Progress?

A behavioral therapist recently pulled all the idiosyncrasies of Samantha together to help us be better understand why Sam is..."different" (her migraines, hour-long night screaming fits, waking up screaming since infancy, food sensitivities, light sensitivities, etc) and how to be better parents.  So far everything we work on she responds wonderfully to.  She's able to play rather than lining toys up and forbidding everyone from touching them, she sleeps through the night (90% of the time) and can calm herself down when she gets into one of her fits (not tantrums- Lord I wish they were just tantrums) about her socks/carseat buckle/touching sand and sometimes just because.

Anyway last night we saw some progress in how she calms down from her night fits.  We hadn't seen one in about 3 weeks so that in itself was an improvement.  I almost called the therapist at midnight to tell him what happened, I was so excited.  I put her back in her pack and play while she was flailing (don't ask- it's the only place she'll sleep right now...we're working on it...) and told her I'd give her her puppy blanket back when she apologized to Daddy for screaming at him.  She threw a huge fit, kicking, screaming til she was hoarse, etc...but she stayed in her bed until she was done!!  Then she came in to our room calmly and apologized to Jeremy.  This is HUGE.  And finally, when I gave her the puppy back and told her to go to back to bed she skipped off happily and curled up under her blankets.

I laid there for quite a while trying to process what had just happened.  The therapist said that eventually we would see progress at night just by working on her fits during the day and I saw it right there first hand.  The night screaming ended under 30 minutes from start to finish- a new record.  And she did most of the work for us (ie calming herself down).

Unfortunately, that was when the bad news started.  Jeremy and I went back to sleep around midnight and at 1:30am we wake up to hear her in the hallway.  Apparently she never actually went to sleep.  I couldn't help but crack up when Jeremy told me she had every surface in the hallway and bathroom covered in blankets and towels and whatnot, claiming she was making "beds" for her animals.

So for an hour and a half she played quietly by herself.  Why can't she do that during the DAY?

Wearing a too-small swimsuit over JEANS-- big improvement on the texture sensitivity front :)

Baby steps, Kim...baby steps.