Author: Melissa

This morning Monkey began asking to vacuum the floor before my eyes were even opened.  I’m sure a lot of people would find this annoying but since we have two, double-coated, dogs…well, it’s always good to have someone who enjoys vacuuming around!  I did make him wait until after we’d had breakfast but as soon as we’d cleaned up I suggested he go get the vacuum out.

You would have thought I’d just invited him to Disney World by the way his face lit up.  Of course, he didn’t want to actually USE my vacuum, he just wanted to watch me use it but he did help out a bit with his Dirt Devil.

I have high hopes that, some day, he’ll beg to use the vacuum and then proceed to vacuum the entire house.  Maybe even daily.   A girl can dream, can’t she?

BTW, day 3…he woke up dry.  I don’t mean to bore anyone but I will lose track if I don’t write it down and I did promise him that after 7 dry nights he could wear underwear to bed too.

Another dry morning…that’s 2 in a row and 3 of the last 4. I told him last night if he goes 7 nights in a row he can stop wearing diapers to bed. *fingers crossed!*

We started Monkey on folic acid therapy in August of last year.  I can’t believe I didn’t mention this at the time, lol.  Anyway, the literature all says that it takes a minimum of 4 months for the effects to show up, if any, and we’re well past that mark.  In fact, the 4 month mark was in early December. 

I would really encourage other families to consider this.  We’ve had no side effects at all and we just so happen to have witnessed a marked increase in Monkey’s ability to attend and communicate starting right around the 4 month mark.  Part of this could be explained by the increased sensory OT he’s receiving at school but he maintains on weekends and during school vacations when he’s not getting any OT so I don’t think the extra OT can account for all of the improvements.

The worst thing about having an only child with FXS is that I never know what is “normal” behavior and what is maybe a sign of problems.

For instance, this weekend Monkey was pretty much glued to me.  I said on more than one occasion that I wished I had a way to tie him to my back so I would at least have my arms free.  He was hanging on me constantly or asking for piggy back rides (he sign’s “pig” and says “back”, pretty darned cute and he came up with it all on his own.)

So..is this normal 4/5 year old behavior or a sign of anxiety?

Duhdee is down in Grampy’s bathroom tearing out his ceiling.  The leak damaged the plaster so it needed to be repaired anyway but the added bonus is that the plumber prefers to go through the ceiling anyway!  That saves us having to rip up our bathroom floor and remove our toilet.  Yay!

Grampy wants the plumber to replace anything that is questionable, not just the leak.  The plumbing is 70 years old, all cast iron….my fingers are crossed that this won’t be a multi-day event!

We had so much fun today, both Duhdee and I thanked Monkey for such a great day as we wished him good night.  What did we do?  We cleaned the basement.  Seriously.

We spent 5 hours in the basement sorting through toys, clothes, books and random crap.  We trashed tons of stuff and we have about twice as much set aside to donate.  It’s astounding how much was down there.  Even Grampy got into the spirit.  He was so impressed with how much we got done that he gave us the go ahead to clean out his stuff as well.  Monkey enjoyed playing with some of the old toys but mostly he just enjoyed running around enjoying all the new SPACE.

We were going to spend tomorrow morning doing runs to Goodwill but they don’t open early enough for us to do all of that before the plumber is due to arrive.  Fortunately, I’ve taken Tuesday off so we can do it then instead.

Who would have thought we’d have such an awesome day…cleaning?!