We’re Thankful For Everything But The Germs

I’ll never understand why my children can’t be like other kids, even if just for a little bit. Mira is sick – again – this time with a simple cold, but the snot is a continuous stream coming from her nose, with no way to turn off the faucet. She’s also running a fever and clearly looks miserable.

So is she sleeping more? Or maybe just more quiet and interested in laying on the couch all day, like most kids (and adults) I know? No way – she’s got things to do, living rooms to trash, and a mommy to climb all over.

The only difference now is she’s getting snot on everything (including me), and instead of going about her destruction merrily, she’s grumpy and whiny and complains about everything in short shrieks and grunts. If I walk into the kitchen and leave without bringing her an edible offering, she falls to the ground and flails in a fit until you succumb to her will. Of course, when I offer her food, she takes one or two bites and then drops the rest on the floor, unwilling to eat any more.

Show no mercy

Somehow, we have yet to celebrate a holiday without at least one sick child. I’m not sure what the odds are, but I’m thinking with two children under five who can’t understand why handwashing is important, my real surprise should be that they aren’t sick every single day of the year.

My only hope is that Mira will be close to healthy by Saturday, when child development specialists will be taking over our living room to do a full evaluation for Mira. Ever since her screening, we’ve been urging her to say anything that might show up in Webster’s, but Mira has her own method of communication, with the few words she says free of the burden of complicated consonants.

I’m secretly hoping for a speech therapist like Henry Higgins, just so we can teach her to say The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain with such a lovely accent. Nah, who am I kidding? If she would say mama, I’d be overjoyed.

Have a great Thanksgiving, US readers. We’ve got two family T-Day events to attend, driving from one end of the county to the other. In this time of thanksgiving, I’m thankful that despite the suckiness of this year, we still have our house, we’re staying on top of our bills, we have wonderful family and friends (including many of you) who are supportive in so many ways, and even though my relationship with Aaron has been through the wringer recently, I still have my family intact. Oh yeah, and I’m thankful I finally got the president I voted for.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. May you avoid cranky and sick children in your travels this weekend. (Those of you we’ll be seeing tomorrow not included. Sorry.)

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PS – In the mood to win something? Come enter my contests at Mommy’s Must Haves – I’m currently giving away a $100 Home Depot gift card, Lands’ End clothing, and ten pairs of Lee jeans! I’ve got several more contests coming soon, too.



Three Years Ago

Three years ago today, I thought to myself Hey, I don’t have enough to do, with working and taking care of Grumperella, why not start writing intimate details of my life on the internet for all to read?

And poof, just like that A Mommy Story was born.

No, that wasn’t the name I wanted for this blog. I tried a few others first (can’t even remember what they were), and after several attempts I had nothing left but a reminder of TLC’s show A Baby Story, and thought, well, this is MY story, not hers. Eh, I choked.

I just went back to look at my first entry, and this was my very first sentence:

Yeah, I should probably say something really meaningful or inspirational for my first post, but, well, that’s just not me.

Whew. Good thing I didn’t set the bar high. That would have been disappointing, wouldn’t it? No way I was setting myself up for that kind of pressure and risk for failure. The post was supposed to be a placeholder that I would fill-in with something more grand at a later point. Well now, you see how that has worked out. (Ah, forgetfulness and procrastination!)

And by my third post, I was already writing open letters to idiots. Blogging came to me naturally, it seems.

Now three years later, I’m still here, still putting much of my life out on the internet, still writing my opinions for an audience larger than my immediate family who are tired of hearing me. (The immediate family that is – if you’re all tired of me, you are clearly lazy in pruning your feed readers.)

I don’t know if I expected to be writing here three years on. Blogs were all the rage three years ago, and I happily stuck out my thumb and lifted my skirt to show my knee when that bandwagon rolled past me. I certainly didn’t expect my life to be where it is today. I had no immediate plans for a second child back then, and autism was still a long way from our thoughts. Everything was easier back then.

But I’m glad I’m still blogging. I’ve met an amazing community of people and I’m proud to be a part of that community. It has been an up and down three years, and I’m glad to have shared it with all of you. I can only imagine Cordy and Mira someday reading these stories written by their mother of their early lives. They’ll probably wonder why I didn’t start anti-depressants earlier.

I’ve had some amazing opportunities thanks to blogging, and I’ve found many good friends from all reaches of the continent and beyond. I’ve cried with people I’ve never met in person, and have found great strength and support from complete strangers during difficult moments in my life. It probably sounds trite and cliche, but with Thanksgiving days away, I can say I’m thankful I started this little blog. It has been a life-changing event.

I never expected anyone to take an interest in my writing. So thank you for continuing to read and for sharing the experience with me.



Haiku Friday: Another Few Minutes From My 15

It’s said that we all
have our 15 minutes of
fame in our lifetime.

I’m now using a
few more of those minutes for
a news article.

Three pictures and one
quick quote from me about the
lessons my mom taught.

I’ve written about
the topic before – wish they had
used more of my thoughts.

I was interviewed last week on the topic of drinking around your children. I’ve said many times that I think drinking in front of your child occasionally (in a responsible way, of course) is not harmful, and probably teaches them responsibility with alcohol and takes some of the taboo away. I’m not talking getting drunk – more like having a glass of wine with dinner.

I knew I’d be in the article, since the AP sent a photographer, but I was still surprised to see it sitting in my Google Alerts this morning. While it’s cool they used three photos of my family, I wish they would have included more than one sentence from the 20 minute interview. Maybe that’s just my vanity talking – I always feel like I have a lot of good things to say. I suppose that’s why I have a blog.

To play along for Haiku Friday, follow these steps:

1. Write your own haiku on your blog. You can do one or many, all following a theme or just random. What’s a haiku, you ask? Click here.

2. Sign the Mister Linky below with your name and the link to your haiku post (the specific post URL, not your main blog URL). DON’T sign unless you have a haiku this week. If you need help with this, please let me know.

3. Pick up a Haiku Friday button to display on the post or in your sidebar by clicking the button at the top.

REMEMBER: Do not post your link unless you have a haiku this week! I will delete any links without haiku!



The Baby Ate My Feedreader. Well, sort of.

Sure, kids may blame the dog for eating homework, but we parents can blame our kids for stuff that we’ve flaked on, too. Especially when they really are responsible for it.

I had good intentions of cleaning out my Bloglines. With over 800+ posts to catch up on, I spent part of this afternoon plowing through it to whittle down that number to something approaching reasonable. I’ll admit I read too many blogs, but I love keeping up with so many people, even if I don’t always have time to comment.

So at one point Mira was sitting on my lap, when she suddenly took an interest in the laptop that she was sharing the lap with. She loves pushing buttons, and kept reaching for the keyboard in an attempt to appease her addiction.

And then she got frustrated when I kept intercepting her button-pushing fingers. With one quick movement, she slapped the keyboard.

And just like that, my Bloglines went to 0.

Z-e-r-o.

She somehow marked all posts as read.

Over 700 posts, no longer marked for me to catch up on.

Damn.

I suppose she did me a favor by forcing me to start fresh. Still…argh.



Catharsis

While talking with two friends over ice cream the other night, one said, “You’re like an open book, so when you didn’t talk about what was bothering you on your blog, I knew it had to be bad.” I think the only way I’m going to get past this mental block in my writing is by confronting the issue that’s bugging me so much. And so I’m going to put it out there, or at least as much as I feel comfortable sharing.

As you may know, this has so far been kind of a sucky year for us. Aaron was laid off in June, and had trouble finding employment until just recently, and this job is only a limited-time contract job. We had to go on food stamps for awhile, and drained our savings. I had a relapse of depression. When the job went away, so did health insurance, which means of course we all got sick as soon as our insurance ended. Aaron and I still don’t have insurance. We have one daughter on the autism spectrum who is often difficult to handle, and another with a possible speech delay.

You can imagine how all of this is affecting Aaron and I. We’re stressed, and as a result we’re often short with each other, acting out against each other, and simply disconnected. Most nights were spent sitting on opposite ends of the living room, each lost in a laptop until bedtime. It’s put a strain on our marriage to the point that we nearly lost everything. Details aren’t important, but a lot of hurt has been hurled and the emotional cuts are deep. After the blow up, the big D word has been hanging over our heads for the past couple of weeks.

I don’t think either of us wants a divorce. We both remember why we married in the first place: we’re good together. We compliment each other well – his weaknesses are my strengths, and vice versa. We’ve been together for over ten years now and have weathered a lot of ups and downs. We also both realize that we’re holding onto a lot of bad behavior patterns that probably date back to childhood experiences. (Freud, anyone?)

We’ve discussed these issues with close friends and family – people who know us well and can provide the support we need. We’ve made the decision that we want to keep our marriage, and we’ll enlist the help of a therapist to guide us back to open communication and help us heal our wounds. There’s still a lot of hurt to work through – I know I occasionally feel the urge to throw something at his head – but we both are committed to working on it. It’s not just for the kids, either. While our daughters certainly forced me to think harder about everything, it’s still my decision, and I am considering my own feelings in this decision.

I can’t predict what the future holds for us. I hope he’ll fix whatever it is that has screwed him up, I’ll address my issues, and together we’ll mend the rift in our relationship. It’ll be a long road ahead to regain trust and I can only hope we’re both up for that journey.

This isn’t eloquent at all, and someday I’ll probably look back at this and cringe, but I wanted to get it out in the open. And while I may sound all strong and brave about this, I can tell you I’ve been angry and scared and sad and revengeful, too, along with 1,000 other variants of negative emotions. But around my children and in public I’ve tried to hold it together, telling myself that I’m better than some of those dark emotions and therefore won’t let them get to me.

There’s no shame in admitting a marriage isn’t perfect, and in talking with several friends, both online and in person, I’ve found that I’m certainly not the first person to endure these kinds of problems, and many shared that they have repaired the damage and moved past these bumps in the road. I can only hope for the same results.

But I will now confirm that this has been in many ways the suckiest year yet for me. I hate sounding all “poor me” because I know that there are those going through so much more, and honestly, the martyr role just doesn’t suit me. But this is probably the worst I’ve gone through yet. I’m hoping I’m at my personal rock bottom – can only go up from there, right?

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