Yogurt and Plumbing

In our crazy world of raising eight children and in daily dealings with Joseph, we have encountered too many plumbing problems to list but this one deserves special recognition.  This is the second time we have had this exact scenario but this one was a lot more costly and frustrating.  He is in the habit of constantly stealing food.  I say "stealing" in the sense that he is always secretly getting food in between meals and hiding it from us.  He is a master at sniffing out things that we have done our best to hide. 

Saturday he got one of the small single serving containers of yogurt, went into the bathroom to hide and eat, and then to conceal his crime he flushed the container down the toilet.  I should say he attempted to flush it down.  We learned the first time this happened that the single size containers are a perfect fit.  But when it comes to the curves in the plumbing you can hang it up.  There is no plunger in the world that could unstop this clog.  So for the second time in a few months dad had to remove the toilet and try to get the container out.  Only this time the toilet could not be removed due to age and constant overflow problems.  The toilet cracked. 

Now all this would have been bad enough but this was Saturday afternoon about an hour before company was due to arrive for lunch.  We had invited a new family moving in from California to come have a meal with us and meet our family.  The house stuck like a bus bathroom and there were no toilet facilities.  You just have to love our crazy life! After all was said and done it was around $150 dollar disaster.  I wish we could afford one of the toilets that can flush bowling bowls....and stuff like that.

We are still dealing with a lot of aggression and violence.  One thing that seems to help is listening to music in headphones.  It helps him ignore all the stimuli around him.  We had a hard day yesterday with a trip that was 2 hours one way.  He did well. 

I am signing him up for Special Olympics.  We are looking for a babysitter that we can bring him to when things get crazy around here.  He needs an escape plan for when things get too stressful for him.  Still waiting to hear something on the disability and the home assessment.  I will be calling today to see if I can get him into a summer day program.  Doing that and the therapy at Madonna will make it a very busy summer for us.  Hopefully we will get through it with few problems.