Almost 12 hours ago I made myself lay down to try to rest. I just woke up half an hour ago. Scholar Owl sent Tuxedo Cat to school but he kept Little Bear home. The school didn’t call so I’m assuming that everyone is assuming it’s because of the abscess. We’ll send him tomorrow.

The dentist had said to make sure he kept non-food items out of his mouth and to not let him play too rough the first 24 hours. So tomorrow he should be all set for the playground. I need to make some saline solution – bleh I need to call my sister and ask her the proportions for it because my brain refuses to recall it at the moment. The only thing I can remember is to not use salt with iodine in it. Just plain salt and water to clean his mouth.

Can’t believe I slept 11 hours straight. Can’t believe they let me sleep that long. Dad looked happy to see me when I came down to get my coffee. A part of me feels like crying.

Dad informed me that Scholar Owl is showing signs of the same shit as me. As in sleep issues. It wouldn’t be the first time that one of us has triggered someone else in the family and before long it’s a full on cascade failure. And I have noticed that even Little Bear and Tuxedo Cat are starting to have trouble with their sleep patterns.

Sleep is critical for mood regulation and executive function. It doesn’t matter if you have a disorder or not. If your sleep goes down the toilet, these two things will go down the toilet with it. So if you do have a disorder and these things are already challenging and sleep becomes a problem, then these things become a crisis.

I think it’s time to rebuild our routines. They went out the window with the move and I think we are paying for it. Since we’re at my parents’ house it means restructuring it all to fit around my parents so I can take the time to share that process of building in detail here.

These routines are what kept me functional back when I was in college before I was diagnosed, hypomanic, and a single mom between 2004 and 2009. If they can’t do it now well… I’ll need more help than a visual routine checklist to regulate myself.

I’ve already talked about the benefits these visual routine charts for children in this post but I didn’t go into a lot of detail in how I make them or how I get us all to follow them.

It is a step by step process. You could just dive in, but it’s overwhelming for me to do that so I imagine it’s overwhelming for others. I always like to start with the sleep routine first because everything else falls apart if that one isn’t working. Everything centers around sleep for the brain, so our routines will too.

So stay tuned as I put these toolkits together and share them with you. Hopefully the family and I will be smooth sailing again here soon. I can’t promise that these routines will help anyone else. I’m a big advocate for doing what works best for you. This is why I want to show you how I build it so if you want to use the method but customize it, you can.

Once I start posting the routine charts, I’ll add a tab for the toolkits category in my menu bar to make them easier to find as well.