I’m one rollercoaster ride away from a good night of sleep, I’m sure. Or at least I can hope. Owen woke before four. This would have probably gone a lot smoother if he had actually gone back to the “blue bed” like he was telling me every five to ten minutes for the next hour and a half. He wanted to lay next to me but every time I fell back asleep he licked my forehead, put his feet on my spine, or wrapped himself in a burrito with the blanket he didn’t want me to put on him. So we got up. At that point he didn’t want me out of my bed, no lights on except the bathroom light that he turned on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off, and for me to have blue pants on at five o’clock in the morning. The party continued from there and I really needed coffee. I’m trying to get him to understand that I do not wear blue pants every day and that I can wear anything I want. And so can he. But this feels like an impossible distinction for him right now. I have to remind myself we have gone through this numerous times over the years in different literal fashions. He gets a picture in his mind of how I should look or someone else and that’s that. It’s not a matter of “he’ll get over it”, he won’t. He has to process it. I can’t even imagine the hours we’ve spent with me holding him through meltdowns because I had shorts on instead of pants at home. And that’s just one of the things that sent him into meltdowns. Me taking off my glasses caused the same reaction, hours upon hours of him on the floor screaming because I took them off to wipe my eyes or wash my glasses. It’s not something I would even think about. I would remove them for a second or so they wouldn’t get wet in the rain and it caused him so much heartache. So this morning I put grey pants on, we discussed it yesterday. “Blue pants”, he yelled. We were all dressed. All we had to do was walk out the door. He yelled again. I can see the look in his eyes when it is going from connection to meltdown and off he ran to my room. He brought back a pair of my “blue pants” and threw them at me. The choice was to wear grey pants and not get him to the bus stop in time and the meltdown completely happen, or change to the blue pants and hopefully keep him calm enough to get him to the bus stop and off to school happy. I changed. I’m exhausted. I can overthink every single second of this morning or I can try to let it go and move forward. We will work through this but knowing a pair of pants, the wrong pair of pants in his eyes is going to cause a meltdown for him is hard. All I can do is continue to talk to him about it and encourage him to breathe and find a different way to process it. When he came home from school he was happy except I was wearing the wrong shoes. I told him I would be taking them off as soon as we went inside. We ate our snacks, we read together, we worked on his writing, and he helped me paint. I talked with him about what I was wearing tomorrow and let him help me decide, they weren’t blue pants but it’s not tomorrow. We learn, we love, we grow. Each day is a gift. Tomorrow is a brand new day and we get to choose to put our best foot forward. Smiles to all and donut daze!
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