[ Posted by bibliomom
Wed, 27 May 2009 18:33:44 GMT ]
So this last week adoptingmama finally got her new house!
It’s very exciting – the kids were like, lined up at the front door with their sleeping bags going, “Mom - do we have the key, yet? … How about now? Should we go ahead and get in the car? Mom … Mom!”
So they’ve been roughing it at the new place since last Thursday, and by Sunday morning at church, The Word Was Out: adoptingmama was in her own place and out of mine.
And the interrogations are cracking me up!
I kept getting asked, “Wow – so do you feel like you have empty nest syndrome? Your house must be so quiet!” She keeps getting asked, “Are you guys still friends? Do you still talk to each other?”
Now I’m not sure if everyone just knows that adoptingmama’s so fab that anyone would miss having her around, or if they all just know that I could drive a saint to the brink of insanity, but I still find it hilarious that we get asked such different questions. And then there’s the looks of total amazement when we tell them that, yeah, we’re fine, we still talk to each other and even over the course of a weekend, have been back and forth to each others houses a half-dozen times.
I mean, Lord have mercy, the two of us trekked down to Ikea 3 times over Memorial Day weekend! If that’s not sistahs for life, I don’t know what is ;-)
And after getting up at o’dark-hundred for a Memorial Day run to Ikea, a full day a the church picnic, and a half-hour of furniture unloading to boot, Twin A stood there in my house, hands behind her back as the rest of her family trailed out to the car.
“Um, your Mom’s leaving – were you planning on staying here for the evening?”
“Yup.”
“Oh. Well, it’s okay with me, but you should probably check with your mom first.”
A short chat later, and Twin A and Twin B stood on my porch, waving goodbye to the rest of the family.
“This is our first sleepover!” said Twin B.
“Where should we sleep?” said Twin A.
(Umm, in the bed you’ve been sleeping in for four months?)
Empty nest? I have four new nieces and nephews who’re already planning out of summer full of sleepovers, field trips and Rock Band; I don’t see that my day’s are going to be changing all that much.
Adoptingmama just has a way better place to sleep come night time ;-)
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[ Posted by bibliomom
Mon, 18 May 2009 23:43:30 GMT ]
Children on the Autism spectrum have many … unusual traits. Hyper-oversensitivity or under-sensitivity to sound, vision, texture or taste and obsessive-compulsive behavior towards certain tasks or topics are two of my personal favorites. So when my daughter gets off the school bus on a rainy spring day with a denim mini-skirt, a parka, bare legs and cupcake print rainboots, I know that everyone from the janitor to the speech therapist assumes that it was a texture or color issue, or something else unavoidable.
But it’s not. Other than a bit (okay – a little more than “a bit”) of a pink obsession, she’s actually fairly fashion conscious for a six year old. No where near the fashion victim level, but deeply concerned about her clothes “making a match” and not “looking dorky”.
So Bug’s not the problem. Autistic fixation isn’t the problem. No, the problem’s much taller and geekier than that, namely, her dad.
Yes, the man who had the audacity to tell me the night of the ill-fated mini-combo, “Did you see? I matched her skirt to a black top!”
Well, yes, aside from the fact that black matches almost everything in the known world, very few people send a kindergartner to school in a mini-skirt and a turtleneck with no tights.
Especially not in a parka and rainboots.
Excuse me – a hot pink parka and rainboots.
When I brought this up, he looked hurt and said the parka was “unavoidable”. Of course this *is* the man I had to red flag last month for trying to wear olive green shorts with bright red tee-shirts, so it’s not exactly a new problem.
Now, I am sooooooo not a fashion person. The princess gene my daughter so obviously possesses is just as obviously not from me - I still have to hold up print shirts to solid pants to make sure the dark browns match. I know my limitations. But when my daughter got off the bus today wearing orange and pink floral capris, a baby-blue and white shirt (with pink sparkly pigs), brown mary-janes with athletic socks and a sparkly orange headband, I felt like the stylin’ queen of the cul-de-sac.
And really, really stupid.
Ah, well. It’s only clothes. Though I really should go back through her drawers and match up her outfits again. Especially since her dad is still kind enough to put her on the bus in the morning.
Poor bug; even her princess gene is no match for her father’s utter lack of fashion sense. It’s probably just as well she lacks the social maturity to realize how dorky she looks – she’d never go to school again. That, or she’d toilet-paper him while he sleeps – it could go either way.
Now, I hope you’ll excuse me while I go try and convince my son that shirts and pants can not be declared a “match” through a common geometric theme. (“Um, honey – striped beach pants really don’t match your striped dress shirt …”)
You know, it really never occurred to me that a battle could be uphill both ways.
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[ Posted by bibliomom
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:55:08 GMT ]
So, a couple of Sundays ago, we were sitting around the house watching the rain start looking substantially more solid. I was coughing my head off and had completely missed church due to the third … or was it the fourth … week of bronchitis.
DH, ever tactful said, “OMG – are you ever going to stop coughing?”
“I don’t know … hack hack … going out in the cold last night totally … hack hack… set me off. I need to like, …hack… go to the desert and dry out or something.”
He looked out at the falling slush, grabbed his computer and said, “Okay, let’s go.”
“What?”
“Mmmm, yeah, M’s online … yeah, he’s fine with it … and there’s nothing pressing here … and I can do that one thing better there, anyway …”
He snapped the computer shut and told me to start packing.
Seriously.
We were out of the house in about two hours, fleeing the cold front that was moving in. We spent Tuesday in Mountain View so Scott could work at the main Google complex, and by Wednesday night we were at my sister’s in San Diego.
Do I still have a cough?
Well, yeah – a bit. But thanks to warm(er) weather and Julia’s mad Chinese medicine voodoo skillz, I don’t go into massive respiratory arrest every time I go out in the cold. It wasn’t exactly toasty down there, but it wasn’t snowing like it was here, and we got a daily dose of vitamin C from Julia’s personal herd of citrus trees. Best of all, I actually got to see my husband for more than five minutes at a stretch. It took a while to get used to talking to him in person instead of IM over the computer, but I managed.
Now, how awesome is that?
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[ Posted by bibliomom
Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:09:06 GMT ]
As a good geek wife, I have learned to deal with the euphemisms of the computer world. Which is to say, when I call my husband to see if he might be stopping by the house sometime in the next week, I’m no longer surprised if he just yells, “It’s all blowing up!” into the phone a couple times and then hangs up.
Geek wife translation? “Sorry dear, things are really hectic at work right now. Don’t wait up for me tonight, because I might not be coming home until morning. If I make it home at all.”
Geek Life really is it’s own thing. But since I grew up a Navy brat, it wasn’t that hard of a transition: military life and geek life are both unique cultures almost completely removed from the 9-5 job set; both have their own jargon and special job requirements; and both are such lifestyle shapers that the culture affects not only the employee, but their entire family. And let’s not forget the bizarre hours that are almost incomprehensible to those outside of that life. In the military, it was “Dad’s on cruise for the next three months – if you’re really good, maybe he’ll bring you something from Japan.” With my kids it’s more like, “Honey, I know that Dad’s home for the first time in three days, but he was paged 120 times yesterday, and he’s still trying to get Zurich back online. Maybe if we’re lucky, he’ll play Xbox with us after dinner.”
But while my husband is a born geek, he didn’t come from geeks. (Well, at least not directly – his Grandmother was a main-frame programmer, but that’s another story.)
No, his family does construction. Serious construction. Concrete, steel, heavy machinery - the works. Let’s put it this way: when I brought my kids up their farm this last summer, they went out to pick cherries.
In the boom truck.
A thirty foot boom truck.
Needless to say, listening in on his phone conversations with his family is fascinating.
“Wow – that’s a lot of snow, Mom … Six foot drifts? … Well, yes, I guess the excavator would take care of that … ”
But this morning the collision of construction and computers was running full tilt.
“Well, it’s been a really busy week at work, Mom … Yes … Well, out of all of the services my group runs, all but one crashed spectacularly and publicly …”
“Yes, Mom – that’s bad …”
Sensing a lack of comprehension, he tried harder to explain:
“Okay, pretend you worked at a factory … You went in that morning expecting to see machinery clicking and humming along … Uh-huh … and instead, you opened the door and saw a giant wall of flames … .”
“No, Mom, it was wasn’t actually on fire … though that has happened before …”
I love my in-laws – they’re fabulous people. I love that they can bring an excavator down when we need to take out a diseased tree and are willing to drop everything to spend quality time with their grandchildren. Their current understanding of geek culture extends to: he makes good money and seems to be paying his bills.
I think I can settle for that ;-).
Posted in my crazy life | 1 comment
[ Posted by bibliomom
Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:22:03 GMT ]
So, we’re over a week into co-habitating with adoptingmama and her lovely family …
Oh, wait, did I completely fail to mention that we were doing that? My bad ;-P
Let’s back up.
Last summer, adoptingmama decided they were really, really going to be leaving the idylls of Hawaii in order to return to the rain laden charms of Seattle. (Okay – all of you rolling around on the floor crying, “Why? Why? Dear Lord WHY?!” can get up now – she has her reasons.) Being a tidy and organized person in both mind and house, she wanted to get all her waterproof duckies in a row.
“So, I want you to ask Scott before you answer, but would it be okay if we stayed with you guys while we’re looking for a house there?”
“You know we’ve talked about this before.”
“I know, but I just want to make sure …”
Of course my beloved husband said it far better than I ever could: “All the rest of your sisters have lived with us – why not her?”
And that’s the point, really: family is ultimately a decision. Adoptingmama and I didn’t grow up together and don’t share a biological tie, but at this point we’ve decided we’re family, so it’s all good.
She’s afraid her family will wear out their welcome – I’m afraid she’ll drive herself crazy trying to get my kitchen floor clean. (“Do you have a putty knife? I think I can get this up …”) She keeps stressing out about imposing on us – I keep reminding her that she’s the one living in a basement. And Scott just keeps saying that as long as they don’t charge us for all the play therapy her kids are giving Bug, it’s all good.
(Have I mentioned that I adore my husband?)
So it’s been fun. Maybe not quite as much fun as when all ten of us were staying all their place in Hawaii with warm beaches and vacation time to burn, but still fun. ;-)
Right now, it’s the middle of the night and I’m sitting in front of a warm fireplace, watching the snow fall. I’m sick with a cold, you see, and was able to sleep half of yesterday because I had someone else to help take my kids to Church, feed them and clean up after them. Tomorrow, God willing, we’ll all wake up to another fun day of playing and homeschooling, hot tea and knitting, and generally spending our time taking care of our children, our husbands, and ourselves. We both know that life is a gift and that every day is a blessing, so we’re trying to make the most of this special time our families are spending together.
I have four sisters. Two of them are biological. The other two are by choice. I know that whole, “it takes a village thing,” but it doesn’t really work for me. I think it really takes what I am blessed enough to have: a family.
1 comment
[ Posted by bibliomom
Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:03:31 GMT ]
A friend’s nine year old daughter began picking a fine bone of contention with her father.
“Stop being pedantic,” he said, immediately provoking a response of, “But I don’t even know what that is!”
Our friend looked over at my husband, who immediately looked at me.
“Cyn? Care to define Pedantic?”
I, of course, shot him a dirty look and pulled up the relevant wikipedia page.
“Did you know that “pedant” has an archaic female form? It’s “pedantess”.”
Then I turned to my friend’s daughter and said, “That is, by definition, pedantic.”
And all the adults snickered.
Three college educated adults and none of us were willing to risk a less than perfect definition for a balky eight year old.
As my friend said to his daughter, “Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree …”
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[ Posted by bibliomom
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:13:34 GMT ]
So, I’ve always love the auto-suggest function of search engines – they’re just soooo entertaining. But I think the King County Library System has now achieved my new favorite suggested search phrase.
I entered (quoting a book title I found on Amazon): “Homeschooling the Child with Asperger Syndrome”.
I received: “Did you mean homecoming the child with caperers?”
Okay, yah – you might want to talk to Google about search terms …
1 comment
[ Posted by bibliomom
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:08:42 GMT ]
Time: 9:28 a.m., Sunday morning
Location: master bedroom
Situation: trying to get Bug’s hair bob’s straight before we hop in the time machine and actually make it to Church on-time for once.
Me: “Baby, please hold still – Mama can’t fix your hair if you’re upside down.”
Bug: “Ow! It hurts! Ow, ow!”
Me: “Fine! Go to church with dorky hair!”
Bug: “NOOOOOO! NOT DORKY HAIR! NOOOO!”
And she came back, wiggly but willing, for me to fix the hair bobs so she no longer looked liked she had horns.
Amazing.
And those of you with experience with spectrum kids know exactly what I’m talking about.
Posted in my crazy life | 1 comment
[ Posted by bibliomom
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:46:13 GMT ]
Every so often I go through these phases as the mom of a high-functioning spectrum kid: “Oh, look at me whine – she’s not that bad, I’m just undisciplined and messy. Look at X – now she has a real special needs kid. At least I have some real hope that my kids might move out and get jobs some day …”
That sort of thing Usually it’s after Bug’s been fairly well behaved and/or off at school half the day, and I’m just busy being depressed how how messy and disorganized I am.
And usually, she follows up by doing something spectacularly horrific that makes me want to bang my head against a wall till I pass out.
Over the hols, she’s was just more on a low-level reign of terror – hiding under the table and cutting up pads of paper, emptying her drawers onto the floor, arranging the entire stack of paper plates into crop circles on the kitchen floor – nothing spectacular. But now that she’s back in school and I’m finally over the plague, I’ve been more able to follow her around and pretend to be “good-mom”.
“Oh, here honey – let’s cut paper at the table. Oh, here baby – when you color on paper towels with markers, it goes through and stains Mommy’s carpet … like this. Let’s move to the counter and get real paper, okay?”
Which leads to me thinking, “Oh, she’s not that bad, I’m just a whiner.”
Which I am, but that’s not the point ;-P
The point is that DH came downstairs the other night, rolling his eyes and twitching.
“What is up with Bug? She just like a highly concentrated mass of destruction! She sat there, trying to listen to the story and couldn’t leave anything alone – she tore pillows out of cases, ripped tissues out of the box, pulled books off the shelf … man.”
And then I remember, “Oh, that’s right – she’s not an average, neuro-typical kid. She our Bug, and we love her.
As closely as possible.
Posted in my crazy life | no comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:10:55 GMT ]
Okay, so I’ve seen the kiddy temporary tattoos with spaces for contact info before, but my dear friend adoptingmama found some really awesome ones.
Mind you, they’ve been blogged before, I was just really impressed that they have autism specific ones, pre-printed food allergy models, and even special “non-verbal” and “non-verbal autism” editions.
How great is that?! I would have killed for these when we had Bug at Disneyland. Bug’s better than she used to be – she might actually give her name if she was asked – but back when she was still largely non-verbal, something like this would have been wonderful for the zoo, the fair, or pretty much anything else like that. And as silly as it sounds, I really appreciate the tactful graphics for the autism and non-verbal tats – it’s an emotional subject for both parents and children, and physically labeling your child with a big AUTISM tat can be a little stressful, for both kids and adults. It shows a lot of sensitivity, or at least I see it that way.
I really need to get off my hiney and order some and see how they go over, both in a “Are they Bug-proof?” and “Are they Bug-compatible?” way. Which is to say, will she let me put them on and will they stay there once I do.
Posted in compulsive research & product reviews | no comments
