Sunday, May 06, 2007

WIWUTS 5/06/07

I did not celebrate Cinco De Mayo with an officially sanctioned celebration, but today working, it sure felt like it. Most Saturday nights, I am quite awake. But I'm usually home and not expending energy so when I do got to bed at 1:30 or 2, it's really not that deep. Once I get past 10, I'm straight. Today though, I felt tired. Most times I can stave it off, but I was hurting. And so were my supervisor. And a former supervisor who came to help out since we had an open spot in the morning. It was a pretty good day though. We had acouple of incidents, including losing a kid for two minutes, but it was all pretty manageable. For once, we weren't scrambling at the end of the night to finish paperwork and chores. If the night shift was actually on time, we might have left early.

Today's justification is brought ot you by one of our most heartbreaking cases. He's a seven year old who operates at a toddler-preschool level cognitively. Cute as a button, but so troubled inside his head. Can't really stick with something for too long before he gets bored. He learns negative behaviors from his peers and replicates it without really understanding what's happening. No one can stay mad at him for too long. He's just helpless. At bedtime, someone usually has to be outside his doorway to make sure he does go to sleep or else he's up every 30 seconds running out and trying to see what's happening in the hallway. Of course since he is so young, he likes being tucked in from time to time. When I do it, I kind of wrap him so he resembles a taco or a wrap or something. So I've gotten in the practice of calling him "Chalupa."

Bedtime rolls around and tonight I have fallen in the role of making sure little Chalupa is asleep. First he's jumping on the bed, but once we got him an orange, he started to settle down. He peeked down the hallway one more time and then dove into bed. Faintly I heard "Would you tuck me in?" I walk in the room where he is chewing his blanket and he looks up at me and says, "Like a chalupa."

That's why I woke up this Sunday.

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