Calmer Waters

It's around 4am when I roll out of bed and throw on yesterday's clothes.  The baby has had me awake since 2am and there are chia seed crackers and walnut/macadamia cookies that need turning in the dehydrator.
It seems funny to be doing sun salutations when the moon is still in the sky.......
My body aches too much to persist with yoga so I sit in the stillness of the morning and sip water. I can hear the Paddy walking around upstairs  so I steal some time to myself back under the covers before  'showtime'.

I find myself wondering how many other Mothers lie in bed waiting to hear how loudly her child's feet hit the floor in order to gauge the tone of the morning?  Probably more than I imagine.  Dillon crawls under the covers with me and snuggles.  He is happy and well rested.  I exhale.

I serve scrambled eggs and vegetable soup for breakfast.  I really appreciate the fact that Finn is willing to have this with Dillon.  I can't imagine too many kids his age happily eating vegetable soup in the morning.   Pretty soon Spectacular Spiderman will be down with a different order and the baby will up for his usual. When  did my house become cafe?  Breathe........

The scene here is in sharp contrast to other  mornings over the past month and I am reminded of how much food matters. No fights, no yelling and most of all no tears.   Dillon is calm, I am calm and his brothers are calm.  It's a good morning.  I exhale.

Bittersweet

the bitter result of a meltdown

Sweet

Life for us has been playing out like a bittersweet symphony, where the drugs don't work (thanks The Verve).  Events like this morning make me question my decision to have more children.  Feeding a baby and protecting a toddler while your 8 year old destroys your house. smashes his head against various hard surfaces in between throwing objects at you, will do that.

I can't help but wonder what kind of impact living in this situation will have on their lives....
I can already see how it is affecting our eldest child as he was fighting  back tears this morning as all hell broke lose.  There's no doubting the level of stress that my other children will carry, which is no less compounded by parents who can't seem to agree on the correct way to deal with it  (is there really a correct way to 'deal' with this?)

A few days ago, I finally swallowed my pride and admitted that I am out of my depth and needed help,  only to be told that funding for this kind of thing doesn't extend to the area we live in.  Let it be said that 'my area' would hardly be considered unworthy of funding.  Lack of funding for a crisis situation?  The media has been very vocal lately regarding Autism funding, some going as far as to say that medical professionals are falsely diagnosing borderline kids in order to get funding.  Apparently the government is pouring money into Autism.
As bad as things are here, they are exhausting but do-able,.....  for  now.   Fast forward 4 or 5 years though and try to picture how  we will be travelling as a family unit then?  Not so good if things don't start to turn around.  Yesterday I was reminded of the lad who pulled a knife on his mother because he didn't want to take his meds and was subsequently shot dead by an inexperienced police officer.   A couple of years ago I could never of related to that story but now I'm not so sure.