I've Got Some Explainin' To Do....

The floor where "It" happened. This was actually after I had tried to wipe some of "It" off.
Believe me when I say the photos don't even come close to doing justice to the enormity of this mess.

Yesterday's post was a bit hurried and probably prompted some confused looks from anyone reading so I will take a moment to explain the reasons behind the three things I was thankful for on Thursday.

First, as you know, I woke up with unbelievable pain in my neck yesterday. It was one of those things where any task of any kind - big or small - felt like it required a monumental effort on my part. At one point, I sat on the couch for about an hour and decided I was not getting up unless I heard screaming. For most people, this wouldn't seem like a big thing. If you're reading this, you may even be thinking, "Good for you. You got a break." Breaks are practically non-existent for many parents of autistic children. For those who have a child with autism, you know what I'm talking about - this is BIG.

So I had taken a break, it was getting close to naptime and things had been especially hectic with my neck pain and with Reiss and Milla demanding something every four seconds, so I hadn't really eaten a lunch. I didn't get to eat when they were eating lunch because they were dorking around and misbehaving so much that I literally forgot to feed myself. Now normally, this would be hard to do since we eat the same things. We would all sit down, have the same thing to eat, and then eat. Throw a new dietary need - mine - into the mix and it ends up I'm eating differently than they are now. I'm trying to lose weight so I could not eat the baked potatoes and fried chicken they were eating yesterday. Well, the fried chicken, maybe - since the breading was very light. But since I'm eating only low carbs/good carbs in order to lose weight, potatoes are definitely out.

For lunch, I needed something quick. I grabbed a can of organic refried black beans - for fiber - and heated up half the can. After throwing a bit of salsa on top, I was ready to go. So I was walking into the living room (yes, I said it, eating in the living room!) to eat my bowl of beans and I saw something on Reiss' shoes. I scooped a bit of it up with my finger and asked Reiss, "What is this?" as I brought it up to my nose. Before he could answer, I said "Oh my GOSH! You have GOT to be kidding me!"

And Reiss said, "Is it poop?" Because that's his way of saying "It's poop." And yes, it was poop. And it was on his shoes, socks, pants, shirt, the floor, the (brand-new-less-than-a-week-old) bean bag chair he had been sitting in....basically, everywhere. And he never said a word about having poop in his pants. Seriously...and people wonder why I'm having such a hard time potty-training him. Go figure.

I'm not going to lie and say I was laughing when all this happened because that would be far from the truth, but the irony of it all did cross my mind even while it was going on. I can laugh at it now that it's yesterday's events. It would take a rock of a person not to correlate the ironic relationship between the fact that I was getting ready to sit down to eat a bowl of what looked like a cow patty and my already bad day making an even worse turn with a half-hour's worth of poopy mess to clean up off my child and numerous surfaces of our home.

And in case you're wondering....Yes, after all that, I still ate the beans. I was starving.

Number two on my "Thankful for Three Things Thursday" is pretty self-explanatory. I booted the old table in our kitchen and we purchased a new one. There really was nothing wrong with the old table - it was hand-crafted and excellent quality. It was simply too big for our kitchen. Our new table is a 48"-round and perfect for us and the size of our kitchen. I would post a photo but haven't taken one yet. I will be certain the table is in one of the photos when I post the "After" pictures of our recent remodel.

And number three...why am I thankful for fiber you ask? Well, for two reasons, actually. First, I had to do something to turn all my lemons yesterday into lemonade and one of the things I did was be thankful that Reiss is obviously getting enough fiber to keep him regular. Many autistic children experience either one of two extremes when it comes to bowel movements. They either have diarrhea on a consistent basis or are constipated quite often. Reiss is neither and is pretty regular and I credit that fact to us eating a GFCF diet and making certain he eats plenty of fiberous foods.

My other reason for being thankful for fiber is that it helps when one is trying to lose weight, as I am doing right now. Two high fiber snacks I have taken up eating are flax crackers (8 fiber grams per 5 cracker serving) and cacao nibs (9 fiber grams per one-ounce serving). I'm still mastering the art of finding palatable ways to eat cacao nibs, as they can be somewhat bitter-tasting.

So there you have it...yes, they are indeed strange things to be thankful for but it's not been the greatest week and I have to find the positives wherever I can. Today I am thankful that it's Friday!!!