The ABC's of life

Just in case you were wondering:

Q's obsession of the month is Blue's Clues. We spend a lot of time looking for clues and sitting in our thinking chair.

Q's favorite game is to go through the alphabet finding one household object for each letter and lining them up in the family room. Ah, Hyperlexia. Today we had everything from an airplane to a zebra. This is a fun game I can play too. C doesn't quite have her letters down yet so to her everything is an A, a C, or a P.

C's favorite new game is to stand at the top of the stairs and sing and dance. She takes requests, or rather she orders you to give her requests, but she often makes up the song halfway through. This is best done in dress up high heels.

Q apparently taking cues from her, decided to get up last night at 3am and sing various renditions of the alphabet until at least 5am. And that's why I'm so tired today. Yes, those are circles under my eyes, how nice of you to notice. You'd do better watching the girl superstar in the heels. Just make sure you know all your letters.

The Parent Social Skills Group

I am on a number of listservs that focus on autism spectrum disorders. They have been an invaluable help to me over the past almost two years. The other day someone was asking about social skills groups in our area. One parent suggested a particular group remarking that as good as it has been for her son, it was also great for the parents that sat in the waiting room and shared stories and suggestions about their children.

On Saturday Q started a new social skills group run by his occupational therapist and her therapy practice. He also attended their camp this past summer. Saturday groups are a pain since they slice into your weekend, but it works better for me since I don't have to bring C in tow. That child has spent a not insignificant portion of her life in the car on the way to various waiting rooms while people worked with her brother. So I went on Saturday preparing to work on my lesson for Sunday School the next morning while I had a few minutes of quiet while Q was in group and C was home with DH.

We arrived late. Saturday morning is not the easiest time to get up and out of the house on time. The waiting room was full of parents. And we all spent the next hour and a quarter talking about our children. No one except another parent of a special needs child really understands what it is like. All of my friends, especially those with children around Q's age, have no idea what my life is really like. How therapies and special education concerns constantly swirl around in my head. How much money it takes to pay for therapy. Or even how it seems like almost my every move has to be figured around dealing with Q.

Having children is never easy. You constantly worry about them, how to best raise them and keep them safe and happy. Having a special needs child raises the bar. Suddenly you need a law degree to know how to influence special education law. You need a therapy degree to figure out which therapy to use and how much is needed. You deal with left over guilt about any responsibility you bear for your child's issues, whether you caused it or you took too long to see it. And always there is the helpful advice from everyone on what to do and how to handle your child. Never mind that none of the advice givers live with your reality day in and day out.

I don't mean to sound angry or miserable. Most days I am far from that. But suddenly when you get around other people who have some idea of your daily life it feels really good to know that others out there struggle the same way you do. Sometimes I feel caught in between two worlds. I know what life is like having a typical child like most of my friends have. For most people I know they cannot say the same about my incredibly wonderful but challenging life with Q. It is nice to have a parent social skills group that understands. Of course that did mean my Sunday morning lesson didn't get prepared until Saturday night. Oh well.

Done, done, done

I finished my sermon!!! Yeah!!! And it is only 10:30pm on Saturday night. Oh you say, "That is cutting it close no?". HAH!!! Cutting it close it still writing it at 8am on Sunday. This gives me hope that one day when I become a minister I will not be up at all hours every Saturday night. It probably won't be something that never happens, but you know, that is life with a procrastinator. Truth be told I've been going around and around in my head on this sermon for the past two weeks. And it really didn't come together until I sat down to write it tonight.

There's a lot of pressure because it is the first sermon I am giving at this church. I do a children's sermon every other week but it is a little shorter and much more simple. Go figure. But I need the adults in this church to listen to me as well if I want to really get anything done there. Therefore this first time that I am talking for any length there is important. Also I don't want to let down my pastor who is giving me this opportunity and spent hours with me last week trying to think it out. One day I hope he'll give me a kick butt letter for when I apply to seminary.

But anyway it is done and I think it's even fairly good, though not my best work. But it does what I wanted it to do. I just hope all goes well tomorrow morning and I didn't forget anything major and my kids don't totally freak out because I am not teaching Sunday school this week.

My old pastor in NY used to say she got butterflies every time she gave her sermons, which were amazing. "Surely", she said "there has to be a better way to make a living." I know whereof she speaks. I'd almost rather sing than give a sermon but mostly I think that is from lack of practice. So I'm off to practice some more tomorrow. Wish me luck and if you're into it a prayer or two thrown my way would be nice too.

I need it

I am supposed to be making my kids lunches right now. Tomorrow is a school day and work day for everyone and unless I want to make lunch at 8am while running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I should be making lunches right now. But I'm not. So goes my life. If you take the sentence "I should be doing [insert various item here] right now", you'll probably find me doing something else.

If I was C I would say "I need to do something else". For C everything is a NEED. And when I remind her that she doesn't in fact NEED whatever she has decided she cannot live without, she has a response for that too: "I have to!" I have no idea where she has learned this. Though in my future I see a lot of conversations along these same lines: "Mom I NEED that outfit!!!" "No, C, you're not getting it." "But I HAVE to have it." Another mom of a two year old reports many of the same conversations. So at least I know it isn't just my incredibly assertive (I say that with no small amount of pride. My daughter will not be one to let anyone walk all over her.) yet overly verbal child.

DH, who is being responsible is presently making his lunch and has just reported that while we have a jelly jar in the fridge, it is basically empty. Q will not be happy having only peanut butter on his sandwich tomorrow.

Really, sometimes, this being a mom thing where you're supposed to have all the answers, do all the work, buy everything that's needed, and respond to strange but apparently incredibly important needs, is not all it's cracked up to be. I think I'll call my mommy and tell her that I NEED 24 extra hours of sleep, tons more money, a good outline for the sermon I'm giving Sunday, and some strawberry jelly. I mean really, I just HAVE to have it.

The Joy of Eating

I'm not sure that I have ever mentioned this but at best I am a passable cook. At worst I am a terrible cook. Mostly I just hate cooking. It just doesn't do it for me. I appreciate other people's good cooking. I'd rather have someone else cook for me in just about every situation. Too bad for me that it is very rare that someone else cooks for me. DH doesn't cook for the most part and given the state of our finances lately, no one else is getting the meals on our table either. DH and I fantasize that one day when the kids move out we will probably cook once or twice a week at most and leave the rest of the week's cooking to people who do it professionally. But for the here and now I am the cook.

I struggle with trying to plan out my meals for the week. Because of my avoidance of cooking I'm usually spending time at about 6pm each night scouring my fridge for something (anything!!) to put on the table that night. This leads to a lot of even worse cooking than I am normally capable of and a lot of calls to take out. So in light of trying to save money I am trying to plan out the menu a week in advance and actually be aware of what I need to cook and if I have to thaw anything. If only the kids ate anything other than hot dogs, grilled cheese, pizza, and chicken.

Lately I am trying to eat healthier. This is because my usual diet is chocolate with a bunch of other fattening and bad for you foods thrown in for good measure. And it is obvious from my waistline that this approach to eating isn't doing me any good. Hence, the diet begins. Several years ago, before I had kids I did weight watchers for awhile and lost 15 pounds. Now those pounds are back so it was back to my weight watchers books I went to try to figure out what to eat and how to cut down. Here is the problem with dieting - you can't really enjoy food. Everything you eat is carefully planned to be light on something - calories, carbs or sugar. All the stuff that really tastes any good. So you end up eating a lot of food that tastes passable but not great and then you can't even compensate for it by eating a good dessert. And most of the time you walk around feeling hungry and wishing you could eat more. At least that's how it is for me. If I could cook this might be easier. A friend of mine has been on South Beach for quite awhile and lost a bunch of weight but she can cook so her food actually tastes good. But mostly I think diets just suck. And they suck all the joy out of eating.

I am convinced that my bad cooking is a result of me not having had a play kitchen when I was a little girl. C is cooking all the time in her kitchen and I hope one day to enjoy many real meals that she can actually cook. I will confess the plastic pizza she brings me is barely edible now, but I have high hopes for her.

For now I dream of my own personal chef, a lot of chocolate, and some liposuction.

A working mom

I doubt anyone ever checks this blog since it has been so long since I have posted. Briefly stated the combination of summertime (read many more hours of childcare) and starting a new job was incredibly overwhelming. I still feel like I am only half aware of all I should be keeping tabs on. But school started this week and I am hoping to get back to some sort of normalcy. I make no promises about blogging, but figured I could take a few moments to make an update.

In July I started a new job as director of Christian education for a small church in northern VA. I work 20 hours a week, some at the church, some at home. This required me to change, well, quite a bit. I had to scrap the plans I had for my kids for this school year and go from a co-operative preschool to an inclusion child care center. This caused me to question myself several times. I think that the decision DH and I made was right in the end but time will tell. C will be at the center two whole days a week while Q will be there two mornings a week after which he will go to his special ed preschool for the afternoon. I had to buy a number of new clothes since I had thrown out most of my old work clothes. They either no longer fit or are way out of fashion. I had to revamp my whole schedule to carve out 20 hours for work each week. DH and I have had to share a lot more responsibility around the house and with the kids. Finally, it is now imperative that I look at my calendar more often and schedule things very carefully.

So far it has been wonderful. The thing I like the least is teaching Sunday school and even that has many wonderful moments. It would probably be easier if I didn't have my own kids in class (kids are never as good with you as they are with someone else) but it works none the less. The hardest thing is trying to schedule things since I only have four Sundays off a year. That goes very fast. The adult conversation and intellectual stimulation has been a godsend. I feel like I am going in the right direction. It is clear to me now that the church is my life. I cannot escape it, though I have been trying to for years.

So how is it being a working mom? Hard and yet easier too. I am so glad that I was there for my children's infancy and toddlerhood. But they are old enough now to spend a little more time away from me and I think that's good for both of us. It helps that I'm only gone 2 1/2 days a week. For half the week I still get to be a stay at home mom. So it's kind of the best of both worlds. I find I have more patience when I get some time away and some adult conversation. I won't lie and say I didn't spend a major portion of the day worrying about C and Q and wondering if they were okay and happy. But it felt good to read and talk and think without anyone interrupting me. This is still all new to me and I'm sure there will be days when it all seems insane. But for now, it works.

Of course so far it works without time consuming things like blogging, but we'll get a handle on that soon. Hope you all enjoyed your summer. Now we'll freefall until Christmas. Ah, how I love the Fall.