A fun weekend, but terrible fits

This weekend was a lot of fun with the Irish Festival going on. Jill and I went alone Friday and had a great time with other friends who came without their kids. We stayed until it closed at 11pm. The funny part of the whole thing was we were both tired and ready for bed at that time! So much for a big night out.

Over the weekend Liam’s fits have become more frequent than ever before. The worst part of it is when we can’t settle him down, he has a meltdown. The meltdowns the past week have led to Liam throwing up. Liam has thrown up on the carpets, himself, and our furniture. The main causes of the fits normally stem from Liam not being allowed to do what he wants, when he wants, and whenever Seamus goes somewhere and he can’t go. Jill and I are really trying to figure out ways to calm him so he does not throw up and work himself into a meltdown. We have tried redirecting him and holding him. This has not had any effect. Once he gets his mind set, there has been no changing it. All we can do is continue to document his fits and bring it up to his neurologist in the fall. This evening (Monday) after dinner, Seamus went outside and Liam wanted to go. Neither of us were ready to go out yet as we were still eating dinner. Liam began yelling, crying, and banging on our window. At the time this was going on our neighbor and fellow Sherwin Williams employee Mike stopped over to ask me about work. Liam normally is happy to see Mike, but this time he ignored Mike and just wanted to go out with Seamus. His loud crying continued so Jill took him out of the room so Mike and I could talk. Jill sat Liam and down and started to clean up the kitchen. Liam kept crying and sure enough, he threw up. Luckily it all stayed on his lap and was not too bad. This is going to take time to work through.

Sunday we took all the boys to the Irish Cultural Festival and all the boys had a great time. They were all well behaved the whole time. Friends of ours were there with their kids as well so it made for good company. After walking around and talking with friends and family we took the boys to listen to The New Barleycorn. They love their cd’s and listen to them often in the van. Due to rain early in the day the Barleycorn was moved into a cow barn that was HOT! We survived and the kids had a great time. Towards the end of the show the Barleycorn asked any kids that wanted to come up and do the hand gestures to the Unicorn song. As the song started Liam and the other kids recognized it and went down to the floor, but not the center right away. Once Liam recognized the song he went right out with the other kids. He did not know exactly what he was doing, but he was having a great time doing it. When Jill and I see Liam do this we both feel so good to see Liam do something like this. A year ago in a crowd like this Liam would not even want to be in that cow barn. He really makes us proud to see something so simple like that. The last Liam did something like this was last October at the circus. We were ringside in another environment that Liam has not handled in the past at all, especially with clowns, they scare him. Liam joined a bunch of kids and clowns in a ring doing a train dance.

By the nights end, the boys were all exhausted. When it was bath time Liam just talked all about singing the Unicorn song, Barleycorn, and the petting zoo Grandpa McCourt took them too. A fun day was had by all.