Sunday, July 29, 2012

Anthony ate our homemade guacamole one night this week.  We left him alone for a few minutes, and voilĂ --it was gone.  It was enough for all five of us for our Mexican dinner.

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I think I ought to be afforded a moral exemption for smacking Anthony when he takes the laces out of his sneakers.  I took him with me to his younger brother's soccer practice, and when we arrived and I was about to let him out of the car, I saw him as he was just pulling the laces out of the last eyelets.  Don't know why I didn't notice it earlier--but I guess I wouldn't when I'm trying to pay attention to driving?

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Anthony was literally hopping mad yesterday morning. I heard him being upset on his bed, so I asked him if he wanted to go to the bathroom.  He didn't get up, so I went to the bathroom instead.  He resumed screaming, so I told him to come into the bathroom, where he jumped up and down as he yelled.  I told him to sit on the floor, and then he banged his head into the floor, the walls, the cabinets, and the bathtub skirt.  That is now officially beyond repair, by the way.  I have been meaning to try to piece it together and cement it, but I will just have to look for something else to replace it that is hopefully inexpensive.

He did finally go to the bathroom.  I still don't know if that was the issue, though.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

I suppose this gets old for people who read this blog regularly.  My wife called me today late in my workday to tell me she had the police at our house to prevent Anthony from further attacking her, and asked if I could come home a little early (which I did).  I came home to find my wife with an ice pack on the back of her head--where Anthony had inflicted the most pain among several head butts--and another on her lower leg where Anthony had bitten her after she tried to subdue him by getting him on the floor and sitting on him.  Her knee is also quite painful because Anthony hit it with his head a few times.  Needless to say, she won't be trying to pin him down any more; he is now simply far too strong for her.

Among the household damage: a large hole in the drywall that we thought was well-reinforced by a piece of wood we had put behind a patch for a previous hole; and a toilet seat ripped off.  I was rather impressed with that one.  Amazingly, our dining table set is unscathed--or, nothing is noticeable since it is low-quality to begin with--after he kicked a chair into the table and sent the table itself flying.  

In this case, we probably know the cause of his rage, as benign as it sounds: he needs to go to the bathroom.  He did not have a bowel movement yesterday.  I in fact have learned to avoid taking him outside with me in the evening if he hasn't had a bowel movement during the day, but we didn't have any issues of that sort yesterday; he just didn't go.


Sunday, July 8, 2012

I have noticed that Anthony sometimes seems to display more awareness than at other times.  It could be my imagination, of course.  But I mostly see it when he is angry.  That doesn't mean I always see it when he is angry; just that, when I do see it, it is usually at those times.

So I was trying at times this week to talk to Anthony as a normal person--asking him how he felt, explaining things, et cetera.  My wife figuratively raised her eyebrows when I did, but I pressed on.

Well, when I took him out in the car with me to go to a home improvement store--and part of the problem might be that I had him sit in the front with me rather than relegating him to the back where, even if he gets upset, he usually hits parts of the car rather than those in front of him--I realized I again had an opportunity to try to engage him.  This turned out to be one of the worst judgmental errors I have committed with him.

I asked him how he was doing.  I asked him what he thought about the sheep we saw out the window.  It was my mistake to point in the direction of the sheep.  Anthony thinks that our pointing to something means that he has to touch or pick up something in that direction.  So I told him that, no, I did not need him to adjust the air vents, but that began to agitate him.

I then noticed that he had multiple mosquito bites from our previous evening watching the local symphony at an outdoor venue.  Where most of us can resist the urge to scratch very much, Anthony of course will exacerbate the problem, so he had (and still has) large red blotches all over his arms and feet--he was wearing flip-flops because he had removed the shoestrings from his sneakers, and I didn't have time to re-lace them before we went out.  So I started pointing to and touching his arms to ask about his mosquito bites.  This made him even more agitated, and he started trying to poke, pinch, and hit my hand with his head.

If the weather were cooler, I would have left him in the car while I went into the store, but the mid-90's we are experiencing made that an impossibility.  So, I took him into the store and hoped for the best.

I went to the service counter to return some items I had bought.  Anthony was still attempting to dig his nails into my arms and otherwise engage me.  I did what I could to keep him calm while the store clerk processed my refund, but it wasn't a simple process and Anthony got further upset, lowering his head to try to hit my elbow.  As I again tried to keep him quiet without putting him into a headlock, he backed up and yelled at the top of his voice.  Naturally, everyone within hearing range looked over to see what the commotion was.  I smiled weakly and apologized to the clerk.  She sympathetically said something along the lines of, "No, it's all right," and did what she could to hurry the transaction through.

We finished there and walked through the store to complete my business there.  While Anthony continued for a while to try to hit or otherwise hurt me, I was able to divert or engage him sufficiently to prevent another outburst.

Ultimately, this is sad to me--and not because of this experience, embarrassing though it was.  What grieves me is acting on the occasional flash of seeming cognition from him--allowing for a moment my hopes to grow--and being swiftly brought back to earth to remember precisely what it is that we have in Anthony.  I'm not sure how many more attempts I will make in the future, regardless of what indications I might believe I see.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

I wrote a few weeks ago that I was happy that Anthony had learned to blow his nose.  Now I sorely wish he never had.  In that same post, I dismissed his angry sniffing as comical; now I know that when he sniffs angrily, what follows will be him blowing the contents of his nose on whatever is within a few feet of him, often including me.  But if I promptly give him an Otter Pop, I might be able to quickly change his mood and save myself multiple cleanups.

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And now, for something completely different: My wife recently laid out some clothes for Anthony to wear, and he instead came out of his room wearing something altogether different.  We of course are happy to let him choose his clothes within reason, and we have since tried to leave it more up to him.  But my wife had to laugh the other day when Anthony came out of his room wearing a long sleeve shirt that was so tight on him that he could not move his arms!  Even if our weather weren't currently in the mid-90's rendering long sleeves unsuitable, one would think Anthony might have the wherewithal to make a different choice if it were so difficult to put on.  I guess we will have to rummage through his drawers to remove selections that won't work.