The Saga Continues...

So. Yesterday at about 1:00 I said, "Well Princess; you haven't used the toilet in five hours, which tells me you've used your pants. Let's go get you cleaned up and changed into your bathrobe, and then I guess you can hang out in your room." Whereupon Princess launched into a very loud, very long insistence that her pants were not wet. All the way up the stairs, into her room, and all the while I changed her obviously wet pants. She sat in her room, in her bathrobe (wet bathrobe after 3:00) for six hours. Had dinner there (no BBQ sauce, either). I hung out with her for a while, but I kept thinking, this is not working. She was too alone. Since somewhere at the bottom of things, that's what she's going for, it backfired on me.

Fortunately, I woke up this morning with my jujubes back, PLUS today just happened to be Princess's appointment with her super-cool psychiatrist, Dr. D. So I sat down with my coffee and cranked Christine's video on playing dumb LOUD so Princess would be sure to overhear it (she surely did- I could tell because she pretended to be having a really good time in the kitchen while it was running. Ironic, don't you think?). When I got back in from the bus, I told her she needed to get her mat (waterproof crib pad) from her room so I could wash it. I explained that I understood walking that far would be super-hard, because it was so hard for her to walk to the bathroom and the laundry room, and this was even farther, so I would go with her and we would go reeeeeeeealy sloooooooooow so she wouldn't lose too much energy. And we did. We averaged about 30 seconds per step with a rest on the landing and the top. When we got to the mat, I asked if she thought her brain was strong enough to tell her hands to reach out and pick up her mat. She said it was. And she did. I jumped! I cheered! I hugged! I kissed! I cuddled! I told her what a fantastic job she did. She cried.

Let me interject to say this was not at all sarcastic. It might look that way in print. I certainly wanted to be sarcastic; I love to be sarcastic. It's probably one of my favorite things. But this wasn't. Not at all. The crying surprised me a little. I'm not sure what to make of it. It was brief. I hope it's fatigue from this horrible way she's treating herself.

So. We went to Dr. D. I am so so so thankful for this group of people surrounding Princess and I. There are so many crappy service providers, and I don't have ANY. Not one. They are all supportive. They all understand what we're dealing with and what we're doing. They all have ideas. We decided this afternoon I will offer Princess a choice: the laundry's getting in the dryer and my entryway's getting scrubbed. She can choose which one she wants. That way, either she's doing what she's supposed to do, or she's paying me back for doing what she's supposed to do myself. Win-win. If *cough* when she wets her pants, she can hang with me in the kitchen.

Plans are good. I like having a plan.