Our history...

We have a long standing history with Elizabeth and her voices.

When she was 4 she had a full scale meltdown. Anyways, she came home from school hysterical. I can still see her curled up in her daddy's arms sobbing her little heart out. She kept saying, over and over again, that there were voices in her head and if she didn't get them out she'd never be able to talk again.

Later that year she had this grey Tshirt. Every time she wore the grey Tshirt she would say her name was Jamie. This is normal pretend play but at the time she didn't have any real pretend play skills. This passed eventually and I really didn't give it another thought. Both of these events prompted me to seek help for her but she was over 3 so it wasn't an Early Intervention thing and every place I tried said they didn't deal with children so young. The few people we were able to talk to all said it sounded like pediatric schizophrenia. We never followed up because eventually the behaviors seemed to fade.

Throughout all the time Beth engaged in fairly consistent self harm behaviors. She'd bite herself, hit herself, bang her head into walls and scratch herself. As she got older she started talking about throwing herself in a dumpster, shooting herself in the face, and running away. This past summer she started eating paper when stressed, pinching her brother and sister when she was stressed, being overall defiant.

This September she had a massive meltdown involving voices, hallucinations, and the whole works. It lasted for hours. She talked about it for weeks afterwards but with no sign of fear or stress.

The last few weeks here have been so intense with her voices/hallucinations. They are starting to appear daily.

Mittens

I am a mitten making fool. Love making the mittens. I could seriously make several pair a day if life would just stop interrupting me....lol.

Yes, that's today's post.

Jamie, Clara, Carolese, Mia, and Elizabeth

Who are these people?

They are people who live in my child's head. In the kitchen this morning she was having a conversation with "Mia". She was discussing with Mia how her day should go and what she'd like to do. Apparently Mia had some ideas too because she was telling Mia they would have to wait until after school to do the things Mia wanted to do. 

I asked her about Mia. Mia is a girl in her class at school. Mia liked Beth so much that she decided to move into Beth's head. Mia still lives with her parents and goes to school. Both "aspects" of Mia are real. Beth went on to describe Carolese who is another girl Beth knows from school. Same situation. Clara is from the Nutcracker ballet. Clara moved in also. Beth said that both Clara in her head and Clara in the Nutcracker are real. The problem with that is that Clara is a make believe character in both situations.

Jamie. We've heard about Jamie before. When Beth was three years old she talked about Jamie a lot. She didn't really have any pretend play skills, but we figured Jamie was an imaginary friend and left it at that. We assumed Jamie went away when we didn't hear more about her, but apparently Jamie never left. Elizabeth is her, but not her. 

Confused yet?

Yeah, me too.

I asked a lot of questions. Gently. When she became defensive I assure her that I believe her and just want to understand. She was open, she answered as best she could and explained as best she could. She talked about how she doesnt want her teacher or her friends to know and I told her she doesn't have to tell them. I reminded her that I love her more than life and would always believe her and she can tell me, daddy, and grammy anything. 

She took all that in. Silently. And then...

"Mama, you know my brain works differently than everyone else's." 

Of course I knew that. That's kinda how I explained autism to her. I told her that.

"No Mommy, I mean my brain has advanced technology. Technology no one else has."

She wasn't able to explain that.

Soon after this her daddy woke up and she decided she was going to tell him about Mia, Clara, Jamie, Carolese, and Elizabeth.

Except she suddenly became silent.

"You tell him, Mama, I forgot."

I prompted without leading. She mumbled out their names. We talked about how we will always believe her and support her. She started dancing around like a weight had been lifted off of her and went off to school. 

Without her backpack.

Did she make it all up? Was her imagination in overdrive? Does that even matter? Regardless... it became in-your-face clear this morning that she's unable to separate pretend from real (I quizzed her using book characters and TV characters).

I just want....

To be warm.

I understand that I live in New England, but I see snowflakes.

It's October. This is sooooooo unbelievably far from okay with me. My fingers are freezing. Might be looking up a crochet pattern for gloves soon. I can't crochet in gloves. This is going to be a problem.  =(

Anyways, cracked rib is healing. Today is the first decent day since Monday. I'm not fooling myself though, I have a long time left to heal. I'm just making sure to keep myself medicated and not do too much.

As for my beloveds....

Jolie's learning to read! She loves it so much and its so exciting for her! She went apple picking with her class last week and loved that too. She adores school and everything about it. She's also been a HUGE help since I  was added to the injured players list. She's my "little mama". Her hair is finally long enough for a pony tail again... I'm praying we're done with the "cut my own hair" phase.

Peter is a monster. No, really. He runs around yelling "RAWR". A lot. He gives great "yummy kisses", amazing snuggles, and is fun to share a blanket with while watching cartoons. He doesn't always make sense though. Like right now. He just told me he wants "rainbow fish". No idea what he's trying to get at.

Beth is far too old to only be 7. She's a near constant drama queen. Someone needs to be the drama queen. I mean its just not right not to have a drama queen in the family. And she's damn good at her chosen role. She's in love with science, so I think we're going to start doing some simple science experiments on the weekends. She'll love that!

Monkey is my giggler. Right now he's at the stage in life where everything is so funny. And his laugh is infectious. I can't help but giggle with him. He's not really in a snuggling stage and that sucks because I love snuggling with him, but watching him explore everything is crazy fun too. He's talking up a storm... and trying new foods constantly.

That's my update. Now I'm off to decide what I'm crocheting tonight. I think I'll work more on my flower. I really love the flower cushion and can't wait to see how mine comes out!

A post in pictures....

What I've been up to this week....

Let me start by saying that on Monday afternoon I found myself in extreme pain after coughing.... diagnosis.... cracked rib. NOT fun. As a matter of fact, incredibly painful.

Before that (and after, when I can actually function on the pain meds...) I've been crocheting. All of my ideas have come from various places on the internet... so far I can't seem to come up with my own patterns but I think I may in the future.  =)

So I started with this : 

I'll help you out here... it's a unicorn. It doesn't photograph well but its cute as hell! I made one for each of my girls and they absolutely adore them! They're quick and easy to make, and the pattern was free, which makes me happy!  =)

Well that was fun, but I wanted to do something different. A quick search for free patterns turned up this:

I made it (that's my neighbor's house in the background there..lol) and loved it. It is way too cute. But the kids wanted it and it didn't seem fun enough.... so ^ that turned into this :

 The face was all my idea and all my creation. I was quite proud of myself...lol. But there was a problem. I had one adorable pumpkin and four adorable children. I solved that pretty easily....

 There. Kids happy, problem solved. What to do now?

I decided to look around and see what I could come up with. I stumbled upon this: http://crochetingthedayaway.blogspot.com/2011/10/tunisian-crochet-how-to-basic-tunisian.html and decided to give it a try! The results were :

It was way too much fun! I really loved doing it. I could have done it all day, but I bore easily. On to the next project, but I didn't know what to do. Some clicking around here http://crochetingthedayaway.blogspot.com/ led to here http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/ and I discovered this http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/blooming-flower-cushion.html. This was a MUST do. It's in progress :

So that about covers my recent crochet journey. Kids are doing well... They're loving my crochet journey because they get cool stuff!

Cold!

According to weatherbug it was 32 degrees out this morning.

I hate this!

I know, I know. Winter is coming, same as last year, blah blah blah.... I still dream of living somewhere where the coldest it gets is 60 and the warmest it gets is 70.

Anyways, I crocheted the kids all pumpkins yesterday. They LOVE them! Made Holly a butterfly... it's ummm... interesting.

Did I mention that I'm freezing?

Monkey and Bubba are coughing and have runny noses. Poor boys.

On a good note... they're actually playing together this morning. Totally functional play, and nicely too!