Hurricane Irene....

Six days without power means no blogging...ugh...

How to visit childless friends

Those of you who go back and forth between the two blogs have had the privilege of meeting the "Lake guard" and his wife.  To me they are everything that represents a small New England town.  They shovel when it snows and they grill when it's warm.  Don't ask them a question if you don't want an answer, but if you need any kind of help they will be the first to show up.  Seriously-a shoulder to cry on or a gazebo to put up.  It's them.

They frequently host neighborhood get togethers with their awesome lake dock and fire pit for roasting marshmallows.  Here is the catch-they don't have kids.

I know you guys love it when I take my kids into a new environment.  This is what happens when I take them to the "Lake guard's" cottage.

They go after the dog and all her toys.  My three year old starts asking for the dog when we pull up in the driveway.  "Tiki!  Tiki!" My daughter starts to complain that the dog has more stuffed animals than she does. That could not be possible.  After about thirty minutes, the dog goes and hides, but tonight I caught my son trying to get her to come out of the bedroom closet.

The kids know where all the candy is. They have two bubble gum machines, a box of peppermint patties, and three M&M dispensers.  Mind you both of these adults are not overweight.  I start grabbing candy and putting it in cabinets after the kids eat three handfuls each.

They only have flesh colored band aids.  This confused my son as he really couldn't imagine anyone not wanting Yoda on a band aid-how could you heal without a Jedi using the force?

You have to change the channel or you walk in and your children may be watching Tosh.O or an episode of Law and Order.

I once put ten different breakable items in their bedroom. I don't think anything has been broken this season.

 The husband tore up the pantry looking for MacnCheese for my daughter-he was about to boil pasta and make it from scratch before I told him it wasn't necessary.

And finally, I usually get one or two texts the next morning for toys and possibly shoes that my children left behind.

The best part? My children NEVER want to leave and can't wait to go back.  Swinging in the hammock, sitting around the fire pit, playing with that dog...I hope they remember all of it forever.

Who is inviting us over next?

My Good Baby.....

I didn’t want to quit my job. I had zero desire in staying home with my baby. I would drop her off at the sitter’s house, spend my day with a group of teenagers, and get her at the end of the day for a late afternoon and evening that I appreciated and loved because I hadn’t seen her all day.  She was perfect.  She hardly ever made a noise. She nursed and ate no problem. She lay on a blanket and never fussed. She slept through the night. I thought I had done it all right.  She had one ear infection at six months and one case of bronchitis at four months.  That was it.

I was very excited about having an entire summer off with her. In the fall I was going to transfer with my boss to a new middle school.  After seven years of teaching I was finally going to have the perfect set up: a great daycare center, a new house, a perfect middle school job.  Then one morning in July I woke up and a voice told me “Quit.”  I told the voice I didn’t want to quit, but it said it again, “Quit.”  Are you kidding me?  I had devoted my entire young adult life to teaching teenagers and older elementary students Spanish and this small voice was telling me now to quit?  After I had finally arrived as much as a middle public school teacher could?

I had already moved all my boxes from one school to the new one.  That meant I was going to have to move everything again and have my boss find a new teacher.  Then there was the thing about all the other teachers I loved seeing.  What was I going to do?  No, I can’t quit. I love my job and running after school and buying clothes at Ann Taylor… and don’t forget the books on tape, I need to listen to my books on tape when I commute to work.  One of my aunts always scrutinizes me because I have time to read novel after novel and she can’t figure out how I do it but I listen on tape….ha ha ha.  If I stay home I’ll wear sweat pants, eat chocolate, and watch The View. No thank you small voice, I like my life just the way it is…

.

QUIT!!!!!

So I decided that I could go over to the school, but my principal wouldn’t be there.  My very first boss was psycho and militant, but Matt wasn’t that way. I never heard him raise his voice ever. Not once in the four years I dealt with him.  Maybe he won’t be there. Maybe he took his family to the beach. Yes, I’ll drive over there and I‘ll check in and he won’t be there or if he is he will tell me I can’t quit because they won’t be able to find anybody else to do the job.  I was in my car and I didn’t want to drive there.  But the car went left when I should have gone right. Then I was in the parking lot. Ahhhh this is the brand new building that I’m going to be working in. I have a  big classroom with windows and a dvd player and a computer.  I get smaller classes and textbooks that aren’t  bent up to hell.  Frances was quiet in the back seat.  Not screaming, not cooing.  She was such a good baby.  I took her out of her seat and went in the main doors that weren’t falling apart.  

My principal was right there in the front lobby-like he had been waiting for me.  I was holding my baby and she wasn’t clinging back on me.  She didn’t show any interest in the school, didn’t show any fear in my boss. It wasn’t too late to tell him I had come to unpack my classroom.  It wasn’t too late to say I wanted the teacher’s manual to my new text book.  It wasn’t too late to get back in the car and push her in the stroller around the mall looking for clothes or pop her in the baby jogger and run three miles around the lake.

“QUIT!” damn that voice..

“Hey Matt, do you have a second?  I need to talk to you.”  Say no, you don't have time, you are getting ready to go to a very important meeting at Central Office. Or even better, you are going to go home and watch a World Cup qualifying match and you need to leave right now...

“Let’s go to my office.”

I really thought he would say no, I really thought he would tell me not to go, that he couldn’t live without me teaching at his new school.  I put Frances on the floor of his office. She was nine months old and she lay on the little blanket.  She didn't sit up.  She didn't crawl.  She was noot looking at us, and not curious about where she was, being quiet. I was so lucky I had such a good baby.

“Page you won’t get this time with her back. Let me get the paperwork for you.”  QUIT!  I can still hear the voice...

And with two signatures, I was a stay at home mom with the best baby in the whole wide world, because she never made a peep or got off her blanket.  Never lit up when I or her father walked in a room. Never acted nervous or curious.  But ate and slept through the night.  I had such a good baby.  I was nervous about the new role, but excited at the same time. 

The voice surely had a reason it wanted me to quit....

Can you already see the flags my 29 year old self missed???

The Quack is Back....

I don't believe in coincidence.  There are no accidents.  I have no regrets.  Everything that has ever happened to me has happened for a reason at the moment it happened.

I once had a girlfriend that was extremely anti-technology. She had no computer at home.  She didn't own a cell phone.  She refused a GPS.  She always insisted you needed to be able to do things without the help of all those gadgets.  She also joked about email and everyone "checking it."  She said, "are you waiting for the email that is going to change your life?"  This was before Twitter and Facebook or even texting, so no, a email didn't move my life forward in any way.

But a text did.

I have been very active in the Ryan Woods Autism Foundation.  I love the founder, Brenda Wilson. She is a grandmother with a vision and an action plan. I attended the gala they have in November.  I spoke at one of their parent workshops in May.  Then about a two weeks ago, I got a text from her...

B: Would you like to MC our Music Festival in September?
Me: Oh Brenda honey, this is my cell phone, not my husband...
B: No, we want you to be our MC.  You will have the crowd laughing and we won't have to hire a D.J......
Me:  Are you sure?
B: Yes, you have the energy, good looks, and it feels so right, please say yes!
Me: Yes!

Now in less than a month I will be the mistress of ceremonies at an autism event that sometimes 1,000 people come to .....oh my what have I agreed to?

Since I'm doing this, I want to "Quack" for a while.  Over the last five years I have had a lot of people ask me my opinions on everything from the movie Rain Man to hyperbaric chambers.  I thought I would take some time to answer and reflect on how I went from a twenty-nine year old new mother with "the best baby in the world" because she played on her blanket not making a sound,  to the (almost)  thirty-seven year old mom to three children that changed my universe.

All my posts are going to lead up to the main event on September 10th in Middletown, CT. If you are in the area I encourage you to come.  Be prepared as you read-some days you might need tissues, others you may want to finish your drink before you read and spit it out laughing....

I promise I will do my best to be honest and somewhat entertaining....text me if I'm not....

Life of the Party

Well, I said I wouldn't post another one on autism, but I was thinking that third child should get some air time as his siblings did.  AND I did indeed have something original to contribute to this.  I tend to stay away from autism blogging because I'm lucky just to get their teeth brushed let alone give advice on gluten free anything.

Almost a year ago I was told my 18 month old was likely to be on the spectrum.  Two weeks later he plunged straight into intense 20 hours a week of ABA therapy.  He just went back for his one year re-evaluation.  Guess what?  He has maxed out and improved in every area but socialization. He just doesn't care about other people.  He prefers to play alone.  He makes little eye contact.  Everything else is right on target if not ahead of schedule.

So, we were having his Birth to Three team meeting to make his new goals for the next six months. This is what I came up with:

• Lowell will run for student body president.
• Lowell will be capitain/quarterback/whatever of the football team.
• Lowell will dance in his socks and boxers when he doesn't think anyone is looking-or maybe in front of everyone????
• Lowell will stand outside his girlfriend's window with a radio and play "Your eyes."
• Lowell will skip school and sing a Beatles song on a parade float.
• Lowell will lead a non-violent protest against something-no clue what.
• :Lowell will be in the top ten on American Idol.
• Lowell will have pizza delivered to his history class.
• Lowell will make John Belushi's "Bluto" look like a straight A merit scholar.
• Lowell will write for a music magazine, tour with some band, and be de-flowered by groupies.

A mom can dream right?  Sometimes they prefer my husband to do the talking.....

Tonsils coming out

After putting it off for a few years, the tonsils are coming out.  What would I rather be doing than laying in bed in pain?

• Running 3-10 miles at a time
• Working on IEPs
• Teaching my sweet online students
• Driving my contributions to the universe everywhere they need to be
• Coming up with a better blog post than this
• Proof reading for my husband
• Taxes
• Drinking Espresso and Skinny girl.....

All of it will be there when I come out of the foggy pain....... see you soon!!!!!!

He's only five....

I said two things have been bothering me lately, so here comes the second.

My son is only five.  That is my new mantra, he is five, he is five, and he is five.

I forget this daily.

When we brought him home from the hospital we didn’t say anything to each other out loud, but we knew deep down he was very different from our first baby.  I remember putting him on my chest and he did the little cobra stretch of his head.   I didn’t know they were supposed to have muscles like that.

If you talked to him, his face would change and he would coo back.  Again, we didn’t say anything to each other. We had been married a long time already and we each knew what the other was thinking.

When he was one, he got mad at me, threw his sippy cup, stared me down and said, “FINE!”   At one?  They could do that at one? His sister had been an infant….

I would sit with his sister at her little OT table, trying to get her to peel a sticker and put it on the paper. She couldn’t do it. I could get an entire idiot baseball team to conjugate verbs in the preterite Spanish tense but I couldn’t get one three year old to put a sticker on a piece of paper. Her brother toddled over, watched what we were doing, and put the sticker on the paper.  I needed a little break after that one.

 

I knew I had two children and that they were very different.  And I got pregnant again.

Once, in a therapy waiting room when I was very pregnant with Lowell- a woman actually said to me, “You have one that has it and one that doesn’t, why are you risking a third?”  Talk about bitches….

But she was right-I knew how babies are made, and I had a third.

And he is on the spectrum.

That leaves me with my five year old.  I stare at the middle one and think, “Are you going to be there for the other two?”   What happens later in life? Because of my own life, I know lots of things to be true.

I know that not having autism does not guarantee him a perfect life. He could very well develop alcoholism, bi-polar disorder, or even a general obnoxious personality.  He could have a car accident, he could get cancer, his girlfriend could dump him on prom night for his best friend. Two autism spectrum disordered siblings does not give you a free pass for a good life. 

Another thing I know, that just because he doesn’t have autism doesn’t mean he is a mature little boy that is always going to make the right choice and do the right thing.  He is a child and he acts like one.  He will throw a fit on the way to church so badly a stranger offers to help me.  He will sneak the entire box of chocolate chip cookies and tell me his imaginary friend did it. He will fight me when it is time to take a bath or turn off the television.  These things are normal according to cute little mommy sites such as this one.

He is five, not my 35 year old second in command. There are days when I put way too much on him.  I am trying to work from home or cook what looks like a dinner, and I automatically say, “Kenneth, help your brother with his trains.”  Or, “Kenneth help your sister with her math.”  "Kenneth, why is he crying?"  "Kenneth, start the DVD player please."  Well, the math he might have to keep doing.   

Anyway, usually, he does these things happily. So when he does something that all five year olds do, I forget.  I get mad at a five year old for being five.  That is a problem and I admit it.  It’s my job to be his mom too.

The universe gave this to me because the universe knows I can handle it.  But I need to remember that a five year old is only five.  The Fairy God Bitch should show up and remind me of this.

OK two deep posts on autism-I need to write about the time I tried to iron my husband’s pants soon…..