Little Peter has been really tough on us lately. He refuses to go to bed when we want to, and he get extremely angry if you try to force him to go to bed. Last night we shut off all the lights downstairs and headed up to bed despite Peter's protests. He followed us up, but then spent about 30 minutes screaming next to my wife and tugging on her arm to try to drag her out of bed. He then decided to take matters into his own hands and head downstairs by himself. We have the top of the steps blocked by a playpen full of really heavy stuff. We can move it easily enough, but it's worked really well as a makeshift gate to keep the boys upstairs at night.
So anyway, Peter gets to the playpen and decides to go to work on it. He's screaming and yanking and pulling on it with everything he's got. At first the playpen doesn't move at all, but as he gets progressively angry, Peter starts to gain strength like something out of The Incredible Hulk. Eventually, the playpen starts to move bit by bit, and the next thing you know Peter is heading down the steps. He gets downstairs, and starts turning on the lights and the TV. I head downstairs, turn off all the lights and the TV, and I start to carry him upstairs against his will.
Of course, he's kicking me ( several times in the nuts! ) the whole way up the steps. I get upstairs, put him down, and yank the playpen in front of the steps again. He's heads right for the playpen and starts yanking on it again. I pull his hands away, he tries to to grab the playpen again, and we go through this war of wills for about another 30 minutes. I really start to lose my patience with him, and I raise my voice so much that I'm feeling a little guilty about today. However, no matter how loudly or sternly I say "no", Peter is not really deterred. Finally, I think he just gets exhausted from all the screaming and kicking, and he crawls into bed next to my wife. After about 15 minutes of relatively tame crying, he finally falls asleep.
This all wears me out, but more than anything, it really breaks my heart. I worry so much about Peter' s future. Michael seems to have gotten past a lot of his problems ( Michael has had similar issues, but it was never as intense as it is with Peter ). I'm too spent to write much more about it now, but you can find more info about the challenges facing my boys here. I just hope everything works out okay. We just found out that his pre-school program ( for kids with his kind of development issues ) is now going to offer him a full day of school ( Peter wasn't supposed to start getting a full day of pre-school until September, so it's a very good thing that they will be giving him more instruction earlier. Apparently, Peter's been acting up a lot at pre-school lately, so everyone has decided that it would be best to give him more behavior and speech therapy. ). The pre-school worked wonders with Michael, so we are really hoping Peter can make the same kinds of strides. We also contacted the speech therapist who worked with both Michael and Peter between the ages of 2 and 3 ( At 3, the state of New Jersey no longer offeers the one-on-one speech therapy sessions and you need to send the kids to a city-run pre-school ). She's like an aunt to the boys ( we invite her to all their birthday parties, and she has offered to help in any way she can. So, we feel blessed to have so much help, but it doesn't stop me from worrying every day.
In any case, this post had turned out to be longer and more depressing that I had hoped, so I'd like to end on a lighter note. Take a look at the photo below:
This, my YouTube viewers, is where the Magic happens! Yes, I have shot, edited, and uploaded all 97 of my YouTube videos from that simple looking folding chair in this little wing of our bedroom. If you think this part of the room looks messy, it's only because you have not seen what the rest of the room looks like. I really need to try shooting some videos in another location. Unfortunately, I only have experience shooting on the iMac, and I don't feel like moving ( and potentially dropping/breaking ) the big iMac around the house. Of course, I do have a video camera, but it shoots on digital tape, and I don't feel like going through the effort of shooting stuff on tape and transfering it to the Mac ( I'm sure it's easy, but I'm just been too lazy to even try ). Perhaps I'll buy myself a Christmas present and get a video camera that records in a tapeless digital format. It's been more than 5 years ( we bought our old camera right before Michael was born ), so it's probably time for a new camera anyway. In the meantime, perhaps I'll put more pictures of my home in the blog, so folks don't think I'm trapped in the little part of my bedroom all the time.
Rich
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