Of Mice and Little Men

I hate rodents. I do not like them. Actually... that's not entirely true. Our first pet as a married couple was a wild hamster (yes, I did say wild... we found it in our basement apartment and no one claimed him) named, wait for it... Fuzzy. We had him for about a year and then he lost all his hair and died. We buried him in a Cheerios box. Sad. :(

Then the hubby's sister thought he needed to be replaced and gave us a gerbil. Not nearly as nice as a hamster. Speckles. I don't remember what happened to him. :)

My mom had wanted a mouse forever and my brother got her one... while she was living with us... so I guess it was our mouse too. I don't remember it's name. A little white mouse. He was nice enough. I don't remember what happened to him either.

Wednesday night, Big D was getting some milk out of the fridge and exclaimed, "Whoa! Something just ran under the fridge. I saw a tail."

Oh crap.

The night before I had heard scritching in the kitchen, behind the oven. I assumed it was a cricket as we currently have those in abundance in San Antonio (shiver). But now... Nope. I knew it was a mouse. We got Daddy downstairs, barricaded the floor between the kitchen and living room, and opened the front door ready to chase whatever it was out... like that would solve the problem. We moved the fridge and there was no mouse. Nothing. But there was mouse poop. ICK! ick ick ick...

So I went out to HEB to grab some traps. A friend said glue traps worked best and I stood in the aisle for five minutes staring at all the traps and trying to decide what was most humane, but would solve the problem. In the end, I got some basic wood traps and a box of glue traps. Glue traps just sounded horrible, but I figured we'd try it. I set them out when we got home while Big D watched and acted out 'Death of a mouse':

"I'm a little mouse. I'm walking. I'm walking. Oh, look! Peanut butter! *SNAP* Uhhhhggggg..."

Hilarious AND sad. :)

Within ten minutes I heard frantic scritching again and went to investigate. Sure enough. Stuck to the glue trap was a little grey field mouse. I felt so bad! Now what!!?? How do we kill it?!! It's suffering!!!!

Nathan was upset that I had even gotten the glue traps, as he wanted live trips, pacifist that he is. Big softy. So we took the trap outside and a pair of heavy duty gloves and some vegetable oil and the little mouse was free. We set him loose in the field across the street.

Big D said, "Now he can get eaten by a snake."

Thank you, son.

I thought we were done. Then I went in the garage yesterday. Scritching. Dammit!

So I put out the last of the glue traps and wooden traps. This morning, the glue traps were empty and the peanut butter had been eaten off the wood traps.

IT. IS. ON.

I am currently waiting for maintenance to come fill the hole the little devils dug behind my oven.

Me = not happy.

In other news... Sammit is doing well with therapy. Maggers has her two top teeth breaking through and won't let me put her down. Big D and Ike started school this week. Big D loves it, of course. Third grade was my favorite too. Ike, however, is having a hard time adjusting. :( We'll get there. Kindergarten is full of adjustments. They are in a charter school and it's brand new so it's still under a lot of construction. And the pickup line takes 40 minutes to get through. NOT COOL. Still working that out. I usually walk up and get them. Takes too long otherwise. The school is going to be good for Big D. The jury is still out on Ike Ike. :)




First Day of School!! (Boxes on the floor is the bazillion school supplies we had to buy. All the movies on the floor is because we emptied out the armoire so Sammers could have a "quiet place" to go when life gets to be too much. :) It's hard being 3.)


UPDATE:
I literally just stood with the pest control guy, in my garage, and watched as a mouse came out, sat down, and ate the peanut butter I just put on two of the traps. The pest guy went to get his camera. INSANE. There's some big glue traps out there right now. Nathan won't be inhumane, looks like I'm about to become a killer.

Slammer

My sweet boy. We finally got a diagnosis last week. Some of you may know, he was undergoing some tests for his... behavior. Our pediatrician referred us to a Developmental Behavior Pediatrician in May and we have, over the last 3 months, had Sammit tested for Autism and other disorders. Well, we went in last week for the final say. I have never thougt that he was fully autistic, but I thought there was a chance he might be high functioning or somehow on the (very broad) spectrum. Turns out that he is 2 points under the cut off for the autism spectrum, but exhibits a lot of the same behaviors. Primarily, our DB said that he has speech and fine motor delay, which can lead to dyslexia and dysgraphia (an inability to write). This made total sense to me and was an "A-HA!" moment when we were in there... the dyslexia part and dysgraphia part, we already knew he was delayed. Those make a lot of sense to me. Anyhow, AND he has sensory processing issues, which is often mis-diagnosed as, or can turn into if left untreated, ADHD. She said that he has a good attention span and doesn't exhibit an hyperactivity, so she won't even test for that again until he's 6.
I had never heard of sensory processing disorders before I went in for one of his Autism screenings and she asked me a few questions and mentioned it. Afterwards, I came home and did a little research and it totally makes sense to me. You can read more about it here: http://www.sinetwork.org/about-sensory-processing-disorder.html

Anyhow, after all this, she recommends 2 hours per week of speech therapy and 2 hours per week of occupational therapy to work on things like his need for "deep pressure" and his fine motor skills.

We began meeting with the therapists this week. The OT is awesome. I love her! Her program will be so good for SamBam. The room they treat him in is full of air mattresses, big bouncy balls, swings, a ball pit, tunnels... all sorts of things to help Samu find his "place in space". Today, they let him "crash" which means he spent the better part of an hour diving off a table onto an air mattress. Then they "squished him". He laid down on the mattress and the OT rolled a giant ball over him while laying on it! He LOVED it!! He had some alone time in the tunnels and also had speech therapy (which I shall hereafter call ST) in the ball pit. This is going to be really good for him. The OT said that she thinks a lot of his problem may be inner ear related ... since he has speech issues and doesn't like being upside down, etc. Basically, my little man is hyposensitive, which means that he craves touch, and they will help him learn how much is too much and how much is just enough. (I think we could all use a little OT actually!) She also said we should get a small jogging trampoline for his "deep touch" needs (I think he would jump on my bed all day if we let him), and also create a small space (in a closet or wherever) that is just for him to go and sit in. This made total sense to me, since he's already claimed the inside of the armoire in the living room. :)

He also saw an ST today and she said that he is doing really well, they just want to see more. He is also being tested through the school district for that, so we may just let the school district foot the bill for that one. I do not want to take him out of OT for anything though.

I'll give you a sensory processing for instance... yesterday, after Sammers first OT appointment, we went to Inflatable Wonder Hell... I mean Wonderland. After about an hour and a half Sumo was starting to wear down so we took a break for lunch, then we came back and he climbed into a tunnel and barricaded both ends from the outside world. He was sitting inside playing with a car. Whenever another child came by, he would start to screech at them to make them go away. I went and sat by him and told him that he needed to stop or he was going to get a time out. An older lady came over to me and told me that my child had "anger issues" and was "just so violent". I told her that yes, he had issues, and we were working through them, but that he was NOT violent! She said, "Well, I work with special kids. It's amazing how violent they can be." Shook her head at me and walked away. Ok. Anyone who knows Sam, knows that he is NOT violent. He is a chronically happy child, who doesn't know how to channel his energy. He is NOT violent. Grrrr... But I digress. The point is that Sammah had enough and it was time to leave. He had to shut himself in his tunnel once the over-stimulation had set in. Another example would be his inability to match his moods with his emotions. We were at the splashpad and some other big kids were chasing him with a water gun and he was screaming, but he was smiling. I told them to KNOCK IT OFF and they said, "but he likes it! He's smiling!" BAH!! Exactly.

Or when we went to see Toy Story 3 and he sat on the floor (bleck!!) crouched behind the seat in front of him peeking over to see it. He wanted to watch, but the theater was a bit much.

So that's that. I'll post updates as we go along. :)

The crud... and more fun stuff...

We've been pretty busy since my last post. I guess I'll start with the present and work my way back. This morning, I felt it. Creeping up out of my chest and into my throat. The crud. Blah. Sammit started coughing yesterday and Mags developed a runny nose last night. So, I guess we're all getting it. N says it's probably just allergies, but I don't have "allergies!" No!! I won't!! ... We went to the zoo yesterday. That was... fun. Maybe I'm allergic to the zoo!!! Maybe I won't ever have to go back!!! At least till it's no longer 100billion degrees outside. Blah. I told the kiddos we'd go back soon though, so they can play in the river, which I promised them yesterday but we were all so miserable we had to get out of there...

Let's see... what else...

I'm too tired to write about it, so I'll just show you...

It's summertime, so we:

Go to the Farmer's Market and get cucumbers for cucumber salad! Mags enjoys!! (I know, I know, possible choking hazard... trust me, the piece was huge! It wasn't going anywhere!)

We built tents out of the boys' bunkbed. These tents are still up. Makes it a little less difficult to get them in bed. Especially when they get to take the camping lantern in and stay up reading books! :)

Homemade slip n slides on the front lawn. Especially fun when mixed with dish soap for super sliding!!

Playing at the playground sometimes leads to accidents. Big D was climbing UP the slide (how many times do YOU say SLIDES are for GOING DOWN before they listen!?) and we got to spend 5 hours in the E.R. waiting for stitches... and then they just glued it shut. Nice. Thanks, Army Hospital... He is gonna have one heck of a scar, and it's still really nasty. I'm not very happy, but very happy he didn't HAVE to get stitches. He was worried:P

He wanted to put this bandage on for slip n sliding cause he was worried the bandage would come off. :) Yes, that is face paint. Hey, it's summer. We're keeping ourselves busy! :) I got out my old Ben Nye theater makeup and we went to town. :) Sammit did himself and the rest of us did each other.

Terrifying really.

Mags has enjoyed her saucer.
We made circus popcorn. Mmmmm.... though I prefer red...
The boys have played on the computer. Sheesh. Have they ever. We've really had to get strict about how much time they spend on there, cause they'd be on all day if we let them!


Sammit likes to pull all of the blankets out of the quilt box ans climb inside... so we made another tent! :) You really can never have too many tents.



I made another cake! :) For my friend's kids birthday party at the roller skating rink. ...where Ike got run down by some kid who felt the need to grab anyone around him when he slipped. Dumb kid. Poor Ike. :( Little fat lip..





Okay, Mags is awake from her nap. I'll update about Sam later today, if I can...

Toothies and Red Heads

Maggers got her first tooth recently... and of course, I'm so slow to blog about it, she already has her second now as well. They both came in basically about the same time. It's just so cute! You can kinda see the first one in the picture. (Yes, she had a sunburn. I swear I put lotion on her at Splashtown!)

And I'm now a red head. I've toyed with strawberry blondish brown for a long time, but this time I went darker. And more red. It's really quite red. I really quite like it. :) I think I'm going through a midlife crisis or something. I've got all these ridiculous ideas of things I wanna go do. Mostly, I think, I wanna go put my kids in school. Sheesh. *headache*

And... I just got suckered in by a door to door salesman. Blast! Those better be good steaks.

Dude.

OH MAN!!!!!!! LMB-CLEAN-O!!!!!!!!!

Brilliant (and really only worth watching till around 1:15)...

Oh man.

And I saw a t-shirt online that said nothing but, "we got yo t-shirt."