Bad Mom Award

I deserve an award. A big. Fat. Award. For the worst mom EVER. I noticed, while helping my son get ready for church yesterday, that his shoes looked like they were stretched over his feet. I felt for his toe and found it, almost poking through the end of his shoe. Reaching back in time, I tried desperately to find a memory of buying his last pair of shoes. Found it. Before Disney World......a year ago. We bought him new shoes yesterday afternoon. He chose them.

Sign me up for worst mom of the year.

Please Forgive Me

I just re-read my last post and, quite frankly, it's a mess. Grammatically and otherwise. So, please forgive me and I will try to do better. More pictures of my kids are coming soon, I promise!

What's My Deal?

Okay. So, what's my deal? Why haven't I blogged since before Thanksgiving....and its March. I haven't been sure as to why. I've tried on several occasions to sit down and blog, and just could not do it. Why? Here is my theory.

Sometimes what is going on in life is to big to blog about, but also to big to ignore. So to blog about it is too overwhelming and to blog about anything else is heartless and cold. Is that clear as mud or what? That is my big philosophical conclusion. What does it mean? Not sure. But, I have decided to just blog about what has really been going on.

December, work is crazy, kids are crazy, life is crazy, I usually love it. Except this year my best friend for many, many crazy years, was having health problems. She went in for surgery on diverticulitis (no big deal, right?) Her husband called me crying when she was out of her surgery, it was colon cancer, at 32, with 3 young children. She spent Christmas in the hospital, and every time we talked it seemed like the news got worse. Level 2 to level 4, chemo every other week, to chemo, plus at home chemo every other week, and on and on and on. She's on treatment now, its going reasonably well. I love her, she's one of the strongest women I know.

Early February, love is in the air right? Father-in-law goes into the emergency room with chest pains. He's in great shape, active healthy, not over weight, doesn't smoke, it is bound to be nothing. The hospital hooks him up to an EKG-nothing, good news, but he can't pass a stress test. The heart cath shows 99% blockage in his front artery....he's a heart attack waiting to happen. The next day he has emergency bypass surgery. He is recovering beautifully. Praise God. He is an amazing man, and one of my heroes.

Late February, my beautiful 7 year old begins crossing her left eye into her nose involuntarily, it's nothing (this is what I keep telling myself) except it increases in frequency until one Saturday she is doing it up to 20-30 times per hour. The following Monday she sees her pediatrician, he orders a CT scan for that afternoon, as well as an EEG and an in depth opthomology appointment to be completed within a week. The CT scan is clear and the wait begins. As a mother all I can think is brain tumor, seizures, and every other scary term I've ever heard. I have to numb myself in order to breath in and out. My baby handles it all like the bravest of warriors. She doesn't cry during the CT Scan, acts like an adult during the EEG, and doesn't flinch for the opthomologist. I thought she wasn't even that worried, until the afternoon that I told her we were sure it was nothing, and that we were going to quit the tests. She laid her little seven year old hand over her heart and took a relieved breath. She had been terrified. Her eye has quit crossing in and the general consensus is that it was either a muscle tick or a virus that had settled in her eye.

Believe it or not in sharing what I have, many things have been left out. It has literally been 3 months of constant emotional chaos. God had been a life preserver we've held onto for dear life........

So that's it. That is why I haven't blogged and why I'm trying again. Hopefully I will do better in months to come.

Beautiful Girl

This beautiful young woman is growing up faster than I could have imagined possible....sigh.

Update

Once upon a time, on a crisp October day this boy:

Married this girl:

And on October 28th we celebrated 13 years, a lot of joy, also some trials and an suv full of kids! Yeehaw!

On October 31st these ghouls celebrated Halloween:



We had a blast!

On November 1st my husband celebrated his 33rd birthday and my daughter (whose 11) went on her first hunting trip....and after dressing out the deer had to run in, shower, and get ready to cheer for the last football game of the season (she is so well rounded!)


And believe it or not I am leaving tons of activities out. Needless to say it is a busy time of year. Next up, the Holidays!!!

Tag, I Guess I'm It!

Jae tagged me, so here are 6 totally random things about me.

When I was young (but not young enough to justify it) I told everyone that I could speak spanish and play the violin. I even got myself signed up for a fairly serious talent competition in which I was to play the violin (which I could not even sort-of play) until my big sister, who could play the violin, told on me, THANK GOD!


We had a dog when I was little named Mississippi Mud who would split open and eat our watermelons which we were somehow growing in our back yard in the middle of a neighborhood (because we weren't weird enough).

When I was a teenager I had two poems published, one in a local newsletter of some sort and one in a poetry book (which was probably a gimmic, but I didn't care.)

I started college two weeks after I turned 16.... but before you get too impressed, I then fell in love and quit after two semestars... and would do it again..... because I'm still in love.

As a child I really believed I would be a dancer.

When I was 15, I was the co-host of a talk show on the local free channel. It was not for teenagers, but rather discussed deep topics relating to living as a conservative in the present time....I now disagree with many of my then opinions. Oh, and I didn't look 15 not by a long shot, and we never told anyone I was, so hopefully the fact that it was on the free, public access channel kept anyone from listening to me.

I tag cassie

My Trip To Holland

I just finished a paraprofessionals workshop. Sometimes things related to my current job hit a little too close to home.....

This story is one of those things, but instead of being saddened by it, I appreciated the way it verbalizes something I've never been able to. My personal experience with autism.

Welcome to Holland

When you're going to have a baby, it's like you're planning a vacation to Italy. You're all excited. You get a whole bunch of guidebooks, you learn a few phrases in Italian so you can get around, and then it comes time to pack your bags and head for the airport-for Italy.

Only when you land, the stewardess says, "Welcome to Holland." You look at one another in disbelief and shock, saying, "Holland? What are you talking about? I signed up for Italy!"

But they explain there's been a change of plans, and there you must stay. "But I don't know anything about Holland! I don't want to stay!", you say.

But you do stay. You go out and buy some new guidebooks, you learn some new phrases and you meet people you never knew existed. The important thing is that you are not in Italy or some filthy, plague-infested slum full of pestilence and famine. You are simply in a different place than you had planned. It's slower paced than Italy, but after you've been there a little while and have had a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland has Rembrandts.

But everyone else you know is busy coming and going from Italy. They're all bragging about what a great time they had there and for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's what I had planned." The pain of that will never, ever go away.

You have to accept that pain because the loss of that dream the loss of that plan, is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

I don't know who wrote that story but I appreciate it.

I've always talked (and blogged) about so many things unabashedly, but for some reason my personal experience with Autism and I mean my really personal experience, the one that happened inside me, has been tucked away in a corner of my mind somewhere and I rarely, if ever, access it. In fact just saying these words fills me with fear. Fear that I will present my feelings incorrectly, fear that my son will read these words someday and think that I resent him, fear that talking about it will make me feel it again. But I think maybe I need to talk about it, to pull the feelings out of the corner and examine them, deal with them, and, most importantly, let others benefit from them. So this story opened the door. It reminded me of the grief that I experienced (when I allowed myself). The nights that I knelt all alone at the foot of his bed while he slept, my fist against my chest, begging God to take it away from him. The knowledge that it wouldn't be taken away, and the overwhelming despair I felt looking down the road I knew we would travel down. There were fears that I never spoke aloud, like fearing he would never speak at all, and that I would never know what he felt or if he was really happy or okay. And the fear that even now, with my son so happy and well-adjusted, that I experience anytime he even has a sort-of bad day. It can be paralyzing. Wondering if we are going backwards, if he will pull out of it. He always does........ but the fear remains.

So for all that I can say that I have learned to enjoy Holland, my son is my windmill, he is my Rembrandt, and I would not trade him for anything. But I also want those in the same situation to understand that the pain is real and okay to feel. A woman I love and respect (who has two severely autistic children) told me once, "You have to soldier on... but every soldier drops their sword sometimes."

My story is a happy one. My son is doing the best he has ever done, exsquisitly is the word I want to use, and maybe it is time to air out my fears and hand my son back to the God I know created him.