Best Early Birthday Present EVER!

Funnies of the day:

So I've been working hard to lose weight and get in shape. I've been exercising regularly and a lot of muscle definition is now evident on my once (ahem) smushy bod. So today I got in some good cardio, putting in 10 miles on the elliptical walker in 45 minutes. Because I was a sweaty mess, and because it was 80 degrees today, I threw on a tank top instead of a T-shirt just before The Skink's bus arrived.

When I boarded the bus to help The Skink off, she looked at me hard, poked my bicep and shrieked, "BOOBIE!"

I thought the bus driver was going to fall out of her seat laughing!

It's great to know all my dieting and workout efforts are paying off... and not so great to know that I'm so small-chested that my biceps are so easily mistaken for breasts...

And in other news:

March 21st was World Down Syndrome Day. As if to celebrate the occasion in Emily Perl Kingsly (link to reference) -style, our tulips are starting to bloom.

The appearance of the colorful and fragrant blossoms are killing Iraq who has been positively expiring with the desire to pluck the tender plants.

Today I handed her a pair of scissors and told her she could cut one for our little bud-vase. I gave her instructions on just where to cut, and watched as she beheaded one unsuspecting plant, grinning ear-to-ear all the while.

No sooner had she cut the long stem, but tears welled up in her eyes. The poor kid felt guilty for cutting the flower. She cried for at least 5 minutes, saying she wished she hadn't cut it! Of course I was a very bad mommy and I laughed. Couldn't help it. The whole thing was so... Aspie... of her! She had an OCD-type desire to pick a flower, but immediately had a negative reaction to the very change she had caused.
Pure awesomeness!

And... this video had me in hysterics this morning! The set up: Nanny-cam catches babysitter sweetly playing with a toddler. Toddler throws a ball which knocks the babysitter's drinking glass over and breaks it. THE CAT hears the child crying and believes the babysitter is harming the child...



And after watching the video, I'm thinking this family doesn't need to worry about having a nanny-cam! Heck - THE CAT is watching out for the kid... God Father style!

Moving right along...

So, if you've followed my blog for more than a month, you know that my sweet father-in-law passed in early February. Though we didn't expect it, he left us a small sum of money with the instructions that we use it for ourselves (because apparently he knew me well enough to know what a penny-pincher I am and that it was all gonna go to bills if he didn't say it).

Check it out!

That... that is a Canon EOS 50D. It's something we never would have been able to afford. Last year my wonderful husband surprised me with a Canon PowerShot SX30 IS. To say I was over the moon would be a huge understatement when I received that camera! Over the year, that camera allowed me to learn a huge amount in the photography arena. I learned so much, in fact, that I was itching for more... I wanted Manual Focus!

Having played with my new baby for over a week now, I know for sure I was born for manual focus, baby!

So, please enjoy a veritable smorgasbord of my getting-to-know-my-new-camera practice shots!

Iraq is ridiculously photogenic. I can take 100 pictures of Iraq and 99 will be great. The Skink, however, is like me. She just isn't very photogenic. For what ever reason, today was photographic GOLD for The Skink!

And my favorite Skink-shot of all:

So - I hope everyone has a great Friday! Happy almost-weekend, folks!

Do Parents use Special Needs as an excuse for Bad Behavior?

I ran across this little ditty the other day and, as the mother of 3 kids with 3 different diagnosis', found it rather thought provoking.

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Views of Professor Priscilla Alderson as seen at psychminded.co.uk

Professor Alderson said that it was often convenient for neglectful parents to claim that a child had a behavioural disorder. She believes that much of the increase can be put down to more flexible interpretations of normal childhood traits, such as restlessness and excitability. In our more gullible age, she says, this becomes attention deficit — which could be solved by engaging more with children and allowing them to let off steam in traditional fashion by playing in parks and climbing trees.

“I recently visited a special school which had 27 children diagnosed as autistic. Of those, only two that I met displayed the lack of eye contact and absence of empathy which denotes true autism,” she said. “Money is behind all this. Pyschologists want the work, and lower the diagnosis threshold accordingly. Special needs is an administrative device describing children who have extra needs from those provided for in the average classroom.
Professor Alderson, 57, who has three grown-up children and three grandchildren, admitted that her eldest daughter had been “difficult”, something she attributes to her naivity at the time about how to be a good parent. “By the time my other children came along I had realised that if you treat children as adults then they will behave accordingly.” 

See article HERE.

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So... lemme get this straight. Because Iraq makes eye contact and she is fully capable of going through the motions of showing empathy, she does not have Asperger's? Well hallelujah! It's a miracle - my 8-year-old has been cured! What a wonderful relief!

Quite honestly, I wold LOVE to have Iraq's issues boil down to poor parenting as it would mean I could FIX the problem, but unfortunately for myself and thousands of other parents of children in the autism spectrum, Professor Priscilla Alderson is an outdated, judgmental moron whose views will only add to the struggles we face. (Ooops! Did I just type that out loud?)

It is unfortunate that there are people out there, working under the guise of being an "expert," who know and understand so little about autism. I may not have "Professor" in front of my name, but I honestly believe I know far more about the symptoms of Asperger's in girls than the Priscilla Aldersons of the world.

"I didn't spend 6 years in evil medical school to be called 'Mister.' Thank you very much!" 

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). Laugh at sound byte here.

 That said, I must admit that I DO use my children's special needs as an excuse for bad behavior. For example:

• I use Iraq's meltdowns as an excuse to let the clean laundry wrinkle in the dryer for 15-60 minutes some days. (OMG!! People are going to think I am an incompetent launderer! The horror!)
• I use The Skink's Down syndrome as an excuse for the school bus to pick her up at the front door instead at the top of the street (and when I say "at the 'top' of the street," I mean a hill that goes up at an angle of about a 45° for about 2 blocks). We've tried the walk before - she usually walks about 20 feet at 0.1258 miles-per-hour before begging to be carried the rest of the way. I don't want to carry a 30+ lb. child UP the hill every morning... I'm lazy that way, you know.
• I use the theory that the sum is greater than the parts as an excuse to NOT be an active member of the PTA. Well... that and the fact that my husband doesn't get home from work until after 7:30 p.m. and that I don't trust most babysitters to be able to handle the sum of the younger 2 parts... nor do I trust the oldest part to not distract said babysitter...
• I use the excuse that my son has ADHD to not make him babysit his 2 little sisters often so I can torture myself enjoy being a regular part of the PTA. I also use the ADHD excuse to make him mow the lawn... there I go bein' all lazy again. *sigh*
• I use 2 of my children's "issues" as an excuse to bring our dog on family vacations and to restaurants.

 

So yeah... I'm bad! Seriously BAD!

Ok... well... maybe not that bad...

Me... after 16 years of evil school.

Does this look like good PTA material to you? 

*Don't answer that*

So what do you think? Do you feel that autism spectrum disorders and ADD/ADHD are fig-newtons of society's collective imagination?

Do you think parents use the "special needs" label as a crutch or an excuse for bad parenting?  

Or, like me, do you believe that while there are plenty of parents out there who don't properly discipline their "normal" kids, there are also parents struggling with children who have very real issues? Yes - it can be hard to tell the difference, but you don't have to go to a day of evil school to know that labeling MOST parents of children with ASDs or ADD/ADHD as neglectful, gullible people who don't take their children to the park enough is worse than submerging them in a tank of sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads. Why must I be surrounded by frickin' idiots?

But I digress.

"Help! I'm in a nutshell! How did I get into this bloody great big nutshell? What kind of shell has a nut like this?"

 Yeah... I totally feel that way some days...

Oops! I digressed again. 

So tell me what you think!

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From Here To There, From There To Here... Funny Things Are Everywhere!

Well, what a week it has been! Though our family had initially planned a nice little camping trip for this past week, life has a funny way of throwing curve-balls. Curve-balls that mean you leave the camper at home, but have a chance to see a lot more of nature... and human nature... and...

If you recognize the picture above, you might be a redneck... or a Texan. Last winter, my father-in-law moved from Georgia to Texas. Unfortunately his health has been declining and it was recently suggested to us that we come visit... soon. The trek from VA to TX is a long one at about 1,152 miles... but I think that number doubles for each child in the car. (Am I wrong?) If it weren't for the DVD players (yeah - that's plural) and the dog, it would have seemed even longer than that.

And right now you're probably saying to yourself, "You traveled 1,152 miles with 3 kids and A DOG? What, are you nuts?"

Yes I am! Obviously we should have left the kids with someone!

The dog was a saving grace! As some of you may know, I put our Olde Victorian Bulldogge through Service Dog training. The picture above is her, crashed out in a very crazy-busy Tennessee McDonalds in the PlayLand area where we were allowing the 2 youngest of our brood to play off some energy. Not only does our dog not beg or drool when she smells Big Mac-luciousness, but if you drop food on the floor next to her, she pretends she doesn't even see it.

What service does Brandy Ann provide? Well, Iraq (who has Asperger syndrome) often becomes very over-stimulated - especially in busy, noisy, colorful places... like in a McDonald's play land.We can see the tell-tale signs. First she plays like all the other kids. Then, her play starts becoming a little wild and loud. Then louder... Then... she begins trying to find a private, quiet place within the giant habitrail-like plastic tubes. (Good luck with that, kiddo!) She resembles a feral cat as she slinks and hides when anyone comes near her or if we try to call to her. Once we are able to GET HER OUT... a task that is usually far easier said than done... she goes into full, non-verbal melt-down mode. As we pull her away from the multi-colored maze of plastic, the shrieking will begin and the limbs stop working.

Without the dog, we may stay in melt-down mode anywhere from 10 minutes to some giant indefinite number of minutes. As if it's not bad enough that I am having to subdue a shrieking, flailing child, it's usually at these cherished moments when I am bequeathed with dagger-stares from other parents. (My favorite part of any meltdown!)

With the dog? Well, the moment she is placed next to Brandy Ann, the shrieks stop immediately. She puts her arms around the dog's neck and buries her face in her neck. In about 5 minutes, she has calmed down completely and asks politely if she can go back and play.

Yes - - the dog DOES help!

So how was Texas, you ask?

 

Yup - that about sums it up! Not only was it hot, but the state is experiencing its worst drought since Texans started keeping records... so like, before the Alamo and all that. It was so hot and dry in fact that we all spontaneously combusted the moment we stepped out of the car.

Anywhoo... We are very thankful that we got to see Pawpaw. The kids will have some very nice memories of time shared with him... except for The Skink who would get no closer than about two feet from him. (So it's been a while since she last saw him.) Iraq and Broadway got snuggely for a picture.

And we got to see cousins... however I think poor Pawpaw may have gotten just a liiiiitttlllle overwhelmed...

We even took Pawpaw to the aquarium in Grapevine, TX...

And we got to see an old friend just for a few minutes. Cyndi was one of The Skink's favorite nurses during her (rather loooonng) stay in the NICU, 5 years ago.

After 3 very short days in Texas enjoying Pawpaw, we headed to Louisiana to further torture ourselves by adding humidity to the unbearable heat and to visit my sister. On the way, we got stuck in a traffic jam, (due to a brush fire obviously caused by spontaneously combusting swamp-grass... or possibly by some moron throwing a cigarette out a car window - my vote is for the spontaneous combustion thing) but it allowed us to see one of the funniest scenes ever. Some cars were using the median to turn around and avoid the jam. Well... a motorcycle cop saw the cars driving through the median and made them turn around, drive back through the median and get back in line! Go LA police - you tell 'em!

The offending white car takes the drive of shame back to her place in line... ROFLMAO!

Eventually we did get to my sister's house un-charred and in one piece so that Broadway could get some good chicken cuddles from Chick-A-Doodee. What? Doesn't everybody have a pet chicken?

Iraq got to ride Aunt Kate's new mare, Jelly Belly, all by herself. We later found out that the belly isn't due to jelly at all! The vet came out and confirmed that in a few weeks Jelly Belly will be a mommy! My poor sister hyperventilated on the spot!

I got to ride too for the first time in way too long! (On one of the non-pregnant geldings.) Yeah - couldn't suppress that big ol' silly grin!

And while New Orleans is not exactly on the rout back home, hearing that Hurricane Irene was bearing down on our home state, we thought there would be a certain amount of fun in the irony of taking refuge in that fine city! At least long enough for lunch and some window shopping.

 

We did discover one little over-sight in NOLA, however. It became VERY clear that prior to our next summer trip to a city notoriously as hot as... someplace even further south... we will have to invest in some doggy booties! Heat-resistant doggie booties! Poor Brandy minced over each hot patch of brick sidewalk until she reached the next shady portion where she slowed waaaaaayyyyy down to cool her poor feet. Smart dog!

And what would a road trip be without a blown tire in Nowheresville, Mississippi? Yeah... and I'm not even going to mention getting pegged by another car in NOLA (their fault) and getting some retread thrown under our front end by an 18 wheeler, causing further unnecessary vehicular damage. (Oops - I mentioned it.)

We saw the inside of far too many McDonalds' in the duration of our trip. We also saw tons of caravans of tree removal trucks and line-repair trucks coming from LA and MS toward the areas targeted by Irene. I don't know why I chose this particular caravan of about 10 trucks to photograph, but we saw them again a few hours later - just 2 hours from our home  :(    Oops!

After all our adventures, we got home very late - and very tired! It was an adventure for sure, but there's no place like home, is there?

  *Disclaimer: We do not live in a white picket fence, but in a house that happens to have one.

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Don't forget to check out my new book on Kindle - and you don't even need a Kindle to read it!

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Don't have a Kindle? Click Here for other ways to read the book!








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