Not an Easy Day

So, our hoped for easy day certainly hasn't been today. Elise woke in a major tanturm an hour after I feel asleep for the night . Inconsolable unless she was allowed out of her bed. I gave in because I was so exhausted. She laid on the floor next to me and instead of sleeping, played for more than 2 hours. When I continued to ignore her, she started rattling B's crib. Since I didn't want him to wake, I took her to the playroom. She just wanted to play there too. Finally, after 4 hours of this Sh*!@*, I pulled her to my chest tightly, laid down and made her stay still. She fell asleep probably 15 minutes later. Eventually, I was able to put her on the floor and I managed to sleep on the couch for a couple more hours.

We took the kids to the pumpkin patch today. Elise showed such a startk difference to last year when we took the kids. Then, I remember her laughing really hard with Brendan while they played in those picture taking things where you put your face through a hole. This year, she was oblivious to everyone around her. She tantrumed at every transition, major tantrums. It was miserable. She didn't ride any of the rides with her brothers. She wasn't interested in the pumpkins other than to climb them. Overall, it was just really depressing to see. What happened to my little girl within the last year? There were signs last year, but the progression is so quick it's just distrubing. How much farther will we go down? I'm not sure we've seen the worst yet.

I did stay up until 11:30 and managed to almost complete all of her paperwork for the UCLA program. I'll be glad when it's done.

I'm trying to figure out if anything was different yesterday. She had such a great day until evening. I gave her chocolate after our grocery store visit (the bribe). That was an unusual item for her. In the biomedical book I'm reading, parents have reported drastic improvements in their autistic children when chocolate was removed from their diet. The reason why this would be is not known, unlike most of the other things parents have reported as being helpful. Anyway, I guess this may be a candidate for more testing. Poor girl if she's to spend her life denied chocolate. Really, is that a life worth living (sarcasm, of course)?