boys are gross

I am so frustrated right now. Keith is being a royal pain in the butt. Yesterday I was trying to help him clean, but he just screamed at me, then attacked me when I wouldn't leave his room. So today we had to go down and clean his room because he had refused to and we found out that he has been hiding food in his dresser. He also is peeing on the floor when he is mad at us. We ended up taking almost everything out of his room and throwing most of it away. I am going to have to go through his dresser tomorrow and make sure he is not hiding anything else in his drawers. I also have to shampoo the carpets. Yeah, 'cause that sounds like fun - not. I do not understand why Keith wants to have a filthy room. I know he is a boy and they don't care, but it is just so gross. Boys - I will never understand them.

Kicking Off The Summer

Wow, I can't believe how fast last week went by. I didn't even have time to post at all last week.  We went camping on Friday night. It was fun, but man, I forgot how hard it is to keep up with Raymond. This is the last week of school for two of my kiddos, which is going to get interesting for Jenny. She still has like a month or more of school. She is really going to struggle with getting up and going to school when the others don't have to.  Keith told me today that he doesn't want school to end. I was like sorry buddy but I can't control that. Hopefully I can find activities for him for the summer. I am looking forward to all of them being out of school so we can take it easy for a little while. Well it's late, so type you all later.

Cabin Fever

This weather has been crazy my poor kids want to go outside but it has just been too wet and cold. They are starting to get cabin fever. They don't do well with not getting out and working out their crazy energy out.   I know we need the rain, I just wish it could be a warmer rain. Keith is doing well.  His eye is starting heal. Thank goodness it didn't do any major damage to his cornea. Poor Raymond fell and hit his face on our coffee table, now I am using bruise blend to help his poor face. Tasha is loving the deep blue. It is really helping with her aches and pains from dance, not to mention mine and Mike's backs - which right now mine is killing me.

A Trip to Instacare

So life just loves to be crazy. I had to rush Keith to the Instacare last night. He got into the cat's face, and so kitty swiped him. The problem comes to be that the cat scratched his eye and sliced his eyelid.  So after he got nailed I knew I was going to have to take him in to make sure there was no damage to his eye. The doctor checked his eye and sure enough his cornea is scratched. Poor kid is still trying to get over this cold that he has caught still. He is starting to feel better but he still has this nasty cough that he can not seem to get rid of. Sounds like he is hacking up his lung. At least he is on his way to getting over this bug. Raymond is finally starting to chill with all the screeching. He is still really loud a lot, but I can deal with that. Just not the screeching. Jenny has also seemed to stop her banshee routine. So on the whole things are going well here. Now if we can just not have any more Instacare trips we will be great.

Today is good

Today has been a great day Keith came home and mowed the front lawn.  He was so excited to mow the lawn, which is amazing because he hates chores. He missed some spots, but considering it was his first time he did phenomenal.  He then went on to help me clean the living room with out any fits. It has been great. Jenny helped me do the laundry and dishes. Granted, Raymond was still a screechy kid, but i can deal with it if everyone else will be nice. We had all the kids help clear up the back yard so we could mow it before it rains again. Finally things are turning around it was a good day. I am so happy that Keith is starting to turn the corner.

Is summer ever going to come

Please tell me that summer will get here soon. We have been experience a lot of rain, which I know we need, but its really hard on the kids because they can't play outside. So they are going stir crazy, which in turn is driving us crazy. Jenny is still off track which is hard on me, Raymond is wild and crazy, I am having a really hard time keeping up with him. Keith has just been going from one extreme to another. One minute he is in a great mood, then he is so violent. Tasha has so much going on right now that its kinda of crazy. I am so looking forward to summer time when the pace slows down and things can be much slower. Which is funny because I usually can't wait for school to start again when it's summer time.

Headaches

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I have been so busy. Things have been crazy  around here. We have been rearranging the house.  Keith is still struggling. He hates all the cleaning that I have been having everyone do. Granted I am partly to blame. I have been so busy I have not been as good about putting the lavender on him. Raymond is acting  up as well. He is constantly yelling and he is saying no when he means yes. I am really struggling with my migraines again because of all of his screaming and yelling.  Past tense is helping with the headaches a little. Well its late so I am going to close. Everyone have a good night.

Fun at the Fair

So I told you in the last post that we were going to take the kids to a fair. Well we did. It was really fun. There was a tarantula, bearded lizard, and snakes. Raymond wouldn't even get near any of them. Keith was so funny because he wanted to be near the snakes but not the spider. Tasha was talking to authors almost the whole time we were there. The kids had a blast watching the performance that the fair put on. It was two guys dueling, though actually it was more of a comedy routine. There were also bunnies there. Jenny was in hog heaven. She loved petting those bunnies. Raymond was running everywhere. He wanted to see everything. The kids had a blast.

Sometimes I just want a break

So jenny is off track for the next 3 weeks. That is going to make it a very long 3 weeks for me. She has already been screeching at me and she is only been off for 3 days. The lavender has been helping, but it can't overcome her desire to be on the computer or videos games all day. I am like no way she needs to get outside - she needs to do something that doesn't involve a screen . Raymond has also been screeching a lot lately. My migraines are starting to come back. I would love to hear from anyone if they have any ideas on how to get kids to stop being banshees. I get Raymond. I don't like it, but i get it.  Jenny, though, I can't figure out. She throws fits like her baby brother. It drives me bonkers. We are going to take them to an autism fair tomorrow. I think they will love it. Wish us luck. It should be interesting. Mike gave me Tuesday off and I already want another vacation.

life is good

So this weekend was actually not so bad. Keith had his birthday party. He had one friend come. He had a blast. He played video games, ate food and generally had a good time. It seems like he has finally turned a corner. We did not have any blow ups this weekend. It was nice. The lavender has been working great. It calms him down quickly. Now we just have to get Jenny to chill out. We have started her on lavender and it seems to be working, though a little slower on her.

Crazy life

When it rains it certainly pours. Sorry I did not get a post up on wednesday it was a crazy day. So just when we think that we are getting Keith calmed down, we get hit from left field. He came home wednesday and immediately started blowing up at me, yelling and screaming about how I hate him, and that no one loves him, and that I am a horrible mom, and he wants to kill himself. Now mind you I haven't even had a chance to say, "Hi Keith, how was your day?" I really wish I knew what it is about spring that sets him off so bad. So anyway, he is just yelling and screaming at me, gets in my face, and I was trying to reason with him which I know is stupid, cause you can not reason with him when he is like that. I finally had to just send him to his rom and let him throw a fit in his room until he calmed down and fell asleep. I think I am going to buy a diffuser and see if that will work to use oils to get him to calm down faster. I was so worried there for a minute that he was going to attack me again, cause nothing good ever happens when I end up having to restrain him. Summer can't come fast enough.

Gotcha ya

Ha the Lord obviously has a sense of humor because my last post was talking about how things were going better. Raymond has started up on his terrible twos today. I could not please him. He wanted breakfast, but I got him the wrong bowl even though I got the blue bowl he pointed to. I poured his milk wrong -  I didn't get his cereal fast enough. The cushion on the chair kept moving and you would have thought the world was coming to an end. He only took about a half hour nap which is short for him. I think I am going to have to start rubbing lavender on him before his naps cause he so needs his naps. I wish I knew what started all this with Raymond, because he has really been triggering my headaches. He is normally a very easy going kid

All is calm

So after all the headaches Keith has been giving us lately, he seems to be getting back to the normal "I don't want to do chores" kid. He hasn't had any major meltdowns this week. Granted he hates cleaning, so it is always a battle to get him to clean but I think that's normal for most kids his age. He always seem to really struggle in the spring time. I don't know why. He has been doing great in school. I just hope this hold out for long time.  Jenny is starting to get better at not screaming so much since I started her on lavender. Granted it hasn't been too long, so we will have to see.

Weather

So we have been enjoy wonderful spring until today. Today we got 6 or 7 inches of snow. That is hard on Mike's body. He does not handle drastic weather changes. It makes him ache something fierce. Thank goodness i have deep blue on hand cause he is going to be needing it to soothe the aches and pains that this weather brings out. I have to admit I like teasing him about him being addicted to deep blue. He absolutely loves the stuff, it makes all of his aches and pains go away. Well I am cold and tired. Last night was a long night for me, so I think I am going to sign off but will type you guys later. Take care.

Set Backs

This weekend was full of major setbacks. Keith just seems like he is determined to get away from us. He keeps saying that we hate him and that we are trying to ruin his life. The reality is we love him and he can't see that assaulting people and stealing and destroying property is only going to hurt him in the end. I am struggling right now with how to help him cause he just wants to get locked up in the psychiatric hospital again. When he is there though he just wants to be home. I am worried that if we can't get him to understand that his actions have consequences that he is going to end up in juvie or worse dead. There has got to be more help out there for kids like him. He doesn't fit in a box. They all want to just put him in this box marked bipolar or epileptic etc but he is not just one diagnosis. He is more than that and he refuses to be put in any one box.

My Little Banshee

Jenny is my youngest daughter. We have know since she was little that something was different with her she didn't talk till she was three.  They diagnosed her as autistic spectrum disorder. She is so completely different from her brother.  Where he wants to be social but he doesn't get social cues. She really doesn't care she has a few friends but really she is completely happy to just be by herself. Then about 4 or 5 years ago our seizure alert dog just started going nuts the only kid home was Jenny. I couldn't figure out why Zoey was flipping out, but I figured I should get her checked out. After the doctors ran some tests, turns out Jenny has seizures too. I wont lie my heart broke a little. We had been struggling trying to get Keith's seizures under control and now I found out that I have Jenny  with seizures.   Jenny's have proven to be much harder than Keith's. Where he has the one you can see them pretty obviously Jenny has absence seizure where she just stares off into space. If you are not looking right at her you can miss it. Plus hers hit all over her brain not just one area. Jenny is not violent but her autism causes her to scream like a banshee which tends to set off everyone. I have her on clary sage which does wonders for her seizures. I am going to start her on lavender to help control her outbursts and help her with anxiety issues.

Keiths Struggles

 For years we have severely struggled with Keith with all of his issues. He has been in multiple incidents with police. We have had to change his school three times. He has attacked me and his siblings numerous times. We have been forced to institutionalize him several times  He currently is on multiple medications to try to control his violent outburst and we still were just hitting brick walls. We couldn't get any help they just wanted to keep adding more pharmaceuticals.  I was like how many more can you put this poor kid on he is on so many already and they have so many possible nasty side effects.  We even had one cop tell us that this kid needed a good sound beating. I was floored that this cop is telling me this cause you know if i ever even threatened to do it cps would be there beating down my door taking my kids away. As I have already told you Keith can be quite violent. Which makes life very hard when you have other children. Keith attacks his younger sister a lot not Tasha so much cause she fights back. Jenny is just starting to learn to fight back. Thankfully he loves Raymond so much that he has never intentionally hurt him. We have found that lavender calms Keith down when he is getting into one of his moods. I put lavender on his feet at night and on his chest in the morning. Lavender has taken down the number of incidents we were experiencing from 2 to 3 a month to we now went 8 month in between incidents. Granted he is by no means cured. In fact we just yesterday got a call from the school police officer. He was destroying school property. He is now on probation if he does anything in the next 3 week he will end up in court. Like i said we are still going through this but it is way better, and I still hope we can start taking him off some of the prescriptions that have such nasty side effect. I mean really they can't tell me that they know for one hundred percent what having a 10  year old on like 10 different medicine is doing to his body.

My Hubbys battle

This post is about my husbands battles with his bipolar. Mike has always struggled with it. When i met him  i didn't even know he was bipolar. He coped pretty well at that time. Then we got married we started having kids which is stressful but he did great until he suffered a traumatic brain injury while i was pregnant with our third child. then everything was just chaos i suddenly didn't even know the man i was married to.  Mike struggled to know who he was he no longer felt like he was himself. after years he still struggled with it but then i was introduced to Doterra. I was so desperate to try anything that would help him and my kids. I started him on their life long vitality and little by little he is coming back there are still days that he struggles with it but they are getting fewer and far between. Before llv Mike would get sick all the time i think it was partly the stress would get to him and partly bipolar just wears down an immune system. During the year of taking llv he has only gotten sick once which was unheard of before. He is still on prescription medication which i am hoping to get him off of soon.

     I have decided to start this blog because I know that there are parents out there who are going through what I have been through and am still going through on a daily basis. If I can give you a ray of hope then this blog has been worth it. I am not sure where this is going to go but I hope that I can reach others who are struggling to do what is best for their kids or significant other. I am no expert, I just have struggled for years and was finally introduced to natural medicine and have found some things that have helped my kids, whereas prescription medicine was unable to. Here is a little background on me and my story. I am married to my high school sweetheart and the love of my life, who following a traumatic brain injury, now struggles to control his bipolar. I have 4 children, 2 girls and 2 boys. My oldest has A.D.D which can be a big struggle for her sometimes. My oldest son has epilepsy, autism spectrum disorder, and is bipolar; I love him, very dearly, but he is quite the handful. My other daughter also has epilepsy, and autism spectrum disorder, but she is so different from her brother. My youngest is 2, and he is a crazy, wacky, high energy two year old. That's my family, as you can imagine, my life can be very chaotic. I do not know how I survived with out Doterra essential oils in my life. The oils have helped me in so many different ways. Well I've got to run will post again soon.