Routines and Routines

 October 15, 2022

Bradley is a bit of a routine guy. But there are caveats with that, if I try to set his routine and he doesn’t like it…forget it. He might be considered, um…head strong…or we can just call him what he is, stubborn. I can plug away, doing the same thing everyday and in the same way and timing, but until he decides it’s a routine he wants to have -he will fight me all the way. And sometimes, he just creates a routine out of one event and then that’s just the way it’s going to be. 

Every night, we go potty then bath, then meds, then we come out to the living room to set him up on his CPAP. He sat with Dad every night from the first attempt at the CPAP in November of 2020. We had a small month in there when he wanted bed and books, and that’s what we did. And we probably could do that every night, but not with any CPAP success. So we come out and settle down on the couch. About a week ago, Bradley decided that he wanted to lay on the little couch on a new favorite pillow, his CPAP in place, his weighted blanket and his feet in mom’s lap. His other favorite position right now is laying with his head in my lap, what he is doing right now. We take a bit to let him get deeper asleep, then we’ll take him to his bed, he barely wakes up, we hook him up and he’ll usually leave the CPAP alone for awhile: up to four hours on some good nights, before he kicks it off and comes looking for me. 

So there’s another routine, he gets up and comes in, I take him back to bed. I settle him down in bed, then lay beside him until he goes back to sleep. Some nights it’s really fast, some nights we do a lot of bonding, some nights he is relatively singing at the top of his lungs…how the rest of the family sleeps through those nights is absolutely mind boggling to me. 

If he gets up later in the mor Ning, like an hour before the alarm goes off for us, I put him in bed between us. Most the time, he goes right to sleep. But sometimes it takes a few minutes. Fair enough. There are times he lays there and looks at me, the he reaches out to pull the blanket up on my shoulder and that just melts my heart. And sometimes me, I’m a hot sleeper, so I try to kick it off and he pulls it up again. Mom just has to suck it up sometimes. Haha. He’ll do that until he decides he wants to suck on his hand - he does that to keep himself awake, so I hold his hand and then he doesn’t last long before he is out again. 

When we do get up, he always grabs my Ugg boots and sets them up on the floor so they are easy for me to put on. I only wear them on the weekend, but that’s the routine Bradley prefers, he isn’t a huge fan of leaving the house and spending so long at school. School - only one routine after the other at school. Anyway, when he beats me up and gives me boots, I sometimes wear boots while a I get his lunch ready and school bag prepped and then change into my sneakers.  But some mornings, if I ask him for my sneakers, sometimes he’ll get those set for me instead. Routine for weekend is different than weekday of course. Weekends, Daddy’s home and there is nowhere to go when all the typical routine is done…Mom has her boots on and he gets his movie when everything is done. Weekdays, he gets everything done and no movie…we can have some fights over that. 

The GI doc is ready for us to push more oral foods, so last Tuesday we started walking straight into the kitchen for breakfast while I do his meds and get his lunch packed. He is not thrilled with this new routine, but he also isn’t fighting it horribly. I only had to prompt him to eat a million times one day, and set his fork up with every bite another day - but he ate it all. As long as I don’t say anything about school, teachers or anything related - he will drag his feet and protest a lot, but we get it all done. 

I don’t like to take him outside until the bus gets here: one he gets upset if there is no aide and he can’t get on the bus, and when the weather gets windy or cold - health wise it won’t be a great option for him.  But  he likes to go outside, so there’s our routine. When he doesn’t want to go, I take his bags to the sidewalk to set them down and try to get a visual that he has an aide ready to go too, usually as I come back up the walk, he is standing at the door. I keep clean beach towels in the shelves that are by the door, I bring one out, but the last time we went out, he had grabbed the two that were there and carried both out to me. I set the towels on the bottom step and that’s how we wait for the bus. They keep him dry on damp mornings, warmer, and clean until he gets on the bus. Apparently, he liked that new plan, we’ll just have to see if this settles into a routine he wants to continue. 

He’s the funniest little guy. He knows what he likes and where the things he wants are located, whenever he makes the choices and is obvious in letting us know - it is so incredibly hard to say No and deny him - but he hears no and doesn’t like it, but we get though it. He’s a little caretaker too, he wants to help and he wants to nurture his family. All the markings of an incredible little human that is becoming a little more independent each day, and certainly sharing his growing personality with us each day as well. 

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