back to "normal"

It's been a while since I've written anything here. We've been busy. Plans have changed. Since my last post (which I now realize was 2 months ago!), we've made some decisions.

We've taken the house off of the market. We had it listed for 6 months and did have a decent amount of interest. But as the new school year started we thought it was time for a certain amount of stability. My stress level has improved dramatically since I'm not worried about keeping the house show-ready all the time. In fact, we went from one extreme to the other. We had a bathroom leak that required Christopher to tear apart a bathroom to find. We literally had a bathroom sink in our bedroom for about a week. At any rate, we plan to do a few improvements over the next several months. Then we will just live here for a while, like normal people. We may re-list in the spring, maybe in a year or two. Right now we're taking it a day at a time.

We've taken Ignacio off of the crazy diet. This has also improved my stress level. About a week after we got back from vacation, Ignacio had a very bad week. Almost constant meltdowns, hitting, screaming. Lots of fun. What this made is realize is that this kid has ups and downs. Kids with autism have ups and downs for a variety of reasons. We figured that whatever "improvement" we thought we saw on the diet, was more likely attributable to these normal fluctuations in mood and behavior. He's been back on gluten and casein for over 2 weeks now, and his mood is actually much improved. I'm glad that we tried, because now I don't have to wonder.

Both kids started preschool this month. Of course they both love it. We're also in the process of getting Ignacio into the Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities (PPCD) through the school district. I had never heard of such a thing until this year, but basically the law requires that school districts educate EVERYONE in the district. This will be a 5 day/week program to help work on Kindergarten preparedness. We're going to visit the classroom next week, and he should start sometime next month. I am a little hesitant to take him out of his current preschool (they are REALLY good with him). I'm curious to see how this all plays out.

That's all I have for now. I'll keep y'all posted.