This week, it was one of those Wednesdays where I woke up thinking it was already the weekend. Boy, I was way off.
I didn’t sleep super well, and woke up with the house smelling kind of like a campfire. That is cool and soothing in its way, but the sad fact is that the reason it smells that way is because of all the wildfires up north spewing ash and smoke all over our neighborhood. It’s a sad reminder of the state of things out West, and while we don’t have it as bad here in Colorado as so many places in California and Oregon, it is most definitely an issue.
For whatever reason, this week has seemed to drag on for infinity. I know sometimes that can happen when nothing is going on and boredom stretches the minutes and hours beyond their normal zones, but that has certainly not been the case this week. In fact, if anything, it’s been a little too packed.
It’s been a busy week of meetings, webinars and various projects for work. On Wednesday, I had all of that going on, and we also had some parent training with Henry’s BCBA, which stands for Board Certified Behavior Analyst. She basically oversees Henry’s ABA therapy, and comes to the house once a week to observe. A couple times a month, she does some parent training with us.
Wednesday was one of those days, and we had a really good discussion about the progress he’s making, things we can work on, and new strategies we might try out. One of the big areas we struggle with is sleep, and we talked a lot about things we might try to address that. Henry has always been a pretty rough sleeper, and it feels like we’ve already tried a million things, but our BCBA sounded pretty confident she could come up with some strategies to help. To quote the poster on Agent Mulder’s wall, “I want to believe.”
Like all of us right now, Erin and I find each day to be a juggling act between a zillion different things. Keeping our daughter going with online learning, dealing with work stuff, home stuff, and managing Henry’s therapy, and on and on. That’s our plate, and I fully recognize that parents everywhere are facing their own sampler platters of insanity these days.
It’s a lot, but all we can do is take each thing as it comes, do our best every day and move on to the next one. There are better days ahead, of this I’m certain.
That evening, I stepped outside with the kids for a moment and looked up at the moon, which was a blood red harvest moon, probably enhanced by all the smoke and ash in the sky.
Perhaps it’s a scary omen of tough days, but Amelia, always the optimist, saw it and said, excitedly,”OOooh! Red!”
I’ll drink in that optimism, for sure. “Red at night, parents’ delight.” Right? Am I right?
