we're on the road!

we've hit the road in our RV and are having a blast! i can't believe it's only been a few days. the first day we stayed at a cabela's where we all loved the amazing store. the second day, we tried, and fell in love with geocaching. the third brought another geocache, kayaking, and meeting up with friends. and that's today! i've been reading about so many families on the road and NuRVers and can't wait to meet more of them. we've given away our dog, sold everything at an auction, and are now unschooling, well, plus we now live in an RV! so LOTS of changes around here but surprisingly few RADical moments. we've had lots of emotional moments, and a few days where ALL of us were quite grouchy, just adjusting to the newness and weirdness of our life.
but most of it's been just darn fun! we've all been excited and happy about the things we're doing and seeing, and the potential for what we'll be doing and seeing in the future.
mr was disagreeable, as usual. he's been the most excited to go and easiest going, and the day we leave he says he doesn't want to go now. but we expected that (sometimes we're on the ball!) so no biggie. and he's loving life of course, just has to be disagreeable.
em's having a ball too. in therapy (we'll be doing phone therapy!) she's still working on that darn love feeling, ew gross! but she's coming around, just like mr did, although excruciatingly more slowly. we've also noticed she seems to "come alive" in nature, so living on the road seems like it'll really help her open up to life. we hope!
cj, well he always enjoys everything and he's annoyingly happy right now, and talkative about it. all the time.

for our RADical moments, in giving the dog to our sister (temporarily for a few years) the kids were pretty good about considering the dog's feelings. mr usually does wayyyyyy better than em with empathy, but the day he left, mr decided he didn't care how the dog felt, he wanted him back! of course, that's probably not even RADical, that's just grief, and we cried for a while together. em cried also, real genuine tears, which is AWESOME when you rarely see those.

right now we're struggling more maybe with physical issues. they both have sensory issues and we all get why, but fixing them is the hard part! mr, oh mr, just has issues. he'll probably always be "that guy who knocks things over" although i'd love to see him grow out of that. we have therapy for that, aka games to play, but boy, i just don't know.
em can't feel her lips. how weird is that? she eats like a toddler and can't keep them closed for anything. we got rid of the mirror at the table because it didn't seem to help. fun practice doesn't help either. i told dad she'd be a bad kisser when she's older and he just said good! it really is awkward for her goodnight kisses, just a very, very fake weird lip position.

and the brain shut downs, oh how frustrating. i personally opted to give up even trying while we were transitioning to the RV, it was just so stressful. i'm not by nature a calm, loving, compassionate mom, so it takes all my concentration to hold that together during good times. so there's been a lot of "pick up the blue bucket" and their brains panic and think of anything i might possibly mean for them to do that's unrelated to "pick up the blue bucket". i just hate that. and my responses to that have been less than stellar, so it's just spiraled from shut down to stupid. (stupid as in appearing to act stupid, i know it's just a response, no scolding, it's my blog).
it's just so frustrating that i try to make life SO easy on them by giving very short, very clear instructions so there's no mistaking what i want, and their hyper-alert brains try to think of the most difficult way to react. but i'll get back to concentrating and being calm, and they'll react better. just feels unfair that it's my job to fix, but it's their brains that are broken! k, life's not fair, i know. i'm over it now.

so that's what we've been up to. what about you? :)