Suburban Jungle

I just love a beautiful spring day. Especially when I get to play with my Nikon while the kiddies nap:

Lilac bush next to my front porch.

The buds on the grape arbor are beginning to tentatively peek out at the spring sunshine.

My Bleeding Heart

I'm trying to link to someone else's blog...

My friend, Melody, sent me a link to her sister's blog with something she and her family wrote. They were guest bloggers on her sister's blog and chose to talk about the unintended insensitivities that people have when dealing with families of developmentally delayed children:

Things you should never say to parents of children with special needs:

http://aprilhenry.livejournal.com/142086.html

I really appreciate what she wrote. #6 is especially true for me.

NOT HOT tub Rant

Do you see that? Do you? What does that look like?

I'll tell you what it looks like: it looks like a rain sodden cedar box with a brown synthetic leather-looking lid and some crappy plastic steps. It is my un-hot tub.

That's right. NOT HOT hot tub.

See, I wanted to go out and soak in my HOT tub this afternoon while my chickadees were napping, you know, time to unwind, enjoy the lovely Pacific Northwest "sunshine" and de-stress. So, why am I not out in my supposedly HOT tub? Well, the stinking GCFI (or whatever the electrician called it) has fouled--again. The breaker switch has blown 5 times in 10 days. THAT IS A LOT! Too freaking much. So, as a consequence, every time the switch blows, the hot tub shuts off until we reset the breaker. Result: a NOT HOT tub. So, until the electrician can pencil us into his schedule (Monday, if we're lucky) we just have to put up with a NOT HOT hot tub.

Waaa, waa, waa, you say. At least you have a hot tub, you say. Well, I'm just a big, grumpy, pissed off baby. Damn proud of it, too. Today is a rant, after all.

Long time, no see

I just realized, it has been a long time since I've visited the Day to day. Oh well. Que sera, sera. Right?

An update: I had the crud, got well, now (surprise!) I've got it again. Currently I'm taking a day off of work to get well. I'm doing a good job of being sick. I've been in bed twice for naps and, amazingly, I've been able to resist the lure of cleaning house. Really. I have.

See, as a working mom cleaning house is a whole new chore. Once, when single (read: without kidlets) I could theoretically clean my whole house in an hour or so (including goofing off to watch the idiot box or check email or some such).

Nowadays, cleaning with the Peanut and Chub-chub in tow is at best an all day event or at the worst an all week event (and, in that case scenario, one cannot even tell said cleaning has happened). So, to be home all day with the kids at the sitter and a messy house all around me, normally-- the pull to clean would be as overpowering as Kriptonite is to Superman. Not today. Kudos to me. Yippee! I feel crappy and I have a messy house. I rule.

Last Saturday, we were impulsive. Is such a thing possible with two small children, you ask? Yes, young grasshopper, I say: It is.

Again, leaving an uncleaned house (do I detect a trend? gulp.) we loaded up the mommy-mobile and spur-of-the-moment, went to the beach. We had a blast. The kids were happy on the drive (a feat, previously, unheard of) and we had a great time finding a stretch of beach to plunk down our requisite beach junk, dig in the sand, and fly our cheap-o plastic kite (the cheap one B.J. and I bought umpteen years ago when we were still dating. And you accuse me of being a pack-rat? Forsooth! It is memorabilia from a long gone epoch.) I got some cool pictures of the day. I present to you, for your viewing enjoyment, 'the beach at L.C.':

The Peanut, aspiring architect:

Chub-chub, a.k.a. "The demolition expert":

The Peanut also found some muscles. Likely leftovers from sea animal who was scared off by the noisy beach goers:

And, of course, here I am. Flying that proverbial kite:

I've got the Crud

I've got the crud. You know the stuff. You feel tired, cranky, and just want to wear your favorite sweats all day and become one with the couch. The nasty, funky, watery post-nasal drip, congested sinuses, a slight cough, and the dull roar of a headache that is threatening to turn into (dare I mention it?) a sinus infection crud. I hate the crud.

I've gotten home from work, checked my umpteen worthless (read: no grant approval statement--yet) emails, crammed a sandwich, and now I am off to beddie-bye. Must sleep off the crud. Must get well before 7pm (school concert that I'm obliged to attend). I hate being less than 'factory fresh.' Waaaah.

The Easter Bunny Came to Town

Well, we survived the weekend! Easter weekend is always so busy, especially now that we've got kids.

Saturday we slogged through the rain to do a church sponsored Easter egg hunt. The Peanut was one of about only 3 or 4 little girls who were wearing the requisite frilly Easter dress. She was so dang cute, I couldn't help but let her wear her new dress that she was so excited to finally have. So, there she was in her pretty dress sloshing around in the mud and puddles, slipping on the wet grass, and enjoying every minute of collecting eggs "with treats!!" (chocolates and candies inside--no real eggs anymore, just neon-bright plastic eggs nowadays...).

Chub-chub (my little boy, K. J.) had a blast, too, once he had a good ol' flop-in-the-mud-and-wet-grass-fit. The hunt was advertised as starting at 10am, however, due to rain and stragglers arriving, it actually started at about 10:20am, and that extra 20 minutes put the 19 mo. Chub-chub over his maximum 'waiting' allowed. But, once the hunt got under way, he had fun finding eggs and dropping them into his 'Easter bag' (a gift bag I had left over from a birthday gift, in lieu of the standard basket--that usually results in more dropped eggs than anything).

We followed up our hunting efforts with a trip to the Golden Arches for a side of fries to share and some run around/get dry time for the kidlets and gossip for myself and my friend.

Sunday arrived with the swift deliverance of baskets-o-goodies for the kiddos from the "Easter Bunny" and a trip to the in-laws house an hour away for brunch and another egg hunt. It was, perhaps, the best brunch at the in-laws that I've ever experienced. Everyone was really laid-back, relaxed, and we just enjoyed one another's company and had a blast watching the kids hunt eggs (as opposed to the usual where everyone is tense or stressed for one reason or another and the soon-to-be-ex-sister-in-law was mercifully absent (a random aside: who in h*** wears stillettos to EVERY event, including an outing to the park? Yup. You guessed it: said soon to be ex....I digress)

It was fun while it lasted, but thank goodness Easter comes but once a year.

Oprah: On Autism

Oprah has Autism as her topic for today. I'm going to carve out that hour from my schedule to watch the show and see what she has to present.

See, I've been struggling with Autism, or rather I've been struggling with my daughter Peanut's (NB) Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) lately. I have been really doing well dealing with her diagnosis and being an advocate for her, but the day before yesterday I just lost it. I was sitting in the hot tub with my husband, B., trying to relax, but I wound up sitting there whining and blubbering about how I felt like I couldn't handle Peanut's ASD. See, we've only had a diagnosis of ASD for the Peanut since February 2007. And we're still in that blinding snowstorm that is trying to sort out our emotions, find the best treatment options for Peanut, and be good parents (all at the same moment in time). It is quite overwhelming.

For example, it is like dealing with your taxes and all the government forms that go along with them every day, just the tax laws change daily, and sometimes hourly, and you aren't privy to those changes. Dealing with the emotions you feel as a parent with a child diagnosed with ASD is like: "here, things aren't the same as you expected, they've changed, I'm not going to tell you the changes, and if you screw up, well....that's just tough. You'll get a melt-down for a reward and you'll have to start from square one. Oh, yeah, and your deadline for everything to be dealt with just got shortened by an undisclosed amount of time. You'll have virtually no support from anyone, and, just for good measure, you'll need to beg, whine, wheedle, threaten and shout to get any services covered by your insurance--that is once you've jumped through the proverbial hoops to get the services in the first place. Tootles! Have fun!!!!"

But, to return to my original train of thought: I'm thrilled that Oprah is going to feature Autism. I've already emailed my family and friends about the upcoming show. I hope that some of them will watch. Maybe they'll get a more open understanding of why Peanut is the way she is, and realize that she's not being a 'bad girl' or that we're not 'rotten parents.' Peanut is just hard-wired differently and has a unique perception of the world that no one else has.