Sunday, April 11, 2010

Letter to my parents

Hi--it's 10:53pm and I think only The Bug and I are still awake. It's been a long day.

The Ups:
The Baby successfully used his potty for the second day in a row today, hurray! Both boys got haircuts and look good. The Baby actually got a real "little boy" short haircut that took three times as long as the Bug's trim, and looks three times better. I'll send pics at some point.

Hugh, who definitely has "sundowning syndrome," let Kathleen help him get into his pyjamas, which I've had to do the past few nights.Not having to help was very nice, for all of us.

The downs:
Kathleen's just fed up. Hugh keeps saying to her, "okay, come on, let's go", which Mike and I have figured out means that he wants to go outside to work, and he wants you to go with him. She always assumes he means "let's go somewhere else, let's go home". Her reaction is "NO HUGH. We're not going anywhere, we're staying HERE" and he replies, "Oh, okay, well, let's go" because he just wants to work...you know?

But I let him take me "to go" this evening and while the first ten times he ended up not knowing where he was going, or what he was doing, eventually, with the rhythm of "yes, let's go", he would go into the garage and move boxes and crap around. There's a big huge plastic storage box out on top of the barbeque right now, and another one in the driveway, and everything in the garage is all moved around, and some of it for the better.

She's so persistent in what she wants, and what's bugging her that she can't realize that she's a broken record too. He says, "Okay, come on, let's go." and she replies, "No, come sit down next to me." Over and over and over. The last thing he wants to do is sit. He needs to be getting out there and working. He gets frustrated. She gets frayed. So then she wants to give him so pill--Xanax, or haldol, or a pain pill, just something to knock him out, but I think sometimes it makes him worse.

Tonight, I was making dinner, and I would go out and help him when he needed me to, so Kathleen could get a break and watch a movie with Mike and have a cocktail.  I'd go move a box, and then tell Hugh to go around the corner and check out the wood, and I'd catch up with him...then he'd come get me in five minutes.  I'd get about five minutes in the kitchen, but Kathleen was getting fifteen to twenty minutes of peace at a time.

Eventually, it started to rain harder, and his hands got colder, and he was getting winded because he'd decided to dig up big blocks of concrete from god knows where. So I brought him back inside and made a show of taking off my shoes and saying I couldn't go out again because of that. Then, I alternated from talking about shoes, and the people in the other room who were waiting for dinner, and that I had to stay to finish dinner. Sure, he kept asking and telling me to come with him, and telling me to put my shoes on, and saying that he didn't want dinner, and let's go, come on, and he thought I was his wife, but it was okay. He was in the kitchen. I was making dinner. It didn't bother me, and he wasn't getting upset.

But it bugged Kathleen that he kept saying the same things to me, over and over, so she came in and told him to sit on the couch next to her. And just like that, the spell was broken. He'd forgotten all about me. And started saying the same exact things...to Kathleen. Who, within five minutes was yelling at him to shut up.

The Baby has quickly learned that Hugh freaks him out. Hugh wants to grab his arm and take him somewhere. Hugh gets annoyed if The Baby's hands are messy from finger painting. Hugh tells him to be quiet when he's playing. The Baby gives Hugh a wide berth now...which I think is a good thing, even though it's sad.

You know that phrase that Mom used to say to describe people having a fun time, full of wild abandonment? "It's life with the lid off!"

That's how it feels. Mike and Kathleen are sleeping well tonight as I think they got pretty well plowed. And I completely understand.

Okay--this is probably way more than you wanted or needed to know. I'm off to knit a bit (I'm working on a baby sweater for a friend's daughter), and then brush my teeth.

I'll call you Wednesday/Thursday.

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