Disturbing

So, it's been a long time since I've had the time to write. I'll try to keep this short because I'm exhausted now and want to go to bed. Elise was really disturbing to see yesterday. She literally spent the entire day in peals of uncontrollable laughter. It was never apparent what she was laughing about and she certainly wasn't trying to share her laughter with anyone else. I have 5 theories about why she was laughing so much:

1. Elise ate something that created a drug like effect on her. Apparently she did eat 3 slices of raisin bread the day before this laughing fit day and that morning she had a full slice of toast slathered with the regular store bought grape jelly (the one full of preservatives & high fructose corn syrup).
2. Elise is becoming worse because she's going to make a leap for the better - whatever, this is wishful thinking on my part.
3. The mold in the bathroom behind the bath molding is now exposed and she's reacting to that and other allergens. My allergies have been terrible this week and her brothers have also been suffering. For whatever reason, allergies seem to really negatively affect the boys behavior, so maybe this is affecting hers also.
4. Elise is playing with ghosts or angels, as in "I see dead people." Hey, I'm reaching for a reason here to avoid accepting the possibility of #5 being correct.
5. Elise is being lost to autism.

Well, as you can see, it was disturbing to see Elise like that yesterday. Today she was supposedly better. I didn't spend much time with her today, so I wouldn't really know. Yesterday, B had to visit the doctor. He has another sinus infection and he was a bit wheezy. He's now back on albuterol, pulmicort and antibiotics. Poor kid. He was a nightmare behavior-wise in the doctor's office. He was hyper wild and not listening. It was actually embarassing and I'm pretty immune to getting embarassed by my kids' behaviors.

Today we made the surprising decision to attempt using Zoloft on Elise. The more we spoke with the team at UCLA and the more we researched and thought about it, we think it's worth a try. I feel it's possible that anxiety is underlying many of the impediments to Elise's learning. We'll start on Thursday morning with a very low dosage. I was much more hopeful before the laughing fits surfaced...

When A was bathing yesterday, he showed us how the molding of the bathtub walls are coming off. Now that you can look behind the molding, there is just a bunch of black colored mold visible. It's on the wall of the bathroom that is shared with the twins' room where B's crib is located. B's doctor said yesterday that it's very unusual for him to have 2 sinus infections at his age since there aren't much sinuses developed at this age. She felt that most likely he is being exposed to some sort of allergen in his environment. Hmmmm...so, in our spare time we're looking to move. I want to give our 30 day notice by the end of this year so that we'll be out by February 1st. You know, things just weren't hectic, stressful and exciting enough for us. We really needed to add a move on top of everything else happening in January. We just don't want to wait any longer because we really believe that this house is making us all sick. I wish we could move yesterday.

Well, that's it for now. We are getting through this and next week is shaping up to be much better than this week has been. Our works will be slowing. the drug decision is made, and B should start feeling better. Oh, I forgot the other thing that happened yesterday is that A wet himself at school again yesterday. That was the 2nd time in 2 weeks after no accidents at school for a year. Something is going on with him and I suspect it's our household stress. How are we handling this? We're going to move and add more stress! hahaha...

I also forgot to write about the good thing that happened Sunday. I took B to a birthday party for one of his classmates. I met a professor from CSUN there who teaches/trains special education teachers. She told me about a preschool at CSUN that Elise could attend with B. The school mixes special education with typically developing role models. I'm definitely going to look into this. There is a wait list, so this would probably not be possible until next fall at the earliest, but it's nice to know this would be possible.