ADIOS, 2012!!!  WELCOME 2013!!!
A year in review...Safi

Nixi

In all of the winter break and pre-Santa excitement we forgot to write the blog last week!  Too many last minutes preparations for Santa's visit!

So, here's two weeks in a nutshell.  Dad took our first week of break off from work and we went to the park, hung out with the geese, made gingerbread men, and tried to go to the snow.  The snow trip was wash because I got violently car sick on the way up the mountain.  Nixi was a good sport and agreed that we could just hang out at Hospital Rock at the base of the Sequoia's and collect Buckeyes.  After a massive car and me clean up mom saw a family that had just come down the mountain with a bunch of snow on top of their car.  She asked if we could have some of their snow and they obliged so we still got to play with some snow and it was awesome!  Half way back down the mountain I started turning green again so dad pulled over and we collected a bunch of cool rocks.  It was a fun, but exhausting trip.  We went to Flyn and Greer's house to make cookies for Santa and we made a ton so he would have enough to share with his elves.

On Christmas Eve we left out cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer.  They must have really liked our goodies because they left us tons of stuff!  Thank you to all of our family for all of the wonderful and thoughtful gifts and cashola!  Our favorite presents were the guitars we got from Santa.  Our Aunt Becky knit us HUGE stuffed animals, too...which was awesome!!  It was just a really great Christmas.  During the week we got to hang out with Logan, Zoey, and Joshy some and we went to the library on Friday and picked lots of great books.  Because we never made it to the snow, mom's friend Emily (mom to Logan, Zoey, and Joshy) and the kids packed a cooler full of snow for us over the weekend when they went up to their grandparent's cabin!!  So, we woke up to the surprise gift of SNOW in our living room this Sunday!!!  We finally got to build our snowman!  THANK YOU Emily and crew!!  You are the BEST!!  All in all its been a really great winter break.  We've got one more week so we're excited to see what mom's got planned for us.

*Note from mom:  Ironically, the last post talked about the natural waxing and waning of symptoms and psychosis.  At the time of that post Nixi's symptoms were waning, or lessening and taking more of a back seat.  Starting a few days before our snow trip Nixi started sleeping poorly.  Sleep, stress, and diet are all major contributors to exacerbation of symptoms.  While Nix did well on the snow trip, Safi being so sick was pretty stressful.  That in combination with trouble sleeping caused Nixi's symptoms to wax, or increase. So, since then we are back to hallucinations during the day as well as night and her paranoia seems to be expanding.  Three times in the past week or so she has believed that there were object other than food in her meals and refused to eat them, not requesting more food but just refusing to eat.  Bones in her rotini pasta, worms in her peanut butter and jelly, etc.  No matter how much I try to reason with her and explore her perception it is to no avail.  At the time, this is her reality and telling her otherwise just encourages her distrust in myself and anyone else who tries to convince her otherwise.  Safi is doing a great job of trying to be supportive of her sister but its hard because sometimes the paranoia is transferred to her or sometimes scary hallucinations are happening around her and, while she doesn't experience them, its darn scary.  So, we're emailing the psychiatrist just to keep him in the loop but otherwise we're just trying to help Nixi feel safe and happy.  She just says everything is scary to her right now.  Poor kid.  We're doing our best and so is she so we now wait for the tide to recede.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and we wish everyone a New Year filled with hope, laughter, kindness, compassion, understanding, silliness, and love.  We'll catch you in 2013!!!

xoxo
Safi.

Christmas morning!

Snow!!!!