Foot Massage and a Hidden Cache

The past two or three days have been relatively uneventful tantrum-wise, thankfully.

We saw Dr. M on Thursday and I expressed my desire to leave Tristan's medication alone for the time being. I told him also that if we decided that the medication does not work, then instead of adding anything, I'd like to try something new. Dr. M completely agreed with me and was supportive of my plan.

We saw the play therapist, C., on Friday, as usual. She wanted us to have a mother/son session, and since my husband was there to watch the girls, I agreed.

She started us off by having me give Tristan a foot massage. He seemed to enjoy it but wouldn't look me in the eye while I was rubbing his feet. After the foot massage, she wanted me to cradle him and just hold him. He was having none of that. I guess he wasn't into being treated like a baby. I know I personally feel very vulnerable in the prone position like that.

We played with the doll house for the remainder of the session. Tristan made up a very elaborate story about our family running up the hill away from a terrible storm. In the story, Tristan flew himself, Daisy (our dog), his middle sister, S., and his goldfish in a helicopter up the hill. My husband, myself and the baby, W., rode in a police car (which was supposed to be a regular car in the story,) up the hill. He had to fix the car and the house in the story. C. pronounced that Tristan is working on "fixing things" internally.

This morning, Tristan woke up on the wrong side of the bed. He argued almost constantly and about everything until finally, I told him I wasn't taking him to his baseball game in such a mood. I told him that he needed to stop arguing and back-talking and I would reconsider. He started screaming and thrashing around, no matter how much I tried talking to him and explaining what he needed to do to be allowed to go. That was a complete failure. He ended up throwing an enormous tantrum. He went to his room for a while to calm down and came down in a better mood.

In related news, we discovered he's been hiding things in the car. His school folders have been missing. I couldn't figure out where they were since they'd disappeared somewhere between our house and school. I noticed a wrapper sticking out from in front of his seat in the back of our SUV. Upon further investigation, I found all the missing homework, folders and all kinds of food and snack wrappers. I was livid.

Not only had he hidden the homework, all that food in the car attracted bugs and other disgusting things to our car. I try so hard to keep our SUV clean, since, let's face it, roaches thrive in Hawaii. Just about everyone has them, whether they are aware of them or not. We've had the Honda for two and a half years and had no bug problems until now. Our neighbor told us they need to bomb their cars at least a couple times a year and everyone in Hawaii has that problem. I'm not convinced, but it did make me feel better.

We bombed the car last night per our neighbor's advice and showed Tristan the evidence this morning. I wanted him to understand why we don't have food in the car. He was horrified (even though the problem really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.)

On second thought, since he has those bug hallucinations maybe I shouldn't have shown him that...

Still no sign of the hearing aid. I think on Monday, I'm throwing in the towel and calling the audiologist. We may have to eat the $2000, but Tristan not being able to hear is driving me (and him) nuts. He admits he hid it, but says he forgot where he put it.