Little hope smashed

Akila had a pretty decent evening last night, and I was very thankful. We are in a two week or more period where Michael has to work late, it is a busy time of the year for accountants. I was really hopeful as we tried a new sleep medication with Akila. I put her to bed without the usual resistance and came down to the dining room.

Typically, we put her to bed last and then try to plant ourselves because if she hears us moving around, she is more likely to try to call us back. And unlike my other kids, if she calls and you don't come, you are in for many issues. She will begin to rage, and totally lose it. It is really hard as I don't want her to wake the other kids, or to keep them up. I was in the dining room working on my computer (this is also a super busy week for me as we have a big dance performance at the dance studio this weekend), and I was so excited that she had fallen asleep, I almost called Michael to tell him about the success of this new medication.

When I finally felt it was safe to move, I went upstairs to find her in my bedroom watching a movie. Nuts, my little bit of hope in this new medication was smashed a little. This medication is suppose to help her to stay asleep so I was still hopeful that it would help once she fell asleep. I brought her up to bed and we had our usual resistance that I had been excited to avoid a 1/2 hour earlier or so. I put all the kids including Akila to bed at 8:15 and Akila was still awake at 10:00. Then she finally fell asleep. I worked on my computer until 12:50 am and went to bed. She woke me up at 2:00 am.

I gave her some middle of the night meds. She was still up at 3:00. Michael tried to help. At 3:40, I heard her downstairs with the dog and a movie. I went down and we verbally fought a while before i could get her back up to her bedroom. It was 4:00 by this time. Then I could not get her to even sit on her bed as she was not tired and couldn't sleep. I tried to explain that she won't be able to fall asleep if she doesn't lay down and try. This went on for another 20 minutes or so.

I finally went to bed at 4:30, only to hear the dog start barking just before 5, which he doesn't do anymore. I thought she was back down there and went and checked and she had fallen asleep. During all of this commotion, Hezekiah had awaken and kept coming out of his room and looking into Akila's room, which was inflaming her even more. I don't think he fell back asleep, as at 6 am, after I had been sleeping for 1 hour, he woke me and the other two kids up and wanted to play the Wii.

So, the new sleep meds did not work the first night, not too excited to try them again, but I will. It was pretty cold this morning, and I am now driving the kids to school. We were about 8 blocks from home on the way to school, when the van got a flat tire this morning. I was in my pj's. Had to wear Zeke's hat as I did not have one, and it has a bunch of long multi colored string that hangs down from the top of it. I was one hot looking mama on the side of the road changing a tire. I called our neighbor Kathy who came and got the kids and brought them to school, she is such a life savior to our family.

I did feel kind of bad though, I finished the tire about 7 minutes after she got the kids- I could have brought them. You just don't know how smoothly a tire change is going to go. It took about 25 minutes, not too bad in the sub-zero temps. And the really good news, is that the garage was able to fix it so we didn't have to buy new tires.