Change in Programming

As you can see from the post below, Leelo had a fantastic time in San Diego! While he was at the beach.

The rest of the time he was either distant, violently noncompliant, or both. His verbal abilities shrunk to two or three handy phrases (e.g., "I want XXX, Mommy."), and he inverted negative statements the entire visit (e.g., "No toast" to mean he wanted toast). We had two incidents of howling screaming flailing public tantrums, the kind that drew tut-tuts and stares. Before this trip we'd chalked up exactly one such incident.

And he refused to sleep. Absolutely, vehemently. He kept Seymour up past midnight each night; when he finally went down it was because he passed out, not because he gave in. I could not help out because Mali was holding her own sleep-free vigils, I suppose out of sibling solidarity. Iz snoozed through it all down in her grandparents' room (though they did not get much sleep as she is a slumbering jumping bean).

I was very bummed about all of this, as was Seymour. Travel makes our boy extremely stressed and unhappy, which then makes him regress. Sigh. Though he seemed okay with Hawaii, so perhaps we need to try that again (or Mexico, the more affordable version of tropical happies).

What this means in the near future is a shorter Seattle trip in August. I was going to try to fly up with all three kids by myself for a few days, as Seymour didn't have enough vacation hours to cover two weeks of PNW fun. Now I say fuck that, I am not going until Seymour is going. I probably won't get to see SJ or Elswhere, but I'm not sure I'd get to see them anyway if Leelo started acting out the way he did in San Diego.

I was especially saddened by Leelo's San Diego misery because I had been so hoping that my parents would notice a great big wonderful change in Leelo due to the Adderrup. Didn't happen. But maybe they'll see it when they bring Iz back up here in two days.

Leelo does seem to be happy to be home. He is back in summer school at ALSO, back in home sessions, and the Deadwood school district is giving him speech twice a week and OT once per week, in addition to weekly Sage speech sessions. I think we'll have our boy back by Saturday.

He also showed real delight in seeing Pat the Cat again, giving him pets, hugs, and smiles. He even let Mali borrow a coveted Cookie Monster toy when she asked for it, and then insisted on giving her its Elmo twin (the Leelo universe is still one in which pairs reign supreme).

He was enough of himself today that I took him out on the town in underwear rather than pullups, for the first time. Granted, I did so because we had run out of pullups--but he has been doing such a great job staying dry that I felt confident in his ability to remain so during an errand run. He did not disappoint.