Christmas!

It's Christmas night and it is hard to believe that after months of planning it is over!  I have to confess something.  I did not take one picture.  Quite honestly I don't feel bad about that at all.  I could barely keep track of everything going on without a camera in my hand so I sure wasn't going to miss more by taking pictures!  This year brought some great surprises and some excitement over anticipated gifts.  Once the sensory room is all together it is going to be awesome.  2 of the 3 swings were a big hit.  The one that is a bungee chair is going to a friend who will get better use from it.  Oksana's high tone makes it very difficult for her to be comfortable on it and Anya much prefers the platform swing.  Tonight we turned out the lights and turned on the disco ball.  Oksana was hanging out on the crash pad and Anya was swinging on the platform swing.  I put on some relaxing music and I seriously could have stayed there all night!

Oksana loved all of her stocking stuffer sensory balls and, of course, the crash pad is a huge hit.  Anya finally understands presents and kept signing "presents" wondering when she would get more!  I think her favorites are the 2 Elmos that she got.  The girl loves her Elmo!  Clayton's big surprise was a cell phone.  We were pretty adamant about waiting until he was 16, but as he gets more involved in things at school and at church we are finding more times when it would come in very handy.....so we buckled :).  He had NO idea and was very excited.  Evan loves his bungee chair.....and pretty much everything he got!

Christmas and Christmas Eve were overall really good.  Last year was rough with Anya.  She was very overstimulated and our Christmas was not a fun one.  We didn't make it through this year without a few bumps in the road.  There were periods of time when we literally could not take our eyes off of her or she would be getting herself into some sort of trouble.  Hitting children, grabbing stuff from them, and trying to touch anything that she knew she couldn't were favorite activities during those times.  There was just so much going on and so many new people.  Still, she was much better than last year.  Oksana did fantastic....until 6:00 tonight and then we got to see stuff we haven't seen in awhile that landed her in bed early.  I won't dish out the whole thing, I imagine you can guess that she was tired and overstimulated and it wasn't pretty.  She did manage to control herself from going into a total all out rage but it was really, really close.  Interestingly it was after time in the sensory room.  It all started because she was ticked that she had to come upstairs for a bath but didn't want to leave the room so I think we are going to have to set very strict boundaries for sensory room time until she can handle herself better.  I try so hard not to set expectations for holidays but every once in awhile I get bit in the behind by them!

I will post pictures as soon as the sensory room is complete.  My mom is here right now and it is doubling as a bedroom so I  might wait for pictures until she is gone.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!