Water Fountain

Yesterday, we celebrated my birthday which is actually tomorrow. I am not like my friend Juli who won't tell anybody how old she is (she is 39), I have no issues with my age, yet. But I will be 40 tomorrow, and other than how weird it sounds, I'm OK with it.

I was craving my favorite salad which is at Tony Roma's and their only location now-a-days is the Mall of America. Good thing I love rides and Nickelodeon Universe has some great new ones. We ate, rode a few rides, played in Lego Land and had a pretty good time. The kids were good, Akila wasn't too bad, even with me forgetting to give her meds before we left (maybe 40 is going to be painful).

We got ice cream for dessert and were sitting on some benches eating it. There was a water fountain and we gave each kid a penny to put in it. Then as we were leaving shortly after that, we realized that Akila had a handful of coins and hat taken them out of the fountain. Michael was furious, I had a hard time not laughing. I was annoyed with the two of us for not keeping our eyes on her enough. Imani ran the coins back and put them in their place.

The truth is, we have had two weeks of really good behavior from Akila. What is funny when I say this, is that it is still not what most families would call good, or normal. Far from it. But the rages have been short, and the struggles have been fewer. There has been more cooperation on simple things that are usually a struggle. Getting dressed in the morning, taking meds, going to bed, eating meals. She asked for gum last night and I said no and she said OK. That is very unusual. There had been several other times over the weekend she had asked for gum and I said no and she kind of freaked out. It is rare when she does not freak out when told no.

We have still had unusual behavior that is not age appropriate. Like when we went to the park on Saturday, and I watched her go behind a tree and realized she had her pants off. I was about to walk over there when I saw her shaking the pants off. As I was walking over there, I could see that she also had her underwear off, and was shaking them off. She then put it all back on as I was approaching. She had gotten sand in them and couldn't stand it. I talked to her about other options, like asking me for help so we could make sure she was more hidden when shedding her clothes.