Monthly Archives: July 2012

Role Reversal of Sorts

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So, Sweetboy just asked:  “Mama, are you going to be in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Queens while you’re gone?”

And I replied:  “What?!?  How do you know the difference?”

Sweetboy: “Well, I forget how I know, but Manhattan is the biggest.  And could you take a picture of the Statue of Liberty for me? And don’t forget you have to take a ferry boat to the Statue of Liberty.”

Me:  “Uh, okay.“

Sweetboy: “So, which one will you be in?”

Me: (Completely razzled now) “I have no idea! Can I get back to you on that one?”

Sweetboy: “Sure, but there are cool little markets in New York Harbor.  And there’s a little open green space where the Statue of Liberty is.”

Me: “Um… well, I don’t think I’ll have the extra time to make the ferry boat ride out to the Statue of Liberty, but if I get anywhere close to it, I’ll snap a picture for you.” (Hoping to High Heaven that will pacify him…)

Sweetboy:  “Okay… But, Mama?  Don’t go into any alleys between any condos or apartments to go anywhere, okay?”

Me: (My head is starting to hurt) “Okay, honey.  I won’t.”

Sweetboy:  “There could be stray cats in there. And all that jazz.”

Me: “You bet.  I wouldn’t want to meet any stray cats in any alleys in New York City!”

Sweetboy: “Which part of New York City will you be in again, Mama?”

At this point in the conversation, I politely excused myself to retrieve Mommy’s Sippy Cup and fill it with Fermented Apple Juice.

Me: “I’ll let you know when I’m done drinking my juice.”

Sweetboy: “That’s wine, silly Mama!”

Yes. Oh, yes indeedy, it sure is.  And thankfully, there’s more where that came from…

You Know That Moment When?

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You finally have approximately 7 minutes to yourself and you’ve got wax on your upper lip and you’re trying to psyche yourself up to rip it off but the doorbell rings and you think “surely, surely someone else in this house will be answering the door” because you certainly can’t without scaring the ba-doodle out of whoever’s actually at the door and/or whoever is answering the door? Only, no one does? Yeah, that.

Or, you finally get the box from Major Online Retailer containing your precious liquid gold coffee pods that you’ve been desperate for and you carry it all the way through the house to the kitchen only to open it up and take the smashed-up box of coffee pods out to find this at the bottom? And now you see that you’ve left a lovely dark TNT-like trail of coffee grounds from the front of the house to the back?

Why is there so little in the box, you ask? That’s because the other 80% of the pods are now strewn throughout the house.

Yeah, that too.

And then, of course, there’s that moment when you ask youngest sweet child if she’s all done going #2 and she says “NOT YET MAMA!” and you think, “Alrighty then, maybe I have 1.4 minutes to jet the folded laundry upstairs so that at least it’s somewhere in the vicinity of the bedrooms instead of on top of the dryer like it has been for the last week day or two.”, but as you are coming back down the stairs, sweet child looks at you expecting a compliment because, “I am ALL DONE wiping, Mama!”, only, she oh-so-clearly isn’t?

Oh yes, indeedy.

 

So, you give up for a quick moment and have a sit-down to check your email and find that the rush-order you placed for things you need for your trip on Thursday morning have been delayed and might be there by… Thursday instead of Wednesday, as planned? Yup.

Monday – 1

Missindeedy – 0

On the bright side, (or, terrifyingly), the day is only half done. So there’s that.

All Aboard the BlogHer 12′ Train

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I almost can’t contain my excitement as I start preparing for the trip to New York City for the BlogHer 12′ Conference in a few days, (thanks, Picante` Sauce commercial, I just can’t get the sound of that cowboy saying “New York City?” out of my head.).  I’m not really sure if I’m more thrilled to be child-free for 4 whole days or to have the opportunity to rub shoulders (but not literally of course, that would just be weird!) with some of the “giants”, in my eyes, of the blogging/writing world.

After reading thirty a couple of posts on what to wear (comfy shoes, anyone?)  and what not to wear, and what to focus on and what not to worry about, I think I’ve got a good list of goals nailed down.

  1. Actually get out of the house and into the car alone    That’s a good start, yes?
  2. Remember to pick up partner-in-crime    MTM, I wouldn’t really forget you.  I don’t think.  Call me if I’m not there by 10!
  3. Not get lost in the city   If I don’t call Sweetman and have to ask him to navigate me in some way, he’ll consider the trip a success.
  4. Ask a bazillion questions
  5. Soak up every stinkin’ minute of my time with all the peeps who so get what I love about blogging

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’ve got more than a few things I hope to accomplish once there, (finally decide which bird these feathers belong to after all, for one. Or, is it, which feathers this bird belongs to?)  And questions galore.  (What IS a “sparklecorn”, anyway? I’m assuming it’s fun to find out?)  But mostly, I just want to accomplish number 1.  That’s right.  Because at the rate things are going around here, Thursday morning is zooming toward me at warp speed; and I’m still laying on the tracks!

The Gospeling Hippotonomous

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Got that? Good. We’re done here.

 

No?  Let me break it down for you.  Children misinterpret words all the time. If you’ve buzzed around here at all, you know that my children are particularly good at this.  Today was a case in point.

 

In the bathtub tonight, Sweetgirl informed me that she wanted to play with her “hippotonomous”.  What’s that now?  She further confused me by asking where her “hippomamatous” was.  I handed over the hippopotamus with eyes clenched shut and hoped for the best.  It all worked out…

 

On a very serious note… Sweetboy’s Autism isn’t evident outwardly.  It’s in the inward moments, the safety of his home and the love contained within our walls, that most anyone would be able to observe him engaging in Autistic behaviors.  Once in a while, though, he encounters a situation out in public that, as processed later on at home, reveals the depths to which his amazing brain will go to work through something. We encountered that today as he wrapped up a week of two different camp experiences.  One, earlier this week, was okay. The other, today’s experience, was traumatic.  But, for an entirely different reason than I ever could have, ever would have, imagined.

 

I picked Sweetboy and a friend up from camp and asked how it went. Friend enthusiastically plugged camp.  Sweetboy was oddly silent.  His usual response to any question asking for his thoughts on a particular experience is to arrange his thumb and forefinger into the “I squish your head” action and say, “I kinda sort liked it.” (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go ask The Google about “The Kids in the Hall”.  I won’t wait, though, because you’ll be laughing till you pee.  And if you already know what I’m talking about, I heart you.)

 

At that moment, though, I got absolutely nothing from him.  And I wondered about it. But I let him be.  And he played happily with Friend at home for the next hour.  We went to drop off Friend and then visit with other friends for a short while.  We didn’t arrive back home until dinner time, but as soon as we walked in the door of our house, Sweetboy asked if I could just go upstairs and snuggle with him on his bed.  Just him and me.  He never has to ask me twice.

 

As we snuggled, he started crying. You see, it would seem that today, at camp, there was a child there with Down’s Syndrome. A child that he didn’t know and wasn’t expecting.  As he began to cry and recount the day, Sweetboy explained that this boy was older and bigger than him and that he really “creeped me out, mama.”  People, my heart is breaking for my child.  He works so hard to make faces fit into neatly structured frames he has constructed in his mind.  Frames that don’t change.  Frames that help him make sense of facial expressions and people. And he knows that there are children whose faces don’t neatly fit into the frames he’s constructed for people’s faces – but, this?  This unexpected, unstructured face?  He struggled to make sense of the child’s place in his neatly ordered world.  It was at this point that he said, “He’s not like J (our friend with Down’s).  I like J.  He’s not like him. And it just creeped me out. And that makes me feel bad inside.”  And he cried.  And I cried with him.  And for him. Then, I just hugged him.  And hoped the hug would mop up the tears.

 

Let me interject here with two things which I need to state before we go on.  One, we have very dear friends that have a child with Down’s Syndrome.  We eat meals with them, play with them; they are in our lives.  Two, Sweetboy has been exposed to lots of other children with multiple disabilities through his years of therapies and integrated classroom experiences.  He’s either never noticed the differences or he’s not been affected by them. Today, he was.

 

And then, almost like the breath of God blowing away our tears, there was this. As he cried, he explained that he didn’t want to tell Other Friend how he felt when he was there because, “It would be gospeling…”.  I was about to correct him when he added, “and I know I shouldn’t gospel.”  Sweet Moses! I giggled.  He balked.  I asked him if he meant “gossip”.  We all know he meant gossip, right? Then he laughed.  And all was right with his world again.

 

Oh, sweet child… Sometimes, there is no answer.  But, a gospeling hippotonomous will do the trick in a pinch. Oh, yes indeed.

Newness and What-knot

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The times. They are a changin’.  It would seem that newness is everywhere we turn right this minute.  New leaves are turning. New friendships are forming.  New jobs, new dreams, and new favorites are all afoot.  And it is good.

One thing that isn’t new? Sweetboy’s attitude about school.  This is the conversation I inadvertently walked into last night.  And please, by all means, do insert whatever dramatic tones you can just hear in your mind as you read it – I’m quite sure he used those exact ones as he wailed…

Sweetboy:  (Almost with back of hand slapped against his forehead) ” Oh NOOOO!!!  There are only 5 weeks left until I have to go back to school!”  (Followed by much weeping and gnashing of teeth.)

Me:  “Really?  That sounds to me like 35 more days of summer fun!”

And in other news, Sweetgirl, also, hasn’t changed her stance on “I NOT!”, one iota.

Me: (Watching her fling around the new “big-girl” necklace The Nana foolishly generously sent to her) “Sweetgirl, please don’t fling the necklace around and around.  It will get knots in it and Mama will have to work very hard to take them out. (I.E. Won’t be able to take them out because, the eyes?  They ain’t what they used to be.)

Sweetgirl: (C’mon, we ALL know exactly where this is going…) “I NOT flinging it Mama, I am just playing with it and making a commotion!” (Insert shock on my part as I wonder where in the sam hill she learned the word commotion – that’s just above my pay grade, right there.)

Moments, nay, seconds, later…

Knots, anyone?

Sweetgirl: “MAMA!!! My neckwace is all knottered up!  (How does she hear these words I say???)

Oh, yes indeedy.  I’m still working on em’.  I’ll keep you posted.  Or knot.

I Just Love Dat…

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Sweetgirl has been throwing a lot of love around this week.  And some of her little -isms are a balm to our sad souls this week as we continue to adjust to life without our Sweetdog.  Here are a few of our favorites:

We love Looney Tunes around here.  I mean, love them.  In fact, this is how we eat breakfast each morning:

You ever feel like you’re being watched?

And to that, Sweetgirl says: “I just love dat Bugs-in-bunny!”.

While watching a Pepe` Le Pew episode recently, she said, “I just love dat Peppy the Pew-ey!”. (I love how our kids love old cartoons that we grew up on.)

Later on, “Despicable Me” was the pick for Family Movie Night.”  She ran downstairs mid-movie and retrieved one of the stuffed animal minions someone was kind enough to send our way last year and exclaimed, “LOOK! We got one of dose Pickable Me guys!”.

Our perceptions so often color our interpretations.  Maybe that’s why the single most precious thing that Sweetgirl says, on a daily basis, mixed in with all of the very un-precious things she says, is the following: “I just love dat brudder!”.  She reminds me, us, anyone who’s within ear shot, how strong a love can be that knows no divisions.  A love the sees only the good in someone.

And I just love dat!  Yes, indeedy.

Scatterbrain Gets the Smush and Squish

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I’m having one of those mornings where I have added a couple of sentences to no less than five posts that I’ve started over the last couple of weeks.  And I can’t seem to gain traction, for any long period of time, on any one of them.  Ever have one of those mornings?  It’s frustrating, to say the least.

Anyhoo, to add insult to injury this week, I had my yearly Mammogram appointment.  Joy of joys, it is not.  Necessary, though, it is.  I just went all Yoda on you.  I apologize…  I think the smushing of the girls also inadvertently did something to the brain.

I’ve been going for 10 years (as The Nana had some fun lumps – as in both of her girls removed, when she was 40).  And guess what? This is my 40-year-old Mammogram.  And I’m a bit more than nervous.  I keep repeating to myself that I’ve got a Faith bigger than my fear, no news is good news, early detection is key, and all them good thangs.

Here are a few things I’m going to try to remember for next year’s Annual Smush and Squish Appointment:

1. Don’t make appointment so early as to not even have time to grab a cup of coffee to see myself through the hour.

2. Don’t try out lame Tata jokes on the Mammographer.  She will. Not. Laugh. Even when I break out into a rendition of “Do your boobs hang low, do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie em’ in a knot?  Can you tie em’ in a bow?”.

3. Discomfort grows as does age.

3a.) Age grows as does discomfort.

4.) “I’ll position you.”  And, “Don’t help.”, are code phrases for “Keep your dern hands to yourself! I’ll be the one handling your Tatas this morning, thank-you-very-much!”  Whatevs…

And lastly,

5.)  Schedule Mammogram on Hump Day next year.  It’s far more appropriate.

Indeed.

Neigh, I Say

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“Horses – dangerous at both ends and crafty in the middle.”  

(the brilliant) Arthur Conan Doyle

I have a long-standing distrust of horses.  Sorry.  It had to be said.  And the reason why it had to be said, now, is because we have sweet friends that are trying in earnest to get me to take the kids horseback riding.  With them.  As in, with the kids. On the horses. That is terrifying to me.  Remember the scene in the movie “The Godfather” where Jack Woltz wakes up next to a horse head on the pillow? Yeah. That? Is my absolute worst nightmare.  True story.  It’ll be a sweet forever before I get myself near enough to a “neigh” that I can actually hear it.

And Sweetman? Oh, he just loves to rib me about it.  Anytime we take a drive down a country road as a family, and we pass horses, he will pull over and announce to the kids, “Ooh, look guys, horses!  Mama LOVES horses! She loves to pet them and brush their teeth and…”.  You get the idea.  And I shoot daggers out of my eyes as I’m a quivering mess until we get back on the road.  Far far away from the horses.

To that end, I heard the most horrifying news report on NPR yesterday.  I should have slammed my finger against that mute button the moment I heard the intro about “A horse is a horse…”, but no.  I just had to listen to the next 5 words. Which were, “…even when it’s a clone.”.  What’s that now? Apparently, scientists have figured out a way to clone horses.  I’m 101% certain that there are folks on this great planet, lo, even in this very country of ours that need food every single day.  Cloning vegetables or grains that can be used to eradicate hunger? Now that seems like a far more worthy scientific endeavor.  But horses?  Sweet Moses!  Don’t we have enough of them roaming the earth as it is?  To that I say, “Nay”!  Not to be confused with “Neigh”.  No, never to be confused with that.  Indeed!

*I apologize to any readers who adore horses and think they are one of God’s most beautiful creatures.  Let’s agree to disagree on this one, kay? (Cuz I have evidence on my keester from a childhood incident supporting my distrust.)  The end.  Literally and figuratively…*

Death By A Thousand Cuts

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We had to put Sweetdog down today.

I thought I was so smart to dispose of the obvious things that would remind me of her before we left for her “appointment” at the Vet’s office: her beds around the house, the pee pads under the couch covers, her huge bag of food in the pantry, her medications.  However, as it turns out, I forgot approximately 994 more.  And with each thing that I find I’ve forgotten today, it feels like another tiny slice on my heart.  My eyes blur from the hot salty tears that slide down my cheeks, unwanted that they are.  And that very action makes me cry even harder, because my Sweetdog loved to lick away tears.  She’d be filled to bursting with all of the tears I’ve shed for her today. Slice.

Thankfully, oh so thankfully, The Gammy and The Grampa came up to watch Sweetgirl and Sweetboy for us for a few hours.  Just when I thought Sweetman and I had cried it all out, we got home from the grocery store and began unpacking groceries.  Mercifully, the grandparents still hadn’t returned with our sweetchildren, because as I unpacked the first bag, I went to stuff it into the “poop bag holder”.  And I promptly burst into hot angry tears, screaming to no one in particular that, “We don’t even need to keep the grocery bags anymore!”.  Slice.

And as I sat down to write, just now, I put my foot on an errant dog toy that we had overlooked this morning.  Slice.  And then Sweetgirl asked when Puppy Pie Pie is coming back from the doctor’s office. Slice.

I know the hurt will subside with time.  I know that full well.  I also know that she was loved well and truly.  And those thoughts, too, are slices of their very own.  For in knowing that the hurt will fade, I worry that I will have forgotten things I want to remember about her.  And in knowing how well she was loved, I remember afresh that she’s no longer here with us to get that love.  Slice, slice…

I’m posting today for me.  It’s cathartic.  I need to write these things down so that I can preserve how very important a part of our family she was.  So important, in fact, that I feel like a little part of me is dying inside today.  By a thousand little tiny cuts.

Funny Ideas – Part Huh?

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We made it through our Church’s VBS week.  We came, we saw, we conquered.  Then, we crashed. Here are some of the things that happened this week that made me and/or Sweetman say, “What the huh?”.

I attempted, on Crazy Hair Day, to copy a hair style that I saw on a you-tube video.  In it, the girl placed a water bottle on top of her head, flipped her head upside down, gathered all of said hair around the water bottle and secured it with a ponytail holder.  Still on board, here?  I realized quickly that my hair wasn’t long enough for that.  But I, in my desperation craftiness, remembered that I did indeed have exactly 2 of those cheap plastic two-part wine glasses left over from my 40th birthday party last year.  Yes, friends, I am klassy like that. AND, I can be crafty like that!  This is what I came up with instead:

Gotta few extra plastic party wineglasses laying around?

Aren’t I purty?  Seriously.  Aren’t I?  The mask really completes the look, don’t you think?  No?  Well, just be thankful that I didn’t poke somebody’s eye out with those things!  And not for nothin’, but getting into and out of the car with those things in my hair wasn’t pretty either.

In other parts of the house – I’ve mentioned before that Sweetboy has some funny ideas.  I’m becoming concerned that he has identity issues.  Please see exhibit A below.  And you may or may not remember – the child has blond hair.  Also, he is not a pig. Nor is he a pig with a mole. His artistic sensibilities are baffling:

I’m fairly certain that jet black hair dye is in my child’s future

And lastly, Sweetgirl graciously offered to “help” me make waffles this morning.  Now, I am no whiz in the kitchen.  Nay, I barely “kitchen” at all; but I am often in that derned room of the house making waffles on the weekends.  This?  This was Sweetgirl’s opening salvo as to how she could help me:

Apparently, I neglected to teach her that we always start with CLEAN kitchen items…

And there you have it.