Day 87: Michelle and the Terrible, Horrible, No good, Very bad Day

Have you ever read to book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No good,Very Bad Day by Judith Voirst?

Today, I feel like Alexander.

And I definitely want to move to Australia. Or anywhere far, far away from my reality.

It didn't start out a great night. Noah went to bad at 7. He was very tired.

He was up at 7:30, 8:15, 9, 9:20, 10:30 and again at midnight. At midnight, I gave him some Benadryl. But by that point I was wired. I couldn't sleep, totally on edge that he was going to wake up again.

Finally at 2am, I checked on him, he was out, so I finally fell asleep.

I woke up at 9am, tired but fine, and had lots of plans to clean up, work on the back yard and fill up the pool.

I got up and heard the kids in Bri's room, so I figured everything was under control and got in the shower.

I showered, cleaned up my room, striped my bed to wash everything, and even vacuumed really quick. I looked around and was quite pleased with my early motivation. I headed out into the hall way...towards the living room. I rounded the corner and saw this....

This is my couch. It is covered in powder lemonade mix. Like covered. The entire couch.

This...is my floor. Covered in Dish Soap.

Not just in one isolated place. It was spread from the entrance of my kitchen to the back door. In some places, it was covered in more powdered lemonade.

The toilet was covered in toothpaste, the dog food was spilled everywhere, there were "choo choo train tracks" of toilet paper from one end of the house to the other. Every room of the house was hit except mine. He'd obviously been at this for hours.

I turned around. Walked back into my bedroom. And cried. I got the kids dressed, put them in the car, and left. I could not even deal with what my mind was attempting to process. I went to Tammy's and she wasn't home, so I headed to Walmart, as I needed some groceries anyways. I ended up running into Tammy and we headed to her house to try to calm down before going home to deal with the monster that was my house.

I eventually came home, with Tammy's steam cleaner in tow.

I steam cleaned the couch.

Vacuumed the rugs.

And began the long...LONG...process of trying to get the soap up. But what you may not realize is that concentrated soap is like impossible to mop up. It just keeps making more and more and more suds. I'd wipe it up with towels, then mop again, wipe, mop, wipe, mop. It took hours.

Later on I also realized he somehow made my fish food disappear. He says he poured it in the sink.

The worst part is that through it all, getting in trouble, seeing me upset, having to help clean it...it didn't even phase him. He does not care, at all.

So...while I am waiting to get in to get him diagnosed...I've taken some drastic and last desperate attempt measures.

I bought a door alarm and installed it. I showed him exactly how it works and what will happen if he opens his door now. Let me just say, this kid is extremely noise sensitive. So this feels almost cruel. Like he gets hysterical if the fire alarm goes off. And he does NOT like the door alarm, it scares the crap out of him. But I have to be woken up if he comes out. And he has to have some sort of awareness or fear of coming out and doing these things. So this is the only thing left I can think of.

But I also want him to know that I am here if he does need me. I don't want him to feel abandoned in there or like I won't come to him if he has a nightmare or is sick or whatever.

And so, the baby monitor has come back out. I showed him how this works, that I can hear him talking to me, that if he needs me all he has to do is talk into it.

I also bought some new, really expensive moisturizer stuff that I found today. I really believe in my heart that at least the sleeping stuff is being caused by how miserable and itchy he is.

The reality is, I've become for jaded about his skin. Nothing ever works for very long and it takes SO much time and effort to even make a tiny dent, that I have kind of giving up trying. But in the process of a total mental break down today, I realized I have to keep trying. It's so much effort for so little results, but if i can even eliminate a small portion of the itch, I've got to do it.

With that said, I'm putting him back on a daily benadryl regimen. When we we in the hospital for those two weeks, I met 8 and 9 year olds that had been on benadryl their whole lives. They lived like little zombies. This bothered me so much that I took Noah off and vowed never to do that to my boy. But the reality is, he's not getting better, he's not out growing it and he is miserable. The reality is it's better to give him benadyl every day then to let him suffer the way he is.

I feel like he hates me. I feel guilty that he hurts all the time and I can't make it better. I feel helpless and hopeless and frustrated and angry.