Worried about Gregory

Gregory has been very depressed for several days. He's very down on himself (calling himself a dummy, idiot, stupid, etc) and makes scary statements about not wanting to be alive. He hits himself a lot and has hit another child (whose mother implied G was a bully!). This sort of behavior is what led to our discovery of his red dye sensitivity. I know he's had way too much sugar lately, and I've taken him off of it as of yesterday morning. He was miserable not having any sweets yesterday, but I'm not caving. I've explained to him that I believe he feels so bad because of the sugar, and I'm going to help him to feel better. He's not asked for any candy yet today. (any homeopathic remedies that'd help him detox?)

Add to the scenario the fact that none of us know how to handle a puppy (much less a 3 month old 20+ pound puppy!). We've all become "yellers" in the past few weeks. Yesterday we enrolled Bullitt (DH corrected my spelling of his name, LOL!) in puppy school, which will begin in 3 weeks. So the yelling has stopped. Since I know it'll be better soon, I don't have to worry about keeping him off the sofa forever, I just need to remind him to get down. I see a resolution coming, so I am not as stressed.

I'm also trying to get my hands on some books about bi-polar. I know my lousey mood is affecting him in a bad way. How can a kid be happy when he's always around an adult who isn't? At first, I felt researching bi-polar would give it a form of power. If I didn't speak about it, it didn't exist. But that hasn't been the case. I think I need some information to help see around the disease. I see signs of it in Gregory already and I want to be armed and ready, as it were.

So if you could pray for us as we journey down these roads of change, I'd appreciate it greatly.

Meeting friends in New Orleans

Gregory & I met Deanna & David (friends from Oklahoma vacationing in NO) at Cafe Du Monde in N.O. Monday. We had beignets while listening to a street guitar player, took a little walk to the river, then went for a drive. I was forbidden by my darling to go into St. Bernard parish, so we didn't see the worst. To be honest, I'm suprised he let me go at all. I had to remind him that David would be with us, not just "us girls". So we drove down Canal Street to the old cemetaries and then headed to the Lakeview area, where the 17th Street canal had broken & flooded. There wasn't as much debris around as I expected, but very little has been repaired. Some of those homes looked "fixable". Now, cost and structural things may keep it from happening, but it looked doable for some. We saw the lakefront, drove through Metairie which had wind damage and some flooding from the rain, but not the levee failures. It looks somewhat back to normal. There are blue tarp roofs and FEMA trailers and the trees look beat-up, but many of the businesses are open. Then we rode back into N.O. and saw the city park area. There were many more trees standing than I expected. There was more greenery than I expected. There was just mud covering much of it for so long, I didn't expect it to rebound so quickly. After we dropped David and Deanna off, we saw the UNO area and we saw 2 cleanup crews outside of houses in full hazzard suit garb. That was strange.

I'm not in any way saying it looks good down there, I just expected worse. There's still no electricity in most of those areas, and seeing major intersections as 4 way stops was strange. And the medians at the big intersections are full of small "yard signs", some handwritten. Some are looking for workers, others for work - demolition, cleanup, roofing, etc.

David took a picture of Deanna & I, but it's on her camera so y'all will have to wait. I think they'll be there till the weekend.

Oh and we saw the green chair (I never believed it was really dead). David was the gentleman and got out to take a picture for us. He also did a great job keeping Gregory entertained in the back seat of the car. The driving around got old for him quickly.