This week is spring break at the Baltimore City schools.  This means that the Monster’s been home without his regular schedule to give him some sort of regulation.

Now, because I’m hardly cruel, I did take off two days this week, and I’ve been working from home when she has both kids awake.  Only seems fair to me, really.  So we’ve been trying to find things to do, so that the Monster has other things to fill his time besides those things he’s already perseverating on.

Monday was a Zoo Day.  The zoo went largely well until both kids were clearly tired of being dragged around the zoo, and after a short while at the playground near the entrance, the Monster threw in the towel and had a bit of a meltdown… but at least that was at the end of the process.

Tuesday wasn’t a good day, on the other hand.  The Monster just wasn’t really cooperative and was fairly contrary all day – Wednesday shaped up a hint better, but it was also a day that I wasn’t around (the wife took them to a playdate, and I was at work all day).

Today… also didn’t really go according to plan. We’d hoped to go to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to see the dinosaurs before the hall closes for renovations, but… well, after some serious thought, we decided that it wasn’t going to be a good idea.  (Just too much travel time, and the prospect of having an hour plus of travel if he had a meltdown really was the kicker.  I’m normally okay with most anything that might come along with going around with him, but not carrying a flailing, kicking, screaming child through Washington DC and onto the Metro…)

We ended up deciding to go to the pool at the JCC, and then he went to Gymnastics as usual for a Thursday.  We had to put up with one screaming fit at the J – he changed his mind about wanting to go swimming and started fixating on Sesame Street – but we got him past it and had a reasonably good 45 minutes or so in the pool.

I think the big problem, honestly, is not having the reliability of the schedule for him to be regulating himself.  Due to the holiday, most of his activities have been thrown off – no therapy on Tuesday, no classes all week, and he’s home through Monday – plus we’re throwing odd food at him now and again.  We’ll see how quickly he comes back into his normal self when we get into the new week and school resumes.