The everyday life of a stay at home mom just trying to stay sane.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Tooth Fairy made her first appearance at my house last night...

Can you believe it?
The first tooth has fallen out.
It makes Logan look SO much older.
He's becoming a king of all the tricks like sticking the straw through the open tooth.
He proudly went to school today and smiled all day.
He's the first one in school to lose a tooth.

I'll put pictures later, they are ADORABLE!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Those poor women

Today, I ran about 50 million errands.
It was SO busy and I noticed a strange coincidence. The men were out.
There were cute guys everywhere!

Where did all these men come from, I wondered as I was impatiently waiting in line at the pharmacy attached to the grocery store. As I was pushing my way past stupid people while shopping, I noticed groups of them.

Some in suits, some in scrubs, some who appeared to work in construction.

Ahhhhh....then I saw it.
They were grabbing what they could find.
Stupid helium I HEART YOU balloons.
Grocery store flowers (not that I mind these btw-flowers are flowers, but on VALENTINES DAY)
Trying hard to find one acceptable card in the isle that had only 7 Valentine's Day cards left.

Some had it right and chose bottles of wine. Others wandered aimlessly with a lone rose and balloon searching for something else.

WHY!!! WHY were they at the GROCERY STORE buying Valentines Day presents?
I'm sure they could have found something at the mall?
But no, I'll tell you why...they waited until they were DONE with work to pick up something, ANYTHING that would get them laid tonight.

Poor women.

I bet all of them act surprised and excited about the lone rose with the grocery store sticker on it.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Daily life stories

I never really went into detail with Logan and his diagnosis, and I thought I'd touch a bit on what Logan is like.
We all know by my posts the last THREE years (can you believe it) that Logan is a very sweet natured little boy. (most of the time, like all kids)
And I know I've mentioned his quirks before, but I'd like to give you an idea of what I actually mean by quirks.

Logan has a digital clock in his room and when he was 3 we told him that he couldn't get out of bed until 7:00 am. (This was BEFORE Miles was born. Criminy, with Miles we'll be happy if it says 6:00!!)
That was a rule that he learned. He's good with rules, if they don't change.
To this day, if he wakes up at it's 6:something, he'll wait in bed until 7:00 on the nose. And he always keeps a mental record of what time he wakes up.

I took him to the doctor the other day because I was afraid he had Strep throat. I made the appt early in the morning before he woke up. By the time we got there(11:30) my fear of strep was gone, and it was more of a checkup.
I told the nurse that he slept for 14 hours last night and didn't wake up until 9:30.
He interrupted, "Mom, I woke up at 9:22!!"
And yes, he did.

He's a numbers guy. When the numbers are in order, he's a happy. He's comfortable with them. He experiences life in numbers.
He's smart. Like, way smarter than what he should be as a preschooler. He's friends with a 1st grader down the road and he teaches HER math. She's in awe that her little sister's PREschool friend is teaching her math. According to her, "He's smarter than the smart girl in class!" ;)

He's ambidextrous, but now shows a preference of writing with his left. It's so strange to see him grab the pencil with his left hand. I've never been around a lefty before. It seems so unnatural to me! ha ha! But he sometimes switches the pencil to his right hand when he's on the right side of the paper. Of course, we just let him do his thing and never question what hand he wants to use. He uses scissors in his right hand. He also bats the ball like a righty though. I think we'll have him try to bat like a lefty this year and see what feels better??

He has rituals.
He must get dressed in a certain order.
He must clean his body in a certain order.
He must be in bed by a certain time, but not any earlier than a certain time.

He's insanely good at strategic video games. The kind where I cave under pressure. I hate them. He LOVES them.

He doesn't eat worth a darn. I'm in the debating stage of getting help from the food clinic. The thing is though, he likes routine and a schedule. If I make the same routine foods on a very regular basis, he'll eat and he'll grow. But did you hear about that mom who allowed her son to eat only toast I believe his his entire life basically? When I heard that story I thought, how HORRIBLE! But then I have this little boy who would live on as many things as fingers on one hand. It's such a situation because I don't want to make it an issue, but it IS an issue.
Anyway, another post for another day.

Regarding food. He likes routine. He'll eat PB J's with MY bread and MY jelly and MY peanut butter. No one Else's.
He'll eat Fish sticks. Not regular fish or fish patties.
He'll eat corn dogs, not hot dogs.
He'll eat turkey sandwiches, on buns only. MY buns. It must have ranch dressing, mozzarella cheese and tomato's on it. No more, no less.
He'll eat waffles.

He will NOT eat anything mushy, and this includes cereal in milk. Which is hard for him because he really wants to like cereal and sometimes he'll try it, but he just can't stand the texture of mushy cereal.

He doesn't play with toys. We could clear out the house and the only one who would be bothered is Miles.
He hoards things. Paper things. The main thing he hoards are the backs of present boxes he gets. You know how action figures come in a cardboard with a plastic cover over the 'guy'? Well, on the back is more pictures of MORE guys. We have to save them all.

At night, we don't read your typical story books. We read learning books. 100 things about space, all about your 'food tube'...how germs spread...how babies are made (yes, it's not graphic at all, but it does talk about a sperm and egg) anything that he can learn bits of info to store in his head, he enjoys.
Oh, and bookmarks have to be put in in a very ritualistic way. They can only stick out so far, but they have to stick out a certain amount. There is no in between. There is right and there is wrong.

He remembers crazy things. Just Friday afternoon he told me he knew his friend Evan's phone number. Kids this age usually are good learning their OWN phone number. He blurted it out, and he was right. This was 4 hours after he got home from school, so he wasn't just repeating it from a conversation 5 minutes earlier, you know?

Basically, everything must be in sync, in order, and follow a pattern.
Oh patterns, he sees them in everything. He points them out and I am amazed at what he can see.

Life with Logan is structured. WAY more structured than my liking, but it's OK! I'd love to explore more with meals, but I also know that it takes him out of his element. I'd love to be more spur of the moment, but I also know that it's hard for him to do something that wasn't on the morning list of activities.

I'm excited for him to go to school, and I think he'll have a great time meeting new friends. I know he'll have his problem times, but you know what? So will other kids who are considered 'neuro-typical', you know?
He's definitely high functioning, but prefers structure.
If the teacher gives them orders, he'll follow them.
He's super social and LOVES to have friends around all of the time.
I think they will just learn that Logan is a bit quirky, but not bad.
I see his future as SO bright.
Perhaps I'm seeing life through rose colored glasses, but that's OK too.

1 out of 150. It's a crazy statistic.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Anything you can do, I can do better...

Life in our house is changing by the day.

First off, in case he ever sees this, I'm sorry Jeff.
Jeff is my older brother. The one that I taunted and followed and pretended to be interested in everything he was. I had crushes on his friends, and must have been a pain in the ass.

Lately, everything that Logan does, Miles tries.
Logan jumps, Miles jumps.
Logan wants to play cars, Miles steals the cars so he can play with them.
Logan wants a waffle for breakfast, and Miles decides that the French Toast he is eating is not good anymore and HE needs a waffle.

It really goes on and on and on.
It's gotten so bad that this morning after shunning his French Toast when he saw Logan didn't want French toast, Miles, was given a waffle with syrup. Logan on the other hand wanted Peanut Butter on his waffle. Already wasting a piece of French Toast, I made Logan HIDE his waffle so that Miles didn't see the Peanut butter on it.
Yeah, maybe I should take the reins, but it worked for today.

Sometimes Logan LOVES the extra attention and eats it up.
He proclaims that he loves Miles more than anyone on the world, "except you mom" and it's fun to watch.
They pretend they are dogs and chase each other all around laughing and barking. Hey..it's cute. So what if my kids pretend to be dogs! ;)
Miles is WAAY more outgoing and fearless than Logan, so he has no qualms about jumping off the couch like his brother does. He'll try anything, as long as Logan can do it.

Sometimes Logan HATES it. As a big sister, I can relate.
Sometimes he just wants to 'read' his book and not have his brother try and rip it out of his hand. I don't blame him, of course, but unless he's in his room there's not much I can do except try to redirect.

But the good thing about this new development is that little by little I can see my boys becoming friends. Sure, it's not all the time, and I know it won't BE all the time, but it's coming.
Next year, when he's 3 and Logan is 6 I can see them collaborating together. I can see forts and secrets and brotherly fun.
And it will only get better! Age 4 and 7, then 5 and 8. So, even though 75% of the time we've got someone yelling at the other because "He's TOUCHING me" or "I was playing with it FIRST" I can see the light of, "Let's go play together" and it's so exciting!!

Monday, February 05, 2007

Inspired by Mrs. Fun, but with red-eye.

Friday, February 02, 2007

Do they always have such good manners...

This cracks me up.
I'm pretty sure every mom agrees with me on this one.
I had a doctors appt this morning while Logan was in preschool. I asked my neighbor and friend to watch Miles. She has an almost 2 year old little boy, and they play so well together.
When I come back the first thing she said is, "My son had super bad runny poopies! I'm SO sorry! They are so bad they are running down his legs. I've changed him 6 times in the last hour..." as I'm watching them play together, then hug each other.

Lovely.

I can only imagine that this weekend might be filled with poop.

The SECOND thing she says is, "Do you guys go around your house always having such great manners, or is he just being nice to me?"

He said please and thank you all day long. He was so polite and well behaved!!

And I guess really, it's a two fold answer.
Yes, we really do have lots of 'please's and thank you's' in my house on a daily basis. Logan asks for a 'snack please' or 'more juice please' or says thank you if I let him play on the computer.
It's just a part of our life. It wasn't that way before we had kids, but just seeing the lack of manners kids have these days, I wanted MY kids to learn manners and how to be polite from the time they started talking so that it was habit.
It's worked.

But the well behaved thing. THAT is the part that cracks me up.
Why is it that your kids can be animals in your own house, yet the most polite well behaved child in someone elses house. It makes no sense to me what so ever.
Sure, I'm pleased that he was good for her, and I'm pleased when people tell me how well behaved Logan is, but a little more of that good behavior at home would be nice, no?

A little update on my mom...we're still looking at another 3 1/2 weeks until the Dr said she can bear weight on her leg. She's still in a nursing home, and we're expecting another 4-6 weeks if not more. It's tough.
She DID however just yesterday 'walk' with a walker 33 steps. That's huge. Granted the steps on her bad leg were all arm work, but she walked 33 steps! I'm super proud!!