The post provides a detailed and personal insight into the challenges and adaptations made to create a safe space for Gracie.

Damn. It’s been a minute, almost four years since my last post. I just haven’t had it in me to sit down before my laptop and pound out another story. And there are so many of them, lol. From Gracie escaping into the back of our home and immersing herself fully clothed into our pool (in the middle of winter, but in Florida, thank God), to people trying to steal her identity for whatever illegal purpose. Maybe more on that some other day.

Recently I happened by Gracie’s bedroom, and saw our dog, Luka hanging out with her. Luka likes doing that for some reason. I thought the moment cute, and so I took a photo, thinking I might share it with all who might read this post. While looking at the picture, it hit me, all the things going on in there, that most would never observe or know about.

Starting with Gracie’s bed, it is positioned in her room’s center, so she can’t lay on the bed and drum/kick her heels into the walls. The bed is bolted to the floor to keep her from moving it all over the place. The bed itself has a memory foam mattress, to keep Gracie from turning her bed into a trampoline. I think I posted similar information before, but there’s more here. The bedding has incontinence pads underneath the sheets, because despite double-diapering Gracie, she will still somehow manage to wet through everything. Some weeks the bedwetting is a daily occurrence. Underneath her bed is used entirely for diaper and wipe storage, as is the entire upper portion her closet (diapers stacked 3 x 4 x 2 feet).

Back to the bed, Gracie uses both a body and wedge pillow. She has two of the latter, which were purchased not too long ago. The wedge pillows were needed because Gracie had this annoying habit of resting her head up against the headboard, causing her head to rest at almost a 90 degree angle, with her chin on her chest. Her doing that wasn’t good for her, as it would cause her to choke and cough after laying in her bed like that for some time. I thought to myself, “Maybe I could make some wedge-shaped pillows to fix that. Wait, if I’ve thought of it, surely someone else already has, and they’re selling it on Amazon.” Sure enough, I looked on Amazon, found and bought them. Two days later, presto, another problem solved. Initially Gracie would throw the wedge pillows onto the ground, and go back to the head-against-the-headboard posture and coughing thing, and I would sit her up, place the pillows, and then have her lie back down in a reclined, more comfortable position. After some weeks of reinforcing this, it seems Gracie figured out the reclined position is better than an almost broken neck position.

As for other things seen and unseen in the picture, the flower decorations on the left wall are metal sculptures, and are bolted to the wall. The window behind Gracie’s headboard is an impact window, the only one of its kind in our home. The cable conduit mounted to the left wall protects the power cord for an infrared camera monitor, that was used to watch Gracie at nighttime. The chest is also bolted to the floor. The TV receiver is bolted to the side of the drawer, and the TV to the wall. The top two chest drawers have child locks on them, the top side of the closet door has a slide latch, and there is a child gate at the entrance to Gracie’s bedroom. The child gate is secured to the door frame with screws into the door frame, as the original manufacturer’s method of securing the gate (wedging it into a door frame via pressure) is insufficient for a 140 lb. child.

When I take a moment to think about all that is needed to provide a safe and comfortable space for Gracie, I am just blown away. Everything put into place was a process of evolution, learning how to defeat Gracie’s negative behaviors, figuring out how to keep her from harming herself and/or from destroying her room.

Speaking of Gracie destroying her room, I’m still working on patching the hole in her drywall, lol. If you look closely, you’ll see a white spot right above Luka’s head. I’ve graduated from having the hole covered with masking tape to using a drywall hole patch repair kit. I still need to place maybe another coat of joint compound over the area, sand it, apply the orange peel texture, and then paint it. Some day.