Life and Times of The Johnston family: Side Effects And The Past Week

Ok so this past Friday after Elizabeth and I finished school my mom took me and my kids to Arctic Circle for lunch so they could play and get some of their endless energy out. It was a nice "out" and my mom and I had a good visit. That night was Elizabeth's favorite dinner, pizza! After dinner I left the kids with Tony and my parents and I went to several fabric stores in search of Frozen fabric. My mom has oh so graciously agreed to make a weighted blanket for Elizabeth(it helps with her SPD) We found just what we were looking for at JoAnns! It's going to be such a cute blanket!! Saturday morning Tony's dad met us at the credit union and took our kids while Tony and I met with our financial adviser. Then we picked up our kids and ran a couple errands, then stopped by a couple model homes, just for fun. Then we went back to Tony's parent's house and gave the kids lunch. A little while later Tony's parents again kindly watched our kiddos while Tony and I went to Desert Star and saw "Pirates of the Caribbean" which was actually really funny! After we went back to Tony's parents house and Tony worked on changing the breaks on the van. He had a bit of trouble at first as the van's breaks are different than the pilots so he had to watch a You Tube video. His parents kindly fed us dinner then Tony got the front breaks changed. Then we called it a day. I should mention about Friday Elizabeth's anxiety symptoms starting going through the rough and by Saturday they went through the atmosphere! She was literally an emotional disaster. Everything was setting her off....it was scary and very difficult. So Sunday we didn't give her the ADHD meds, but it took her a couple days to come down off it. Sunday Tony's tummy was giving him problems as well so between him and Elizabeth(and Devin was off because Elizabeth was acting so emotional) we decided not to take our issues to church. We stayed home and cleaned and rearranged our place. The last little while I've realized that I don't really need a dedicated school room as it's just as easy to do it in the kitchen/living room, so we turned the front room(that was the school room) into an awesome play room! We moved all their toys in there, set up the little trampoline and slide and it's a very fun room now! We moved our desk into the living room area as well as Elizabeth's desk. I LOVE the new arrangement! It works soooooo much better! Sunday we had dinner with my parents which was delicious! Then we all watched Despicable Me 2 for family movie night.....I think my dad liked it the most! Monday Elizabeth's anxiety symptoms came back to a normalish range(which is still more than most kids but...) and her focus was gone and she was back to bouncing off the walls. I called the pediatricians office and Dr. Sandvig wasn't in but they left a message for the dr covering for her. She called me back later that afternoon and told me it was a good decision to take Liz off the meds as they obviously weren't right for her. She told me Dr, Sandvig would call and talk to me the next day. At this point I started looking at the possibilities of treating Liz's symptoms with a more natural approach. I've heard wonderful things about essential oils in my online support groups so I started looking into that, as well as going gluten free as that has also been proven to help ADHD behaviors. I connected with some great ladies in our ward who do the DoTerra essential oils, who agreed to talk with me about them. That night Elizabeth had a great time in her theater class as they started working on the "It's a Hard Knock Life" song....which she LOVES! She already had the words memorized and she's almost got the whole routine/dance that goes with it down too! Tuesday I failed to look at the preschool calendar, so when we got there we discovered there was no school due to a "professional Day". Devin was thrilled!(probably more so than he should have been!!) So we went back home and did Elizabeth's school while Devin played in the wonderful playroom. Then the two gals came by and talked to us about this essential oil thang. That evening Dr. Sandvig called back and we talked about the severe adverse reaction to the Concerta. She said we might have better luck with a medication to treat the anxiety instead, but they too come with their own set of side effects, that may require additional meds to help with....and this is why a more natural route sounds so appealing to me. I remember all the horrid side effects of my medications when I was younger....some were worth it, others were really not. I'm not anit-medication by any means, but I'm not anti-natural remedies either. Honestly in the end I think we're going to end up with a combination of them, I just want to be open minded about it all, and find what works best with the least amount of trade off for negative effects for my gorgeous little girl. Man what a day it was. I discussed everything with Tony and he completely agrees with me. It's so hard to know what's best! Wednesday was a typical day, I used the sample oils that I was left with to see if they would have any effect. And surprisingly it did seem to help a bit. Elizabeth got through school without too much trouble(which is a big deal for us!) Even Devin seemed a bit more grounded. That evening was Bravo classes, and Devin actually tried swinging on the rope, for the first time! He didn't last super long but she hasn't even been able to get him ON the rope(besides to get his picture taken, so he knew they couldn't push it and make it swing), we were both so proud of him!! When we got home my dad watched the kids while Tony and I went to the Credit Union to finish up some business, which took WAY longer than we thought it would. They only had 3 of the 6 people they usually have working, so they wait was long...in fact we didn't even get seen until 5 minutes before closing. Then we got a gal who was new so she wasn't sure exactly how to do what we needed done, and messed it up the first time and had to call in help to get it fixed. But eventually it was all taken care of! Yesterday Devin was actually excited for preschool! Of course it WAS dinosaur day....he demanded to wear his dinosaur shirt and he got to bring one of his little toy dinosaurs to class! When I went to pick him up they said he actually had a harder than usual day, and had quite a few meltdowns, and that transitions(which aren't usually a big problem, since their schedule is consistent) were pretty rough. :/ Just goes to show that ANY change, even good ones are hard for Devin to adapt to! That afternoon Devin had a haircut at cookie cutters, then the kids demanded we go visit grandma and grandpa Walker! I had a good visit with my grandma while the kids played and visited with her here and there too. We always end up spending a couple hours there! We came home and had pizza for dinner as we have to go grocery shopping tonight, and it was actually a great thing because Elizabeth was in the process of working herself into a frenzy in the car on the way home, until I mentioned we were having pizza for dinner and all the sudden life was worth living again! Whew!! And that was our week.
I'm trying really hard to find a way to just skip over next week....I wish it had never happened last year and I don't think I ever want an end of January/beginning of February ever again......and I'm crying.....if I just don't think about it.......I'll just focus on our super fun, surprise included vacation in a couple weeks. This time 2 weeks from now we'll have the happiest kids in the world! So I'll just focus on their future happiness and the joy it will bring me too. There that's helping....a little.

Here is a video of the kids having some fun at their grandma and grandpa's house last Saturday.

Pictures of the playroom and living room.
Cleaning up!