Hays Family Adventures

It is still early, the kids are all in bed and Darrick has duty, so I thought I would take time to update.

We have been having some really beautiful weather. It kind of comes in spurts. For example, yesterday it was so nice and sunny that the kids and I had a picnic lunch on the deck. Now today, it has been cold and raining all day. At least we see signs of spring everywhere and we know it is on its way.

Last weekend we worked in our yard. I have always wanted a garden, ever since we got married 12 years ago. We have just never lived in a place that allowed one or had the space. But now we do. While Mom and Dad were here they helped the kids and I start a bunch of seeds in some yogurt cups. So right now they are in a sunny window growing their little sprouts. We picked out a place in the yard to start our garden. Darrick and I dug out the grass and "flipped the sod". This is something a Master Gardener here in WA told me to do. The grass will decompose and make the soil richer.

So far all of the seeds we have started have come up. We started tomatoes, morning glories, sunflowers, forget-me-nots and one other one I can't think of right now.

We were also able to attend a free show at our city library called "Birds of Prey". It fit in so nicely with what we are doing in science since we are studying birds. It was put on by a group that rehabilitates birds. We saw owls, a red-tailed hawk and a golden eagle.

This week we finished our last session at Bethany in the ADOPTS program. It is hard to believe that it is over. We really learned so much and honestly I don't know what we would had done without it. But my biggest question for them at the end was "How do we get Naomi to stop hitting, kicking and clawing us?" It is not ok with me and it makes me mad and I don't know how to make her stop. Sometimes I feel like "hey, I did not sign up for this abuse!"

But they pointed out that it has gotten less since we started the ADOPTS program which shows progress. They also told us that shows that her brain is healing. Our goal right now is to have as much space as we can between each episode. The more time you have between episodes the more healing and new patterns occur. So Darrick and I have decided to become "Yes" people. As long as her requests are reasonable we say yes. We realized that sometimes we tell her no because it is out of convenience for us, like we don't want to have to deal with the mess. This is helping her have less freak out sessions.

But we did have another bad one this week, only it was not directed at me, but Oliver. We were homeschooling and I told her that she could not have glue to play with. Well that set her off but she seemed after a while to be calming down. Next thing I know she is under the table, where Oliver likes to sleep, and I hear Oliver coughing and crying. She was completely choking him. She stopped right away when I called her name but I was livid and heartbroken for Oliver-poor dog...

I put her in a chair, in the classroom where we all were, facing the wall. I told her it was not okay to hurt Oliver. After a few minutes she says "Can I have a lollipop to calm down?"

Let me explain the lollipops. During the ADOPTS programs we have learned that sucking is a self soothing and calming technique. They advised us to buy dum dum lollipops to have on hand to help her calm down when she is having an episode. We didn't buy it at first but finally gave it a try and it does help. We were so excited that we found a 300 count bag of dum dums for $6.99!

So anyways when she asked for one, after choking Oliver, that was the last thing I wanted to give her. I felt like I was rewarding her. But I went against my instinct and with what I have been taught and it helped her.

Then today we had the most awesome day together. She has been sweet and loving and fun to be around, I just couldn't get enough of her! What a roller coaster...

I had such a great moment with Micah this week. One morning the dishes from dinner had not been done and were waiting for me in the sink after breakfast. He came up to me and said "Mom, I noticed that there are a lot of dishes in the sink and I was wondering if you want me to do them?" I was dumbstruck, literally. I told him "I don't know what to say!" He does them often but it is always me asking him to do them. This was the first time that he did them unprompted! It was a glorious day!