Wed Jan 31

Kourtney's check up & Andrew's foot

Today was Kourtney's 1 week check up for the medicine she's begun to take (Concerta for ADHD).  She was on a very teeny dose to get her started & make sure she had no weird reactions to it.  Since she did ok on that, we're bumping her up to the next dose (which is where she'll stay if it works for her).  She'll start taking that tomorrow.  The first few days on the med, she did have a tummy ache...which developed into a nice excuse to get to leave the classroom every day, but I believe the tummy ache actually was over & done with on the 2nd day.

This evening, when we got home, Andrew got mad because the girls were singing in their bedroom.  (He was in his room & they were in theirs, all putting up laundry.)  Initially, he did the right thing & came to me to tell me their singing was bugging him.  They really weren't being loud or anything, but I told him he could shut (not slam) his bedroom door.  Later, Samuel went into the bedroom to work on his laundry & opened the door.  Uh oh---now he could hear them singing again.  I would've let them shut the door, but these 2 in a room with a closed door is not a good idea!  They'd have been swinging by the ceiling fan blades in 5 minutes' time.  Andrew stood in his doorway, screaming at the top of his lungs at the girls.  When the name calling & item throwing began, I intervened & talked to Andrew about how he *had to* calm down.  Getting that angry & furious is just not sensible for something so minor.  He told me he couldn't calm himself down & proceeded to kick the laundry basket, clench his jaw & fists, pace the floor with steam blowing out his ears, grasping at the fabric of his shirt & twisting/pulling it from his body as if he'd rip it off (picture the Hulk) & basically threw himself into a rage.  I told him again that he would have to calm down and relax before he hurt himself or someone else.  I pointed out that he could go over & sit beside the bed & pound his fists on the mattress if he needed to get out some anger, but I specifically said he could not kick anything else or call the other kids names.  He turned & went toward the bed, stopped just shy of it, pulled his foot back as far as he could & kicked the bed with all the force he could put into it. Immediately he fell to the floor holding his foot, crying in pain.  Well, silly.......if you put a hundred pounds of pressure into kicking a hard wooden bed, it's gonna hurt!!  My initial reaction was going to be anger that he was being defiant & continuing to take out his anger in a negative way.....but I think he punished himself enough by hurting his own foot.

After the screaming stopped (he becomes a major drama king when the tiniest pain is involved), it was time to eat supper & go to church.  He hopped around on one foot, even crawled through the house & tried to drag himself (like an Army crawl) at one point.  Talk about drama!  There are no bruises, it's not swollen, not red, I don't palpate a lump or anything, etc.  I'm sure it does hurt, but he's really milking it.

On the way to church, Sarah was humming (quietly) in the backseat.  He started screaming at her to stop, began opening & shutting (slamming) his Royal Rangers binder back & forth in anger and generally was throwing a wall-eyed fit.  I offered to pull over on the side of the road & let him get out to calm down (in the cold night air), but he didn't like that plan too much.  He announced that he was NOT going to church, would NOT be going inside the building when we got there, etc.  When we arrived, the first person he saw was his teacher---who asked why he was limping & he had to admit that he'd lost his temper & kicked a bed.

Miraculously, he walked just fine when I picked him up from church, but by the time we got home, he felt like he had to drag himself across the yard (yes, laying down on ground, dragging himself) because he was in 'so much pain'.

To make him happy, Savannah & I decided to offer to wrap his foot before he went to bed.  She got our her Missionettes first aid kit & wrapped his foot in a big long piece of gauze.  (Way to go, big sister!!!)  He loves that & feels very good about the healing of his foot now.  LOL!