Routine .... SCHMOO-tine

Every morning it’s the same routine with Little D.
Wake up. … If he wakes up happy, I have a great day and we talk and read books and he is very well regulated in terms of his sensory issues. For him (and me) this means fewer meltdowns and fewer objects fished out of his mouth.

If he wakes up grumpy (usually he’s screaming at me and yelling “NO” to any suggestion I give him) then we’re in for a long day filled with breaking up fights, time out sessions and Mommy doing her very best not to lose her cool. Trust me, it’s no picnic. I’m still getting up multiple times each night to put both of these kids back to sleep. I’m lucky if I get a 3 hour stretch of sleep, and a 4 hour stretch just sounds like heaven!

This is a picture of the tires mentioned later in this post. The pen was added for perspective.

Pardon me, I have to go pick up some butter… off of the floor. *SIGH*
The semi-loaded knife was flung around in celebration of spreading butter on his French toast … all by himself, and the best part is, he didn’t even eat it!

Little D’s newfound independence is encouraging because for some time I was concerned about his ability to do things on his own. (okay, to be honest, I’m still concerned about this to some small degree) He used to meltdown after every ½ second of trying to do something on his own. His coordination is not the best. Right now he has a small meltdown every ½ second he tries to put on his shirt by himself … and his pants. He is having a hard time seeing both leg holes and it is extremely frustrating for all of us. He is also refusing any kind of help from me or Daddy, which is just adding to his (and our) frustration.

UGH…. Now he’s putting tiny rubber tires in his mouth. I thought I hid them well enough that he wouldn’t find them. He routinely pulls tires off of his toy cars and trucks in order to chew on the rubber tires. These particular rubber tires are just too small. He could choke on them. In fact he frequently has come frighteningly close to that.

Anyway … I forget what I started this post about. Oh yeah… routine.
I guess the point of this post is, no matter how hard you try to create a routine for your kids, there will still be multiple interruptions. Every day there’s something new. Today I only included two of the things that Little D did and only one was sensory related. Despite there only being two incidents in this post, a lot more went on and it’s not even 10 o’clock yet. Oh the joys of being a Mommy … oh yeah, and one of mine has Sensory Processing Disorder. … All in a day’s routine.