so we've been going to the psychologist, who thought that maybe we should see a psychiatrist, in order to get some risparidone (or something like that) to help with impulsivity issues.

he says that we are so in survival mode, that if we took the energy down a notch, maybe we could do more development work, and less putting-out-fires work.

as of now cody is on ritalin, which his teacher thinks helps, but i'm not convinced it does much of anything. when he wants to focus, he can FOCUS. and since he loves school, he does pretty well with that. home is the problem.

so we go to the psychiatrist, the first meeting is just us grownups. we tell him how cody is jealous of his sister, of how he hits, screams for no reason, can't discriminate in a story between plot and detail, etc., etc., etc.

this week we take cody with us to meeting #2. he walks in and.......is an angel, totally neurotypical. he plays tic-tac-toe, draws when asked, tells a story when asked, does EVERYTHING the psychiatrist asks... and of course the psychiatrist says, "i don't see any reason for medication."

arghghghghghg

eat your salad

cody's gem of the week:

it's not important what car you have, it's important that you eat salad.

sharing a dream

it was last night at bedtime.
"mom, do you know how we share a dream?" cody asked.
"nope"
"you hug me really tight and we fall asleep together, and then we'll be in the same dream."
wow.

reincarnation and favorite colors

this morning's cody-gem: "when i am a baby again, i want my name to be yody, because noone knows cyan."

and i think he's got such great logic.....and then i realize that i am SO in his world, and that if he said this in kindergarten, for instance, they would have NO idea what he was talking about, and they would just think he's weird. and then i realize that i'm only PARTLY in his world, and that EVERYTHING he does makes sense somehow and that half the time i DON'T know why he does what he does.

so anyway, in cody-code, the above means that his favorite color is yellow, and therefore he wants a name that starts with Y. cody starts with C, and the colors that start with C are cyan and cobalt, but noone in the kindergarten knows those colors. So when he is reincarnated, and comes back to earth as a new baby, he wants his name to be YODY instead of cody.
makes perfect sense, no?

why did that doctor hit me with a hammer?

yesterday we went to the pediatric neurologist. we've been wanting to go for a long time (ok, cody hasn't wanted to go, but i have). my secret dream is that we will find out that there is something physically wrong with cody that can be fixed with a little tweak, and that forever after he will be "normal".

not that i'd want him to lose his charm or anything, i just want him to have an easier time of getting along with the world and it's rules.

anyway, the neurologist commented on the circumference of his head, on the fact that he has little breasts, suggested possible adhd, odd, pdd...... and told me that most kids could have held it together more successfully for the full hour of the appointment.

actually i thought cody had done a pretty good job, considering that we had waited for the doctor for 45 minutes, and he had actually cooperated and built the little block towers the doctor asked him to build, and answered the questions, like "how many fingers do you have" with great thought- "i lost one, it fell off." (cody decided, around the time that his tooth fell out, that his finger must have also fallen out, since there's a space between his index finger and his thumb.)

it was when the doctor hit him on the knee with a hammer that all hell broke loose.
"why did he hit me?"

i dunno, seems like a pretty normal reaction to me......i must be starting to live in cody's world.

(so we're off to do hearing tests, vision tests, eeg, sleep deprivation tests, cti...........)

the great baking cookies race

baking cookies with cody is not anything like the dreamy visions i had of baking with my kids, before i had real live ones. it's more like a race, in which the finish line is unburnt cookies cooling on a plate. no, maybe more like a timed obstacle course.

2 seconds after i agree to the baking cookies thing, and..... he's off. and he's an unstoppable whirling dervish.
he's in the cabinets, pulling out pots and bowls and sifters. he's trying to eat the sugar, licking the spoon that he's using to mix the batter which has already dropped on the floor, pouring the milk straight into the batter without measuring it while i've turned my back for one second to write "buy more vanilla" on the refrigerator shopping list. he's feeding raw batter to the dog, deciding the cookies need jimmies (or sprinkles, depending on where you're from), climbing up to GET the jimmies, spilling them all over the kitchen floor, turning the light on and off on the oven, breaking the eggshells into teeny tiny pieces and ....

this has been great for my diet, since i get a lot of exercise running after cody all over the kitchen, and when it's all over i really don't want to eat any cookies.

rorschach inkblots and where you can stick 'em

yesterday we did the rorschach inkblot tests!!! who knew those things were still being used.? seems a little bit voodoo to me. cody took one look at it, had no idea what this guy wanted from him, and decided to write the alphabet instead. backwards. starting with Z, ending with A, in perfect order. that'll show this guy who's in charge here.