Interesting week.  Safi started the week with this amazing cold that all of the kids around here are passing to each other.  While she didn't have a fever on Moday, I kept her home for social reasons.

Ok, so Safi has this sensory thing with mucus, snot, boogers, whatever you want to call them.  For a moment, if you will, indulge me.....pinch your own nose.  Immediately after, did you find yourself rubbing it or wiggling it back and forth to "re adjust" it and make it feel "right" again?  Ok, so magnify that by like 1,000 and you're close to what Safi feels when she has nasal discharge.  So, she sneezes and freezes.  Deer in headlights, snot running down her face..hand out to her side, paralyzed.  When she was very little, like 2-3 yrs old she used to actually attempt to stuff the snot back into her nose to make it feel "right" again.  While she doesn't do that now, she still panics.  Enter motor planning deficits.  Give her a tissue when you see her about to sneeze and she either holds its inches away, thereby defeating the purpose...or pushes it up against her nose creating a horrific snot shrapnel situation.  Graphic, yes, but necessary for you to understand why I kept her home.  She's had a few mini metldowns so far this year...lets not add booger girl to the mix.  So, we worked on blowing her nose.  And for the first time ever in her life, she did.  I held the tissue, she just had to blow....for a tiny bit of a sour gummy worm.  The concentration and determination on her face as she got ready, then freaked out and couldn't do it, then looked at the bag of chopped up candy bits, closed her eyes and blew...magic.  And if you know me you know mucus is a dry heave inducer for me.  But if she could choke back the fear and go for, the least I could do was not vomit on her...and we both were totally successful.  Next day at school, teacher helped her blow her nose twice and she blew her nose, appropriately, once herself!!!  SUPER WIN!!!!  She had a great week at school, and while her could remains in her chest as it always goes for Safi, she is feeling great and I am terribly proud of her.

Nixi had a good week.  Some command hallucinations, some delusions that were horribly confusing and then disappointing to sister, and disorganized thinking.  She's been hiding things.  The command hallucinations weren't harmful...write on couch, put something down sink, etc...but she's trying to hide them and that's not a good combo.  She also spent a good part of each day repetitively telling me how much she loves me...over..and over..and over....can't count how many times.  When she does this it is a tip off that her voices are telling her that I do not love her, am going to be mad at her, hate her, etc.  So, I suppose it makes sense that she has been hiding her symptoms more and more.  Its incredibly frustrating because, while we have rules and structure in this house....you mend what you break, you help instead of hinder...I don't yell at her about things.  I ask her about things.  I just say, "What happened?", or "Why did you do that?" in a non accusatory tone.  Again, just more evidence that the illness bare significantly more weight in her life than I do.  Nonetheless, I would say she is as stable as she ever is and we are at her "baseline" and that's a great thing.

Wednesday was Fair Day so no school.  We opted out of the fair in lieu of a library trip, park, and Mc'D's. Later, the girls had another wonderful dance class...this time with me on the other side of the door peaking in the window from time to time.  :)

The girls also spent their first pretty full day at dad's.  Mike picked them up at 7:45am on Saturday and brought them home at a quarter to 6PM.  They had a great time.  They went to Target and bought a new game, tooth brushes and things to keep at dad's, got icee's, went swimming, it was non stop fun...and new.  As all things new and super fun...we paid for it dearly after the girls came home.  They were good for their shows before bed but by the time we needed to do guinea pigs they were both yawning and exhausted.  Minor meltdown from Safi.....but Nixi was ready to implode, and implode she did.  She just became absolutely, totally, and completely floridly psychotic.  Not unlike after the circus, or another super fun event.  She was terrified to go to sleep, started saying that the game (Operation) that dad bought scared her, that the ghost Backyardigan's episode they watched scared her.  It was the perfect storm of changes, lots of excitement, and a game and show that feed into her often morbid hallucinations and delusional content.  It was a good 30 minute bender.  I explained to her that she absolutely MUST tell daddy when something is scaring her and she said she wanted to call him.  So, poor Mike got a phone call from a totally stark raving mad psychotic Nixi about all of the things that made her scared at his house.  I allowed her to make the call because she absolutely needs to talk to other people than just me about what's going on, because she's even sketchy about me sometimes.  After the phone call she screamed about rearranging all of the furniture in the room so that she could see me while I slept.  This is precisely why her bed is where it is in the room and why there is a toy organizer blocking her view of me...otherwise she will not sleep.  She will stare at me all night.  No sleep makes her psychosis worse.  It was just all around awful.  I gave her a second melatonin and just sat with my hand on her back until she fell asleep.

Later, Mike texted about how awful he felt because he thought she was having such a great time all day.  She was.  She had a wonderful time.  The greater the time, the worse the fall out afterwards...just like Safi.  But I told him, "You got 10 hours of wonderful and we only paid with 30 minutes of hell.  That's wonderful!"  And its true.  This is just the way it is.  We take the bad with the good and more often than not the good so significantly outweighs the really, really bad pits of hell bad.  So, I consider the weekend a complete win.  The girls and I took Saturday really mellow, hung out around the house.  They played exceptionally well together...so much so that I was able to mow the lawn with them inside playing together!  Nixi was extremely excited for dad to come to our house after tablet time to go for a swim.  Safi, dad, and Nix had a wonderful time playing together and slight meltdowns later.  All in all, for the first weekend of extended visits, etc...couldn't have gone better.  In fact, I'm delightfully shocked it went so well!!!

Next shocker, this coming weekend I will be going to Fresno to see a friend from school and I will be spending my first night away from a child(ren) in over 6 years...and I'm not freaked out!  Dad will take the girls on their usual Friday dinner date and then Heather will have a slumber party with the girls.  Dad will pick them up Saturday morning for the usual fancy donut run and then over to his place for the afternoon.  Its just crazy enough to work!  I'm completely stunned at how calm I feel about this.  Clearly, I am a phone call away and can be home in 45 min if need be, but I think it'll go great.  Weird and wonderful!

Sarah

While this video is essentially black, I would NEVER make Nixi sleep in the dark.  They sleep with a floor lamp on, this was just the end of the psychotic meltdown Saturday night and I put my iPhone on the floor so the camera was blocked.......


Another Risperdal hunger moment...this is just daily from here on out, I'm afraid...