over the pain. Not Akila. It is like she thrives on the pain.

I have read that some FASD kids have a high pain threshold, and this is definitely true of Akila. In the evening, when she gets her nightly shot, sometimes she has an initial moment of fear before the needle goes in, but when it is in and the tiny bit of pain is there, it is almost like she gets a buzz off of the feeling. Strange. Well, she has no fear or issue with the pain of pulling a tooth. She worked really hard on this tooth and got it out. Most kids would have waited several more weeks until it was a little more lose, but not Akila.

I think she gets obsessed with it for two reasons. First, the thrill and the pain of it seem to give her a high. Secondly, the reward the next day after the tooth fairy comes. Money. I am about to tell her that I am going to tell the tooth fairy to leave a book or trinket instead of money since the money that she receives seems to cause her to be obsessed with spending it. The fairy brought her 75 cents, and she is itching to spend it. We have told her she has to save it. She does not like this, and it is all I'm hearing about.

It is honestly all the money she has. She broke her piggy bank months ago and I am not buying another one. She has spent all the money she has and I am working hard to make sure that no spare coins are laying around the house or within her reaches. The boys each received a coin trick kit in their Christmas stockings, and she has tried to snatch their quarters for their magic tricks.

I am very glad it is Monday and we are back in the routine of school. I must admit that the two weeks went pretty well, with no huge issues, just a million little ones. If I could Akila to chill out on other kids chewing with their mouths open, it would be nice. She has turned into Ms. Manners, and can't stand it when Zekey chews with his mouth open. She will literally go into a tail spin over this, and slap him if he doesn't stop.

One saving grace over the break, was playing cards with Akila and the other kids, but especially Akila. She has been really into playing war, where each player puts two cards down and you have to use your math skills to add them up to see who wins each hand. They have played this in her special ed math time and she loves it. Her and Michael made up a new game called "Beat the Deck", that she really loves as well.

A year ago, I hated to play cards or any game with her. It almost always ended in a rage. She loves to cheat and would often, almost every hand. Now, she doesn't try to cheat too often and she has the patience to play for a really long time. It is a nice calming activity for her as a matter of fact, and it has worked well to distract her. It is a good reminder to me to keep trying to reintroduce things at different times to see if they now may work. She sure keeps us jumping, that is for sure!!

Yesterday, I was doing a lot of cleaning and sorting and the kids were helping a little. We ended up with a bag of stuff to give to our neighbor, Carter who is 3, so sometime around 3:30, I sent Akila down the block to drop the stuff off. Margie, Carter's mom (who I happened to graduate from high school with in Willmar and we ended up living one block apart and never knew it), called and said Akila could stay and play awhile. She then called and asked if Akila could eat supper with them. I of course said yes. It was really nice as sometimes Sundays can be hard for Akila, I'm not sure why they are harder than Saturdays, maybe because we are usually taking it more easy and not running around town or doing errands. Anyway, I really appreciated this break for Akila and us, and Akila had a blast.