With J’s ‘improvements’ rapidly sliding down hill with the more time that passes between his last IVIG treatment and the present, we’re headed back down the road of massive meltdowns. Some of these are from our own doing. Case in point:
We headed to a local large store for FREE Santa photos. We left early enough to be there shortly after they opened. Apparently so did everyone else. It’s a large, large store, huge ceilings, lots of tasteful things on the wall. Festive lighting (not fluorescent), and stuff to see everywhere! Clothes, fish in HUGE fishtanks, Santa’s “area”, race car tracks, carnival style shooting ranges, train tracks and a carousel. Yep…large store. With A LOT of people. You see where this is going, right?
One kiddo with a host of needs, including Sensory Processing Disorder, in an overwhelming store, excited to see Santa, who happens to be sitting right next to (what is likely to be) his life long obsession – trains…a meltdown was imminent. Plus two other kiddos to entertain.
Though we made it through, it was not without a massive melt. Wobbly scarecrow legs, screaming, general uncontrollable wailing, a few bruises on my arms from biting, and in the middle of all this, after he sat nicely for Santa and gave said Santa a hug, we went to an area of the store that had something we so desperately needed. Ear phones.
Now we’ve been considering, over-shopping / researching these for some time. We were in a store that had them and he clearly needed a little bit of something to give him comfort (besides hoisting him up on a shoulder and running towards the door, tossing aside passerby’s with terror in our eyes). We got to “the isle”, started to ‘consider’ each item, when I finally just blurted out:
“BLUE! GET THE BLUE ONES! GRAB THE BLUE ONES!!!!”
The hubs obliged and started reading the selling points. In the middle of his read, with arms that apparently grew out of my sides to hold up J while tearing open the package, I did just that…tore open the package. I yanked them out and placed them on his head.
Silence.
Silence.
It all stopped.
The withering, the wailing, the concerned look from others turned into pure curious astonishment as to what they just saw. Immediate silence from a pair of blue “shooting range” headphones….my new love! He was comforted and we were able to walk out of the store relatively calm.
