It Was the Best of Times & the Worst

Before the craziness of the holidays - Nic, Mr Green, and I took a trip to Arizona while the big boys were at Grandma and Grandpa’s. Since I was still breastfeeding it didn’t work for us to go just the two of us, but we were still very much looking forward to the time away after a very stressful year. We went for the weekend and celebrated our Christmas with them and then left the older two there and the 3 of us flew out the next day. Mr. Green did so darn well for his first flight and was so curious about everything. We were going for Nic’s work Christmas party, but went early so he could spend a few days working in the office. And while Dad worked, Mr. Green and I got to play! Our very first stop when we landed was of course train park, we had to introduce him to some of our favorite places while in town.

From there we went and grabbed some lunch, groceries and headed to our hotel. The trip was so fun and very ‘cup filling’ for me. I was able to meet up with friends and family and spend quality time with them while also introducing Mr Green to all our favorite places. It’s crazy how going from 3 kids to 1, almost feels like none. He was so easy to travel with and was such a joy to take everywhere. We visited parks, cafes, went hiking, went on walks, and spent time with friends and family. The night of Nic’s Christmas party our cousins watched Mr Green and we had a great time knowing he was in the best hands. We were sad to leave the next day but were very excited to see the big boys, we had missed them.

Mr. Green’s first Christmas was so fun. We drove around to look at lights often and he just loved our Christmas tree (and surprisingly, left it alone most of the time). We did all the Christmas activities: Christmas coloring and painting pages, made roll out cookies and decorated them, made salt dough ornaments and painted them, and read many books about the Christmas season.

Then came time for the big day and I will always love the craziness of Christmas morning - even if the night before was late getting all our traditions ready. It’s always so fun to watch the excitement and joy from the kids, but especially when it’s a first Christmas - and one they are actually big enough to participate in.

Then a few days later we headed to my parents for our family Christmas celebration with them. And when we came home we made it in time for us to do our new years eve (early) balloon drop.

There were some great things that came from the year 2023, but we were very much looking forward to a new year and hopefully less craziness.

January was filled with indoor play dates, sledding and snow play, and celebrating Mr. Green’s first birthday.

We were still trucking along with school and going to homeschool group meet ups, but I was definitely getting some push back from Mr Blue and had to back off on a few subjects - but I was totally okay with it, he was only 5 at the time and technically doesn’t need ‘full schooling’ until 7 so we hit the super important stuff and left out the fluff. However, school work was definitely pushing him further into burnout as the demands on all that we were doing was all too much. On top of school we also had church, Bible study, homeschool group, and play group - so our weeks were very busy.

These are all different homeschool group adventures, not necessarily in winter.

By mid winter we decided to be done with counseling for the boys as it wasn’t going how we had hoped. We also were learning more and more of this term PDA and how it fit Mr Blue to a T and quickly figured out that the way we were going about counseling (among other things) was doing more harm than good. And by this point we were sure we had found the information that could finally help us, help him. I bought book after book to help us navigate this and gleaned some incredible and helpful information. We also had our parents read some of them as well so they could learn alongside us to gain better insight into what we were dealing with as well as how to better support him (and us). The next hurdle was that we began to broach the topic of being neurodivergent with Mr Blue through books as well to see if we could get him to identify with certain aspects and begin that ongoing conversation. He wasn’t super receptive to it, but we kept at it and would randomly talk about it or bring it up in certain situations and eventually we got to the point of him listening to the whole book and saying things like, “hey that sounds like me!” or “oh I do that!”. So it was helpful, eventually.

Along with buying all sorts of books, doing research, and digging deep into PDA - I also joined a few Facebook groups of other parents on this same journey. It proved to be extremely helpful in a multitude of ways. Not only was it validating to hear of others with the same struggles, but I learned practical ways (that had been tried before) of how to begin to work towards overcoming some of the daily challenges we were facing. One of the best outcomes of joining these groups were the connections I was able to make. One in particular was around Easter time, on a post where I had seen a mom make a comment about her son and mentioned living in Iowa, so I messaged her to just say - hey I’m in the same boat and I don’t know of anyone else in the state with a child with this. We messaged back and forth and lo and behold - we live in the same city! And even crazier is how much our stories paralleled. We continued to message each other often and it was just so nice to have someone to be able to share the hard AND the good with someone who truly understood. And even though it took us a good 6 months to finally meet in person, it was just comforting to know there was someone local who was walking the same path as us. That spring we also created a garden area in our yard and were eagerly anticipating planting time - the boys were especially looking forward to having fresh vegetables in the summer. Mr. Orange tried soccer for a few weeks, and although he likes to play - he wasn’t so much into the organized/competition aspect.

In early May we had a staycation with my parents/family and since Mr. Blue was so deep into burnout at this point - the mask was gone and behaviors/emotions were at an all time high no matter who was around or where we were at. And to give you a picture of the beast that is PDA: we were at the hotel swimming pool and Mr. Blue really wanted to jump in and cause a big splash - but he didn’t want the water to go over his head. And for the next hour I talked him through a very large meltdown, where he so deeply wanted to do something but his body was fighting against him and causing him major anxiety and essentially not allowing him to do what he wanted to do. I validated his feelings of being scared and assured him that trying new things can definitely be scary, but that shouldn’t stop us from trying things we really want to do. We tried different ways of getting to his ultimate goal of jumping in but avoiding the water over his head but then recognizing that it wouldn’t create the big splash that he was wanting. But at this point it was far too late, his mind and body had made up their minds that blocked what he really wanted to do and there was no way for him to overcome it. His body had fully gone into fight/flight mode because it was perceiving what he wanted to do as a threat, but at that time he hadn’t learned enough about his brain to find ways to override what his body was telling him.

Nic kept telling me later he doesn’t know I remained so calm and patient and I said honestly in this instance it was incredibly easy, because he wasn’t fighting me for once, and I was just so heartbroken for him. He was fighting against his own body and it broke my heart to see him so upset about wanting to do something so badly but his body was literally not allowing him to do it.

Later that month we celebrated Mr Greens first Heartiversary. We had a big party at our church to not only celebrate a successful surgery and second lease on life for him, but also to thank all our family and friends for sticking by us and supporting us throughout that whole time - from finding out about his heart defect while pregnant, birth, NICU stay, and surgery time. It was such a great day and so fun to celebrate him surrounded by family and friends.

One of the books that I had purchased and read was Low Demand Parenting by Amanda Diekman and we began implementing a lot of those strategies that summer to help lessen the demands and hopefully get Mr. Blue out of burnout. I had to drastically change my entire view of screen time but knowing what I know now about how his brain works, I understand why it shouldn’t be vilified. His brain is always working overtime and screen time actually helps to slow it down for him. Now having two other kids, who we think are neurotypical, we still had to be mindful with how we went about it. We had a set selection of TV shows that they could watch, of slower paced and educational shows, but they could turn it on and off as they pleased. And to be honest, there were many times I went to check on them and they were playing without really even looking at the TV, it was more just a background sound. Thankfully after a little while, it worked, we had gotten him out of burnout! We finally had our happy, and not quite as explosive child back. Of course there were still hard moments and meltdowns, but not near as often. The rest of summer was much more enjoyable. We celebrated with family reunions, a joint cousin birthday party, holidays, and another family vacation - with plenty of water play, park visits, trips to the zoo, and so much more. And soon enough, it was time to be thinking about starting school again.