Late winter insanity!

Jake has been on a tear lately. I posted this over at my new Tumblr microblog about our toilet adventures. Yesterday I caught him trying to flush Matt's toothbrush - twice. The day before that it was flushing bits of toilet paper repeatedly. Like ten to twenty flushes.

At school, he's been making silly sounds, saying "poopoo into the toilet," and rocking back in his chair. His para called it, "he feels uncomfortable in his skin." At home, it's a lot of restlessness, a lot of perseveration, nothing seems to make him happy. Not watching his iPod (oh how I wish his iPad were here already! - I ordered at 10am EST, I should have just checked out at 6:30am when I first got up to see if they were available and put it in my cart, because it would have been here any day now, instead we wait till early April). And even if we had the iPad, I bet it would not be the magical occupy-er I am hoping for. Not right now. This is beyond anything occupying him.

I don't know if it's late winter restlessness, or gluten. We had pulled gluten over February break, but once back at school he began asking for bagels. I have not been able to find a good gluten-free bagel locally so I just said, that's fine, let him have some bagels until I find a sub. But the gluten mania has grown. He began refusing the GF pizza that he previously loved. Matt bought bread for sandwiches for Katie and he has been asking for it, then cramming his mouth full and spitting it out. He won't eat his chicken at lunch; he asks for a bagel instead. It's just gotten so much worse.

So, I have to pull it back out. Even Matt, who is normally "nah, no way is it diet-related," thinks it could be the gluten that's at the heart of these crazy behaviors. I am going to give him his homeopathic constitutional remedy, too. And I found a recipe for bagels online and am going to give that a try. He won't eat bagels at all at home, so I'll send them to school with instructions to give him one when he asks for a bagel. The funny thing is, he is now refusing the gluten-free oatmeal - which tastes no different from his usual! It's just not contaminated with gluten. Gotta wonder about that gluten-opioid connection. He seems to crave it like a drug, for sure.

That's the news from our house. Our very tired, tired house. With a functioning toilet - for now. I'll update on Burke in a few days, but the short story is, he's doing great, but we need to brush up on public outings and work with him around other dogs in preparation for flying with him to Florida in a month. Eek! I think he'd do great as long as there are no other dogs. It's hard for us to practice with other dogs around in public places right now because of winter, and the trainer's is such a controlled setting that I have no idea how it would really go in a "natural" encounter.