Elliott's been incredibly animated this morning for some reason. He's all over the place and frankly, driving me crazy. I'm feeling a bit rundown today and not wanting to do much of anything. Even though we had a pretty awesome day yesterday, it was still stressful and exhausting. I'm probably just needing to recover a bit. I hope everyone is doing well and if you're venturing out into the madness of Black Friday, be careful... ☺
Things being as they are in our lives, nothing went as planned today. Elliott had a terrible time falling asleep last night and both he and Emmett were up and fighting before the hour of 5am. After a little while, Lizze and sat up in bed, knowing where the day was heading. Today was already stressful for a number of reasons and based on how the kids started the day, we began to reconsider our plans for the rest of the day. We kept going back and forth about how to handle this Thanksgiving holiday because we really wanted to at least make an appearance at the festivities on both sides of our family. It was decided that we would take a wait and see approach to things. As the morning went on,…
I apologize a head of time for any typos. My eye's are rolling into the back of my head as I'm finishing this. I'm correct any grammar blemishes in the morning. For those who are new here, this Thanksgiving is the first Thanksgiving or holiday for that matter, that we will be spending as a family in almost two years. Lizze and I went through a separation for about 18 months and only reconciled this past June. Things are great between her and I. The separation really had nothing to do with issues between her and I but rather what we've recently learned was caretaker burnout. There's more to the story than that but that pretty much sums it up. It was a difficult time for everyone, especially the boys. I really…
I thought I would share how Lizze and I have decided to handle Thanksgiving this year. There are many things that influenced our decisions but our number one priority is focusing on the kids. We are also paying attention to comfort levels because not everyone has fully accepted Lizze back into the family and we don't want to make anything more awkward than it needs to be. The biggest factor in our decision making process though, was Gavin. We need to limit his level of excitement, as per doctors orders. Having said all that, we will be going to dinner at my parents house. Most of my siblings will be at their significant others for dinner but will be stopping by for dessert. This will give us a chance to…
As mentioned previously, Lizze and I had our third session of marriage counseling yesterday. The boys hung out with their grandparents while we were there. The main topic of this appointment slowly became Gavin. Lizze and I are really struggling with Gavin lately and not for the reasons you might suspect. We're struggling with things from a mortality perspective. I don't talk about this very much because the more I talk about it the more real it becomes. The truth is, we don't know how long Gavin has on this Earth. His health is continuously worsening and new problems keep popping up. Some of the health issues are beyond rare and so no one knows for sure what to expect. What I know for sure is that his speech is…
We just dropped the boys off at their Grandparents and are now on our way to marriage counseling. Today's session will be our third and I'm excited. I think that when most people hear that someone's in marriage counseling and assume that the couple going is in some kind of relationship trouble. Perhaps that's true for some but not for Lizze and I. Marriage is tough and the divorce rate is so high anymore. When you factor in being a blended family, kids with Autism and fragile health, things get a whole lot more difficult. Lizze and I sorta lost ourselves about two years ago. It took thirteen years for it to happen but we've learned from the past and are moving forward once again.. Together, we both realize…
I woke up this morning not feeling well at all. Lizze got the boys ready for school, which wasn't easy. Emmett barely made it to school because he wasn't tolerating anything on his feet again. We tried everything to help including brushing, pressure and joint manipulation. Nothing worked. We were lucky that Emmett's desire to be at school, outweighed his intolerance for his foot covers today. It took the better part of an hour to work through this but the point is that we worked through it. I'm hoping to see more of this in the future. I took the boys to school and Emmett seemed to get off to a good start. After that, I slept until after noon. When I woke up, I felt much better and I'm…
Gavin and I were playing Minecraft tonight before he went to bed and this was the conversation we had about his latest mission today. This mission debriefing was a little concerning and a bit on the creepy side. Perhaps not listening to this with the kids in the room would be a better idea this time. The context of this mission involved someone in Gavin's world being murdered. Gavin was outraged by this act of violence and took it upon himself to return the favor as he put it. I don't know how to feel about this because the fact that he would want to murder someone, even in his world, is concerning. I worry about his thought process there but at the same time, when you hear what he ended up doing…