Coincidence?

Sometimes there are moments I life that catch me off guard and make me stop.  I had one of those today.

Several months ago my best friend from 4th grade told me she was pregnate, then she told me that her due date was a day after Elijah's due date.  I was super excited, for I think she will be an awesome mom.  Due to the baby refusing to flip around, she had to go in early to get the baby out. In she went on Friday and out came baby!  They, like I, chose to deliver at the hospital slightly far from our house but with an amazing reputation.  So today, 2 days shy of my own son's birthday, I returned to the hospitali delivered in.  As I'm walking through the mother/baby floor I get flashbacks of 5 years ago.  As I enter the final hallway it clicks, there is no flipping way, she is in the same room as I was with Elijah.  You have got to be kidding me. Between the baby, the new parents, and being back in the same room I was in with Elijah I welled up with tears several times.  Even as I got home and was talking to BJ about it I started to cry.  It's stupid, maybe it's because she has been like a sister to me over the past 24 years, or because by the time any of my siblings have kids they will be so far away I won't be able to see them in the hospital, but I am in love with this baby and her mommy and daddy.  

I think I might go back tomorrow too.  BJ wants to come too.  He will love her too, I just know it.

Poor X

I have been attending some training a these past few days about Autism.  However, I took all these trainings last year and have been going to refresh my memory.  This leads me to some points during the lectures/presentations where, surprise, surprise, I get distracted and my brain starts to wander.  On one of these days, we were in a kindergarten room of the school and the only thing on the walls was the alphabet strip.  Of course only the first three letters and last five letters were visible so I became fixated on the lonely letter X.  Poor guy.  He doesn't have many words that start with him, and his name is his sound.   You know when you say the letter M sound you go mmmmmmm.  For X you say "eks" or X.  That sucks for him.  And sometimes in words like xylophone, he sounds like Z not eksylophone.  Just saying, I feel bad for the poor letter.  

That is all carry on.

Shoes and their laces

We have all heard them. Those short comments that make such a huge impact they stick with you forever. I think any comment that questions your parenting no matter what kind of parent you are hurts 10 times more than anything else.  

Well known fact, I'm a pediatric Speech Language Pathologist and developmental milestones are a huge perseveration/ hobby of mine.  I like to know a majority of the gross motor stages, (rolling, sitting, crawling, walking) and of course the speech/language ones (totally not enough time), and fine motor (grap patterns, sensory, writing and other stuff).  When it came to these milestones I was, well, hypersensitive to these things.  Watching, observing, not pushing too soon but knowing to push a bit more as we came close to the end of "typically" developing range.  I pride myself on the fact that Elijah has hit almost all skills within age range and never too early. I didn't push potty training until 2.5 years even though he probably could have done it closer to 2. Stair climbing/both feet leaving the ground, not his strong point, but he can play on the playground fine and I don't have fears of broken bones in my future.  We're all good.  I do confess though, I did bring him in for a speech screening because I'll be damned if my child shows up at school and needed speech services!!

That comment I was hinting at? Oh you know, when I knew the independence of my 2-3 year old was more important than skills that are too advanced for them and allowed Elijah to have Velcro shoes/boots/sandals.  Here's the comment, are you ready? 

"All these kids with these Velcro shoes these days, no one ever takes the time to reach them how to tie.  Kids and parents are just so lazy now days."

It would be one thing if I over heard this in a store, but I didn't.  It was in my home, made about my son's shoes.  I kid you not, it took every ounce of strength to not turn around wave my developmental milestone knowledge in their face.  It hurt.  I did though sit on this until 7 days before my son turned 5. We have started shoe tying.  It's a hard thing to learn and teach. The number of steps, the fine motor, it's a lot for a little kid.  

To make matters worse for the poor boy, everyone is teaching him a different way.  Giving him their extra two cents on "how this will make it easier."  We only started yesterday, my goal is for him to get the shoe lace cross, under and pull tight.  STOP. That's it.  The loops need to be done on longer laces than what he has on his shoes, but he doesn't stop trying.

Tonight ended in tears out of frustration. But he is so motivated. Probably because he can't wear his superman shoes to school, until he can tie them myself. We will keep trying, we will get this and he can wear those shoes on the first day of kindergarten.

How do you think I would share huge news?

It is not a secret when I was 24 I created a 7 year plan for my life it included getting married, having a baby buying, selling and buying a house and having a second child.  In my 7 year plan I wanted my second child born the summer of 2014.  Well guess what, life got in the way of my plan.  Seeing as I'm not pregnant I don't think I will be having a baby this summer.  However, this is the problem everyone is way to hypersensitive to the thought of me telling the world I'm pregnant.  Like if I happen to mention that I'm not feeling well today that was not code for please ask me if I'm pregnant, that will make me feel 100 times better.  Also I will talk about our future with a second child openly around my first child, but that is not the announcement of a baby in our life.  Don't worry we will tell everyone in a great way, and our family will know in a very clear way no questions should be asked.  Don't worry we won't wait for the last 5 minutes of our 7 hour day to drop a small clue that we might have a baby... No no it will be something like we are pregnate and the baby will be here_______.  See no questions, clear as day.  I'll let the rest of the world know about 4 weeks after that.  Deal?  

Oh wait you don't have a choice.    

Guess who's back..

In the words of Slim Shaddy, guess who's back, back again. Kelly's back again.... Okay school is done, I survived.  Garage sale is done, I survived that too. Summer school has started and I'm moving into a summer frame of mind.  Let's hope that mind includes some rocktastic blogs.  

March???

Wow! Who is bad at blogging? Ooh pick me! 

I mean really, the past week I have been on spring break with Elijah still going to daycare you would think I could blog every now and again...well apparently not.  Spring break this year has been, well, different.  First of all this is my first spring break since 2005 (I don't think I had one my last year of grad school), second my husband only gets 10 vacation days a year so to take five to sit at home would not be a good use of them, third, I still was going to pay for daycare so Elijah might as well go and have something to do.  Now in all fairness to me, I did spend the ENTIRE day cleaning on Monday. This house looked amazing.  On Tuesday I hung with new baby down the street for breakfast then went to meet my husband at IKEA for lunch and to look at closet organizers.  That turned into not liking the closet thing I thought I would want and BJ finding one he did like.  He then left me as I was going to walk around for a bit.  As I was leaving I walked through the "as is" section only to find a pile of boxes marked for $90. The boxes were returns or damage or something but you had to buy the whole pile.  In the pile were 4 of the new closet systems that we wanted and each new cost $100. Now I love deals.  I walked around that pile 20 times, I got down on the floor making sure we could use at least two of the unites, I asked,if I had to buy the rest that I didn't want, I called BJ at least 3 times.  Finally I decided, let's do it.  Then I had to figure out how to get it home.  The longest box was over 93 inches long and weighs well over $100, and remember, BJ went back to work.  A nice worker helped me load the first fe into the car the a very nice passerby helped with the long ones and tying down my trunk.  By the time I knew it, it was 5 and nothing really got done, other than buying $1000 of random Ikea stuff for under $100. Wednesday was appointment day, first my hair, then Elijah and I had our eyes checked, then I had my two clients. That day was shot. Today was drury and gray and took me over 2 hours to get ready. I had one more kid today and then spent the day grocery shopping.  Wahoo, I know. Tomorrow I am taking Elijah to the zoo for mom and child time, he is so excited, and to be honest, so am I.

Made up words

All kids do it, either make  up words or mispronounce words.  Elijah is in that stage of life.  He is learning so much vocabulary right now he was bound to get some errors in.  I would have been upset if he didn't to tell you the truth.  For example, Brebrember=remember.  But my favorite one has to be, globby.  From my understanding globby means blurry or fuzzy.  Ways I have heard it in sentences by the creator, my eyes are globby but if I rub them it goes away.  Or it is really globby outside (foggy).  Everyday any he says something new that I enjoy he keeps me on my toes that's for sure.

P.S. Elijah is eligible for walk in speech but I think I will pass and just deal with it over the summer.  

The day has come

I feel as though I should start with a duh duh dunnnnnnnn or at least a trumpet dododadooooo.  Elijah is going in for a speech screening at the school district.  I know you can say it I won't judge, "it's about time!"  I know, I know.  I have known since he was just shy of 3. I knew he needed speech, I knew his speech development was not normal, I also know that once an atypical speech pattern starts it will not correct itself.  I know that there are phonological processes that should disappear by certain ages.  Yet I waited.  I needed a job and no time over the last 2 years was I able to get my son in for therapy and back home in between what I was doing.   I know I know.  Tomorrow I will know for real if my SLP and mothers intuition were correct or just in crazy over drive.  And since Elijah has to come with me to second job maybe I'll throw him at my coworker there and have her evaluate him too.  Summer 2014 is the summer of speech for little man.  

IEPs take 2

An IEP is the shortened name of Individulizes Education Plan. Each child 3-21 in a school that receives services, speech/ occupational/ physical therapy/ modifications on tests, blah blah blah.  What most people don't understand about IEPs is the amount of time and effort that goes into each one. I will let you peak at the process of IEPs.  

Like I said, all students on my caseload have to have an IEP.  Every year the IEP needs to be reviewed with goals to be addressed over the next school year and results of the last year reviewed.  Every three years a child needs to be reassessed with a more intense review of current level of performance.  For a non-review year I would gather the data from the past year write a report (45 minutes or so), meet with teachers, aids, and other services (30-90 minutes) discussing overall progress for the past year.  We also discuss the most appropriate goals for the up coming year and the best placement for them.   For those three year reviews, you have to add in testing time, scoring of the test, analyzing the test, meeting with others doing testing to discuss their results, a more intense report explaining the testing and scores.  That adds about an hour onto whole process.   

That is just the physical process.  What doesn't get added into the IEP time is the time I spend laying awake thinking of goals, letting test scores sink in and processing. I think about these kids in the shower, making dinner, in bed when I should be sleeping, in my dreams and in the car.  

As professionals we put out heart and soul into these kids lives to give them the most help to let them succed with the least amount of support.  We get together as a team and recommend from our hearts.  We don't sit around and pick our favorite kid and give them everything while the rest we try to screw over. I sometimes felt while in private practice parents viewed the IEP as a time of us against them.  We really are on the kids side, but due to policies we might not be able  do what we fully want, but guess what, you can't do it in all in the private practice either.  There are limitations there too, but those are not viewed as horrible.  We are professionals, we do know what we are talking about and for my caseload of 26-28 by the end of IEP season I will be surprised if I can still function.  

Future

One thing that is said is future behavior can be predicted by past events.  With that knowledge you all will be lucky to hear in April.  I was so wiped out by two IEPs this past month, I don't know what I will do come April with my 12... I for see LOTS of margaritas that month!   

IEPs

Well I had a great post... Then I hit the stupid undo button and lost it all.... You've got to be kidding me.  I'm not in the beat mood this week and my explanation was just deleted.  How do you think that makes me feel? Awesome.

I don't have the time or the patients to explain why guess I'll try again tomorrow.  Grrr.   

Close call

One of the best things about working in the schools is the theme days they have.  I really think that they are more for the teachers especially the pajama days.  Today I thought was one of those days.  I'm in my yoga pants and show up to school.  However, I was there fairly early today and didn't see anyone.  Then all of a sudden in see two teachers, not in their pjs...uh oh.  Did I read the e-mail wrong, was it really next Monday?  Small panic attack followed by quick math of leaving, changing, and getting back to work.  I whip out my computer and check my email.  All good, it was today.  Tomorrow at my other school it is pj day too.  Score!

Thoughts

One of the reasons I wanted to go back to blogging was because I feel like my brain is always on.  Sometimes it comes up with some weird scientific questions, sometimes it replays events from my day with alternative endings, some times it just gets stuck in thought.  When my brain does this I have a tendency to feel weird while expressing these thoughts.  All throught life we get a lot of practice expressing two emotions: happy and anger.  Happy is the easy one, anger we are taught what is acceptable and how to control it.  But the other emotions are hard, sometimes I can't even appropriately label the emotion I feel.  Therefore, blogging allows me to express my thoughts without the actual awkward social interaction that I want to avoid.  I do want people to know the thoughts but I don't necessarily feel comfortable in that moment.  I guess this is the point that I should warn all of the emotional readers out there at work (Mom), if I as reading this I would probably cry.  So close down the web page and wait for later or grab your tissues and here we go...

This year has already put our family though a bit of a roller coaster and we are bairly 60 days in.  During the first few weeks of the year we found out BJ's mother was rediagnosed with breast cancer but that was all we knew.  We spent many days talking about what test she was going to have, what it would tell us and how would we react to the information we would get.  It came down to cancer localized in just her breasts which would mean chemo followed by a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.  All very scary.  All kinds of emotions that we didn't have a lot of practice dealing with.  I mean his family hasn't yet healed from the loss of BJ's grandfather in August, let alone a new family member being horribly ill.  But as the weeks go by the thoughts that are stuck in my head are these:

-Several years ago a pastor did a sermon on Why God? The question we all ask when bad things happen to good people.  The result of the sermon was we are asking the wrong question.  We should be asking "What do you want me to learn from this God?"  So I have been.  Still waiting on my answer, but I think I may be able to help my mother-in-law with her answer. 

-God creates us both externally and internally but sometimes our eyes and minds overlook our best assets that we are given.  My mother-in-law is a strong woman who has had to deal with lots of things in her life that most couldn't imagin.  But I don't think she knows how strong she is.  She has one of the most kind hearts, which makes her a great nurse, but again I don't think she knows it.  She also had beautiful red hair, that she did know.  But notice it is now a had, the chemo that will fight off the cancer stripped her of her hair, but it can't take away the other parts of her.  I think God needed her to know her true beauty.  She needs to be able to see how amazing of a person she is, no matter what she looks like.  This weekend we spent Saturday with all the family and you know what? The littlest kid, never even noticed.  He knows and sees the true beauty, love.  He loves her and she loves all of us.  

-I also feel that this strong, caring heart has taken away her time to really focus on herself.  She is so concerned about how everyone else is she forgets to be just the smallest bit selfish and do things for her.  Well now she is doing things for herself and saying things to people she might not have before.  It pains me to see great people be taken advantage of and walked over just because they are too afraid of the others views.  In reality most people don't even know that they are doing something rude or wrong.  I mean how many times do people get into arguments because they thought the other person knew something they didn't? More often than we probably think.  I just hope she continues to say what she feels, and listen to the responses she gets.

Tomorrow is treatment number two which will take us on yet another crazy ride, but as her body fights the cancer she grows stronger in ways I bet she never knew and I the end she will have boobs perkier than most twenty year olds and more hair/wigs than most actresses and her inner beauty will be shining out of ever part of her.  Talk about life cycle of a butterfly...

Funny

I'm not 100% on why I found this so funny! but I did.  I now present to you a Siberian Husky wearing a Siberian Husky hat.  

Maybe it's the eyes. Who knows, but it made me laugh.

On another note:

Happy birthday to my father in-law enjoy your youth.

Another note:

It was a warm 40 today with steady rain and now fierce winds that might blow us to Florida, which would be Awesome!

Sorry that dog put me into a slap happy mood today.  

Summer

Okay, well maybe not quite there yet but we are getting closer, I can feel it.  Today it actually was up to 44 degrees, which according to the radio has been the first day since the end of January to be over freezing.  Wahoo! I actually was excited for this week of weather, 40's all weekend rain on Thursday.  Then next week it will be back to the 20s...all week.  Boooo!

On a related note I'm almost done with my boat.  I think I may need it soon.

Wonder what snow looks like?

Well I'm not going to show you. If you want to see what snow looks like please go to Facebook and look at any and all people who live in any of the northern states. Also if you want to see the temp here open up your weather channel app and see for yourself. Instead I will show you my boys together on the couch watching dad race cars.  

I love both my boys and my youngest boy loves his daddy. And my oldest boy loves his son. 

P.S. Go Hawks!

Auto show

For the 6th year in a row we went to the Chicago Auto Show for our Valentine's Day celebration.  Most people don't enjoy the auto show,it it doesn't bug me.  After awhile most of the cars start to look the same but I don't care. My husband seems to enjoy it and he knows more about cars than I do.  The first year we went I was pregnate with my little monkey and this year was the first year since we didn't drag a stoller around with us.  I was not sure how Elijah would do with all the walking but he did it without needing to many breaks.  Here are some pictures of our day.  

 

 

At the end of the day Elijah was rewarded with ice cream and was aloud to throw some money into the fountain to make a wish.  When he was done I asked him what his wish was and it was to see Grandma, I kid you not within minutes I get a text from Grandma wondering if we were still there.  Yup his wish came true.  As we wre tucking him in that night, he told me his favorite part of the day was the whole thing.  Can't beat that can you!

If I had to pick it for him though it would have been the hand stamp he got, ice cream, making silly movies, or sitting in all the driver seats. 

Who? Who?

Elijah learned a new joke this weekend, compliments of my mom, here it goes the best it can for a one sided joke experience.

Knock knock

Whose there?

Cow says?

Cow says Who?

Cows don't say who they say moo!!!

But what does say who you ask? Why they owl that lives in our hood.  He has been coming out more, not sure if he is hungry because there is so much snow or if he is just keeping a friendly eye on the neighborhood.  If he is hungry I would gladly invite him into our dead body room (aka the wasted space under our stairs that is the closest thing we have as a crawl space/basement) where all the mice seem to be visiting during these cold months.  

Tonight however, I thing his wooing??? If that's what you call what an owl does, woke up the dog.  We went to see if we could spy our night time friend and sure enough there he/she was sitting on the top of the house across the street from us.  I think he needs a name this is the third time this winter I have heard him, and the third time I have seen him since we moved it. (Assuming the owl I saw leaving work in November was the same one). Any suggestions on a good owl name and although he is white I will not accept Hedgwig.  That bird died a horrible death and I want to keep this one around a while.  Just saying.  

False spring

When I wake in the morning I always peak out the window across the room hoping for a sneak peak of the weather. Today when I got up I saw a bit of the sunrise and was excited that it was a sign of spring! Wahooo! I should also mention that last night I did not sleep well and did not feel well most of the day.  In fact, as I'm writing this I am laying in bed and will be asleep within the hour.  I slowly started getting ready taking several breathers along the way praying I would be able to make it into work.  After my shower, is shuffled out of the bathroom wanting to lay back down before dealing with my hair, makeup, and clothes, I casually glance at the clock and notice it says 7:00.  Here is the internal dialogue that followed.  

Hmmm that's odd, I think I typically leave the house for work at 7:00.  I think I leave for work that 7:00, ugh I really don't feel well.  What time did I tell my mom to be here today that's when I typically leave.  I think it was between 7:00-7:30.  How did I take an hour and a half shower and not run out of water.  Wait, what time is it.  Yup 7:05.  How the heck am I going to get this done?

End internal dialogue, begin external dialogue.  BJ, GET UP IT'S 7:00 I MUST HAVE TURNED OFF MY ALARM. GET UP GET UP!  

I then proceded to run around unorganized opening doors, getting Elijah, looking for my clothes.  It wasn't until I was in my schools parking lot that I realized the sun I saw at what I thought was 5:30 was really the 6:30 sun.  Well that sucks! Guess I'll just have to wait a bit longer until spring.  

Rescue

When we first got our dog we had issues to say the least.  After trying to train her we came to realize she was a bit, well, different.  She wasn't motivated by food when there was ANYTHING that could distract her.  Our training method was a positive reinforcer, you do what we tell you to do, you get a treat.  Guess what, she didn't do so well.  We also never were able to solve our dominance issues.  We finally had a sit down meeting with one of the "behavior specialists" and were told that we were going to have to choose between our new dog or children because she would never be good with kids.  This caused a huge fight between BJ and I.  He refused to give up on the poor puppy, and I couldn't imagin putting our children in danger with a dog that could possibly bite them.  We then found a negative reinforcement training program, you do what I say or you get a pinch on your collar.  It took a while and we still do have minimal issues but nothing to big.  

That leads us to the present.  Lately, we have been having a harder and harder time finding Rescue at the end of the day.  Typically she is laying on my pillow in the middle of our bed, but the last few nights, Elijah's bed.  Last night was one of those nights.  So much so, I didn't even see her in there at first glance. 

Keep in mind my son is laying under his pillows at the top of his bed so that might have slightly distracted me.  We ended up fixing Elijah, tucking him in, and leaving him there.  Most nights, Rescue I will leave and come into our room within a couple of minutes.  This morning when we were awoken by our 7am alarm "MOMMY, THE SUN IS UP!" Which is actually translated to, Mom I'm awake can I get up, Rescue was still in his bed.  He came into our room, crawled in bed and we started talking about the dog spending the night with him.  His response, "yeah, I covered her with blue blankie." So BJ got up to go check on her...

Yup, I'm glad BJ convinced me to keep her.  Elijah loves her so much and she knows that he is her human.

On a side note, our whole story with Rescue reminds me so much of kids with behaviors or special needs.  Lots of times they just get a generic, "you should do this" without being fully understood.  Most of the kids I work with are driven my anxiety and live most of their life in a fight or flight state of mind.  Without understanding what is the cause of the anxiety to help decrease it, they look naughty.  I don't know how many kids are just given up on instead of really understood.  Just goes to show you even though she is a dog, she has taught me a ton about life.