Day Four

Ugh. Mostly just ugh. Today was a very difficult day. With Olive's breakfast this morning we started her new medicine before heading to UVA for our daily programming. Olive's nerves got the best of her, and she threw up right as we pulled into our parking spot. Perhaps I was feeling too good about being ten minutes early finally because after we cleaned Olive and the car, we were a few minutes late. Polly was waiting for us at the play area.

Olive was excited to see Ms. Polly. For breakfast Polly offered her chocolate milk, explaining to us that one tablespoon of chocolate syrup adds 45 calories, which is a ton for a little tike like O. Olive drank it at first, but it took a lot of convincing. Olive threw a fit over it, and we finally switched to plain milk, which was still a struggle but slightly less so. She also tasted blueberries, and then sucked on frozen blueberries and practiced spitting them out. She did a great job of moving the blueberries around in her mouth. Polly makes sure to remind her that it's not scary and that she can always take a drink to help wash down any pieces or take a big breath. She took a small taste of syrup as well, and she did a good job biting fruit loops in half and spitting out the pieces.

Then we moved on to preschool with Crystal, where Olive's behavior started to deteriorate. She didn't want to participate or she wanted me to do everything instead of Crystal. Thankfully Crystal pulled out a fun, new activity for Olive before she totally lost it. She had a bin of cars and then made a road on the table out of shaving cream. Olive loves cars, and she thought the shaving cream road was amusing. She drove them around and lined them up and made a big old mess. Then Crystal pulled out dishes for Olive to play with and a bin of water for Olive to wash the dishes with. Since water is another favorite, Olive was amused for a little bit. But after those activities, she totally lost her patience and started to scream and refuse to listen to Crystal. I think it's developmentally normal for two year olds to push boundaries, but this was a different reaction than we have ever seen from her. She was exhausted and really acting out in a way that shocked us. We ended up leaving about fifteen minutes early because there was nothing we could do or say to make her cooperate anymore.

We let Olive calm down in her regular play area before snack with Polly. It seemed to work for a minute, but then it seriously escalated. Olive was a grumpy hellraiser for snack time starting from the moment we walked in. She kicked the table fighting being put in her chair. Then she fought everything. She screamed and whined for a lot of it. Polly had a heck of a time getting her to drink her milk. She did do a great job with Ritz crackers, but it was almost manic. She took bite, bite, bite, shoveling it all into her mouth and then frantically tried to spit it all out. She was able to chew some of it and wash it down with milk though. She seemed to like the garlic and herb cream cheese taking some sizeable licks and bites of that. But when she hit her end, she was done. Polly wanted her to drink her milk, but she was acting wild. The crux of it was when she threw her milk at me. She's never done anything like that before. It took all of my willpower to get her to take one more drink to end on a positive note. Then we were out of there.

Her bad behavior continued when we decided to grab coffee before our next appointment. She refused to hold a hand crossing the street to the point where she started bawling and screaming and kicking. Dain had to pick her up as she thrashed around. It was really not like her to have that big of a reaction and incredibly stressful to watch. It was a lot of yelling and saying "no" to everything. We are pretty sure her behavior was caused by the new medicine we started today. It's side effects are drowsiness and irritability, and I'd say she nailed both of those on the head. She was exhausted, yawning and asking for bedtime (which she never does.) And she was just wild and unruly all morning. It was hard to see our sweet girl turn so tired and grumpy.

Thankfully Ms. Jen was next on the agenda. Olive woke up this morning and yelled "Wake up. Go see Ms. Jen." She'd clearly been looking forward to it all day. At first she was pretty wound up and wild for Ms. Jen, not really listening very well and grabbing all sorts of things that weren't on the agenda. Thankfully Ms. Jen was able to wrangle her though, and Olive settled in pretty nicely. They did the swing again along with a monkey bar. Olive spun so fast on the monkey bar that she fell over from dizziness when she tried to walk. She thought that was hilarious. Next she did a puzzle where she fished for the magnetic pieces. She did a great job with that.

Then they worked on stringing beads again, which Olive really focused on. She loves that activity, and she did it on the big tube from yesterday as well as on a skinnier shoelace. She's really starting to love imaginative play and she informed Ms. Jen that the string was a waterslide and the beads were the people going down the water slide, complete with excited shouts of "splash" and "catch you." It's really fun to see her creativity. It was hard to pull her away from that, but Jen coaxed her with play dough complete with play dough scissors and stamps. Olive liked squishing the play dough into a pancake, and she tried hard to learn to use the scissors. She couldn't quite figure out how to do it with one hand, so Jen will keep working on that skill. They also made a person out of play dough and after Olive put on eyes, a nose, a mouth and arms and legs, she pulled a small piece off and told Jen it was the guy's phone. Then she made a purse, a Target basket, a stroller, and a running stroller. The accessories basically tell the story of our daily existence at home. After play dough, they did the fishing puzzle one more time before it was time to go. Olive was not happy to leave Jen.

Right after that came lunch. I was bracing myself for the worst, but it wasn't as bad as snack had been. Probably because the medicine was starting to wear off. Olive once again took big bites of crackers, even chewing some crumbs. She also took a few really big bites of goat cheese and was able to swish it around and swallow it without gagging. Milk was once again a struggle, but she managed to finish her three ounces with lots of coaxing. She's a great avoider. She tries to hide her head in her hands and talk about random things (like a tractor ride) to see if she can distract Polly into forgetting about the food. She also plays a game where she wants Dain to help her, but then wants Polly when he tries but then screams for me when Polly tries. General avoidance is kind of her coping mechanism for the stressful situation of eating.

After lunch Olive was exhausted to the point where she could hardly walk straight. We decided to forego snack with Ms. Polly since it would have to be earlier today due to her schedule. Instead we came back to the hotel to give Olive an opportunity to get in a good nap after a very stressful morning. She took another three ounces from her bottle before nap, and she was much more herself as I was putting her down. It made me happy to see her sweet self back wanting to cuddle with me. Or as she says "Mommy sleep with you" as the nuance of you and me is still lost on her.

We used the bonus time to do laundry at the hotel since we are all on about our last day of clean clothes. I'm not a sugar coater, much to the dismay of Dain as he is definitely the optimist of the group, so I'll be frank in saying that the morning seriously sucked. That's my g-rated description. My gut reaction as a mother is to never give Olive that medicine again. Polly and Dain, however, think that the medicine did stimulate her hunger. I don't think it did. I think she's hungrier because we've hardly been giving her anything through her tube during the day, and I have seen her bite crackers at home before, although admittedly she has never handled the crumbs so well. I think it was more a function of gaining confidence in her skills and feeling hunger from not being tube fed throughout the day like she normally is. Everybody agreed that it had unpleasant and unwanted side effects though.

Dr. Intagliata stopped by as we were wrapping up lunch, and she cautioned that it's hard to know if Olive was just having a bad day or if it was the medicine. I'm 100% sure it was the medicine, but I understand that it takes a few days to gauge the efficacy of a medicine. On the flip side though, I'd argue that it would then also be too early to tell if that one dose had anything to do with her hunger. The doctor also told us that Olive's body should get more used to it and hopefully handle it better. Because everyone agrees that it will not be used long term, we are going to try it for a few more days. Although at half the dose for the next few doses to see if that helps with the negative side effects. Because it's really easy for someone on the outside to say just stick it out, but when you are the one with your child all day every day, it's a lot harder to say this is worth it to me.

So we shall see. Olive is sleeping like a rock next to me, and I'm hoping she wakes up like a new woman back to her cheerful self, especially since Dain and I are in charge of getting her to eat and drink for snack and dinner. We are also planning to find a park to go to this afternoon as the park is definitely one of Olive's happy places. And some days you really just need your happy place.