Settling back into routine...

I'm happy to report that things are returning to "normal" (our standard for normal, anyway :) at our house. The extra 25 mg. of seroquel has done the trick once again. School folks are reporting that B is "twitchier" than usual- Tourettes-type tics more than the OCD ones (B seems to have 2 very different tic manifestations)- but have observed that he's not nearly as sensitive to his regular OCD triggers as he'd been since returning from holiday break. What I've noticed (other than the lack of depression/severe meltdown) is the return of his ability to focus intensely on his own non-OCD thoughts, accompanied by his being able to verbalise much more effectively when he needs help & what kind of help he needs. This is a great relief to all of us- particularly since I'm still recovering from the stress of this past weekend & am more tired than usual=somewhat less patient than my "normal". One of the results of return of B's focus is that he was able to turn a big disappointment into a creative project yesterday...

B was cruising the lego site & found screencaps of the new Exo-Force game (which our Mac doesn't support). He started to descend into angry sadness over the situation, while I reminded him that he has to learn to prepare himself for these feelings if he's going to go to that site. The he said, "I'm gonna show them! I'll make my own game...... wanna help mom?" Did I mention my lower than usual energy? **sigh** I suggested that he might base his game on the Oriental Expedition game that lego included with that series of legos a few years ago, sort of a card-based RPG using the legos & a board for moving minifigures. He got right to work designing cards on the computer. I wandered in to see how he was doing & he showed me 5 files of cards he'd designed. We chatted about the goal of the game, & he decided base it on the Exo-Force storyline of collecting energy stones containing info to help the good guys. I thought the cards would look cooler if we printed them with a pattern on the back, like in a real game, & went get the cardstock from my bookbinding supplies so we could try it out (I think this was the point of no return for me- I was so into the project now :). They looked really neat! We decided to print out simple grids on the cardstock for the game board, & then thought about obstacles to the players that could be placed on the board. By the time I had to make dinner, he was happily designing hazard tokens. We told dad about the game during dinner & began thinking about how to determine the outcome of encounters between the good guys & bad guys... I found myself discussing the relative strengths & weaknesses of the various legos (he may not have all of them yet but has memories all of the specs from the site of course :), which are mostly weapon-laden robots. Being a committed pacifist, married to a CO, I found this a bit surreal, but from a pure strategy point of view it was interesting. After dinner, while B & dad worked on making a file for the game rules (so far,) I cut out cards & tokens. B had found a "kit" of downloadable images at the lego site & designed the good & bad guys' home bases- very cool looking. I suspect that with a few play-throughs we'll be able to nail down the exact dice rolls that make for a fun & playable game. Even if he gets distracted by other things & doesn't finish the game, the activity of yesterday afternoon & evening signal a welcome return to enjoyable family life. B was happily tired by reading time last night & when C came down he told me not to bother going up for a kiss- B had fallen asleep while he was reading! :)