Hmmmm

Yes, we are alive! Life got insane again. I am *hoping* it will calm down again soon. Not quite there yet. Brief recount. Kids all accounted for, some doing better then others. Summer was eh, nothing fun happened here. Dominic is walking, he is still Trouble. Gabrielle started Kindergarten! And Julian was diagnosed as autistic. Most days are bad days for him. Some more other day.

And here is one picture from FL in April, and just about the last time I took any pictures. No, I wasn't kidding when I said it was a bad summer!

cursed

Yep. I should of known better then to say how well Madeline was sleeping in my last post! That was probably the last time she slept well. She attempted to have a friend sleep over for her birthday, the friend was fine. Madeline was not. Apparently having someone strange in her space made her anxious. It just spiraled her out of control again. Several emergency sessions with her therapist, every night in my room, she hasn't entered her room other then to get clothes since that night, and one discovery later. Madeline sleep walks!

We had no idea. Now that I can tell, I know that it has been going on for 3+ years, ever since that fateful vacation when her anxiety disorder was triggered. She appears awake, slightly groggy, but awake. Madeline will talk to you, answer questions just fine, eat, use the bathroom even and the whole time she is asleep! I never once thought to ask her the next day if she had any memory of the night before which is how I finally realized it. I knew about her night terrors that she has sometimes now and she talks in her sleep, but realizing the sleep walking has been eye opening. It is the root of many of our night time issues with her. It happens when she is anxious, on a good week it may be once a week, when she is in one of her cycles, it is nightly. And she can do it several times a night.

I'll put her to bed, check on her on the agreed upon minute, she may or may not be asleep, and then we do another time for me to come back. I return and she is snoring. 5 minutes later she is out asking why I never came in. This is her sleepwalking! She may want a snack, may ask questions about something, she could up for for 30 minutes before I walk her back to bed, the second she lies down she is snoring loudly again. She may or may not repeat it another 1-3 times times. Once it has been about 1.5 hours from the time she went to sleep then she stops doing it and will sleep soundly. If you ask her in the morning about anything that happened once she started snoring, then she has no memory of any of it. We have done this for years! Now that I know I have more patience for when it takes 2 hours to get my 9 year to stay in bed.

a new year

A new year and another birthday. Madeline turned 9 yesterday! We celebrated early because she was supposed to have snowboard practice but it was canceled so we celebrated again. She went bowling early in the week before she went back to school after winter break. We invited 2 of her friends to go along. She is moving out the party age, we have limited friends that are girls, and she did not want to invite her entire class from school. 15 kids all together and only 2 of them are girls. Yesterday we went swimming , out for pizza and then made her birthday dinner. Her friend that spent the day with us wanted to sleep over last night so I agreed to try the sleepover thing again. We've tried two other things in the last year, once at another house in our neighborhood and then we had another neighbor girl try to sleep here over the summer. Neither one were successful. And neither was last night!

Madeline usually does not problems sleeping now but everything has to be perfect, right temperature, right night lights, right time, someone checking on her exactly every 20 minutes, on and on. She sleeps in my room at times when something isn't correct. She got scared with someone different in her room and after an hour of trying to problem solve, I called it quits and took the girl home. Madeline now says she will try again when she is 11, I thinking that might not be a bad idea. She doesn't want to completely miss out on events so I take her to sleepovers and then pick her up at 9pm or so to come home to her own bed. It has worked out ok so far. It was a bit of an issue with a dance team mandated sleepover with having to sneak her out the back so the other girls didn't see. We elected out of the gymnastics team sleepover completely last month since it didn't even start until 7pm at night, she is one of the youngest members and the majority of the girls are teenagers. One of these days...