Monday Numbers

Hey, Kia! Are you doing Monday Mum-mum-numbers this week?

Well, whether you are or not, I am!

• 94 - number of miles I've run since I started keeping count in February. Will hit 100 this week!
  
  
• 2 - number of times I've already had to raise my way-too-modest fundraising goal for Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. You guys rock. Your new challenge - make me do it again!!
  
  
• 1 - number of bell concerts Saturday night.
  
  
• 2 - number of standing ovations (one for the full group, one for an awesome duet played by 2 of our members!)
  
  
• 3 - number of bells I got to ring simultaneously in ONE hand during a certain passage in Bach's Little Fugue
  
  
• 1 - mylar helium fish-balloon I brought home from the concert decorations for the girls.
  
  
• 100 - percent of her time that Joy spent playing with the balloon and its lovely stringy ribbon yesterday until we hid it away.
  
  
• 7 - handwritten coupons received from Rose yesterday for Mothers Day
  
  
• 2 - coupons I have already redeemed (hugs and a big ol' room-cleaning - yes, this mama is hard-core! I helped her with the room though.)
  
  
• 4 - weeks we technically have to test out the 7-Level-Communicator, a voice-recorded communication device that's a big step up from Joy's push-button.
  
  
• 1 - number of days it took Joy to figure out the new tool. Wow.
  
  
• 5 - number of times Joy went to jump in her bouncy castle with her playdate friend on Tuesday.
  
  
• 0 - level of enthusiasm she'd had for the bouncy castle last year when it was her big birthday present. This is a major improvement!
  
  
• 32 - number of pieces of sports equipment in the kit I got Friday from Special Olympics, for their Young Athletes family program that we'll be doing this summer at home.
  
  
• 3 - number of list-items in this post (at least) that deserve blog-posts of their own.
  
  
• 14 - cups of rhubarb that went into the deep freeze yesterday from our one prolific plant.
  
  
• 5 - names I'm aware of for the flowering bush that we planted yesterday: serviceberry, Juneberry, saskatoon, shadberry, Amelanchier.
  
  
• Gazillion - blossoms on the apple tree in our back yard.
  

Oh, and half a gazillion dandelions in the lawn to go with 'em. At least the yellow is bright and cheery against the green grass!

Update: Ooo, forgot an important one.

• 8 - number of months since Joy's last knock-down seizure, as of today. Woo hoo! (And, knock on wood!)

String... String... STRING!!!

When my brother Uncle Schnirelmann and I were kids, we had a silly little in-joke game called "string."

I'm not sure how it started, but it involved feigning a fixation on string. Think zombies moaning for "Braaains!" Our signature moan went along the lines of: "String... striiiing...STRIIIIING!!"



Then we'd greedily grab and pretend to obsessively play with whatever piece of string triggered the joke.

Well, the joke's on me, my friends.

Joy's hair-pulling stimmy activities didn't come out of nowhere. The dimmer-switch has actually been sliding for quite a while.

It started with dolly hair, as far as I can tell. My Little Ponies. American Girls. Barbies. Most of which, by the way, belonged to Rose. Miss Rose has been generous with the ponies, but the others have been rather a cause of contention.

Then it spread to other stringy things. She started picking up hair and fuzzy bits from the carpet, and gravitating to toys with strings. Here's what her OT reported on the subject on March 18:

Joy was really drawn to stimming activities today. It seems like every where there was a string for her to twist in her fingers. It was me against 10,000 pieces of string!

The hair-pulling seems a natural extension (though I guess you can't wear extensions if you don't have any hair there to begin with...) Here's from Lynda's daycare report yesterday:

She was putting a lot of energy into looking for strings. I took a couple toys out of the room that have strings. Ones she knows are always on the shelf. Even if I turn the toy so the string isn't visible, she knows it's there and will pull the toy out to get to the string. I tried substituting a squish ball thingy that [the OT] had brought for her a while back. She would play with it a few minutes, then go back to tracking down string. A couple good clumps of hair came out when strings weren't readily available.

Joy's been wearing a little pink hoodie-sweatshirt today, to pretty good effect so far. I so very much appreciate all the words of wisdom and encouragement on last night's post! It all feels somewhat more manageable this morning. My best guess is that the dimmer switch will eventually slide the other direction, as it has with many other less-than-desirable behaviors and stimmies.

I still see a potential buzzcut looming in the future, though -- if not as a preventative approach, then in service of evening things up when the hair starts to grow back in! Pixiemama, I don't "do" Facebook, but I bet your shaved head was adorable! Auntie RatM has even more extensive shaved-head/buzzcut experience. Makes her more aerodynamic and all.

Hey brother mine: "String... striiiing...STRIIIIING!!"