I had another doctor appointment. Went much better overall, I think. He said I looked better… less drawn and more animated. I guess this is a good thing. LOL Still not sleeping worth a flip, so he upped my dose on a couple of things.

The Flagyl hasn’t whooped me yet, but I’ve only been at full dose for 2 days now, so it’s still a bit early to tell, I think. On the whole, though things have been better/nicer in the last couple of weeks. WAY less nausea and being off balance. Less twitching. Less overall aching, too. I did have a couple of days of some extreme pain in my knees and upper legs, and some really, really bad headaches, though.

We’ve had some interesting highs and lows in our medicine costs lately. One of mine (Zithromax) and one of the kids’ (Zyrtec, replaced by Claritin).

The thing with the Zith is that it is super duper expensive even in the generic form. At least it is if you have to take it for the length of time I’m having to take it. These TBIs (tick-borne infections) are some really tough bugs to beat and take BIG doses of antibiotics. Whereas most people will take a short 5 day course of Zith, I am looking at probably a couple of months… two pills a day. That’s a lot. It’s like a WHOLE lot. I had some massive sticker shock when I went to pick up the script for the first time. The gal said it would be $400 for a month’s supply. I asked about the generic and she replied, “That is the generic cost, the brand-name is $600.” Oh my!!

My mom bought 14 pills for $100 from Wal-Mart. That was enough to find out if I would even be able to take them (i.e. NOT have an allergic reaction) and to get me tied over for a few days while we tried to figure something out about affording this stuff. A couple of days worth of poking around and we managed to find the generic at Costco for a lot less. We also found that the drug manufacturer sometimes will supply meds for low-income, prescription-drug-plan-LESS people like myself. Sooooo, we’ve applied for that and in the meantime we bought another 10 days worth for $34 from Costco.

Yeah. That much less! I think I know where Wal-Mart is making all its profits now. =/ It’s in the medicines. Both prescriptions and OTC. Here is another example…

Another really good deal I found at Costco was the generic form of Claritin. The kids have both taking Zyrtec for about 6 years. Before Zyrtec’s patent ran out and they released it as an OTC medicine, that meant a $20 co-pay per kid each month. Once the patent ran out, it was about $1.50 cheaper per kid to buy the generic form OTC. Soon after I discovered we could get Walgreen’s generic version for about half the cost, so we switched to that. A couple of months later I found a generic Claritin at Wal-Mart that would be even cheaper. $7.50 for a bottle of 60. That would get both kids covered for a full month… at $7.50! Much better than the $40 it had been, so they got switched to Claritin a month ago.And then in walked Costco and sweetened the deal. I just paid $11.99 for a bottle of…wait for it… 300 tablets!!!! That is FIVE months for BOTH kids!! For twelve dollars!! So the kids’ maintenance antihistamine cost per year has dropped from $480 to $30! Oh my stars!!! =)

Anyway, while we were at Costco, Mike decided we’d buy a membership and he would drive me out (it’s a good hour’s drive) a couple of times a month. We made our first shopping trip last week. I spent $189 and came home with not a lot. LOL

No, really we did get some pretty good deals. Specifically in meats and cheeses. We got 10 pounds of ground beef for $18, a couple of decent sized roasts for another $20, a 2lb brick of Mike’s sharp cheddar for $5, and 5lb of shredded cheese for $11. I also picked up giant cans of diced tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, and spaghetti sauce to try freezing them. (I’ll split them into meal-sized portions and bag them, first.)

Our other medicine news…

Matthew is taking a new medicine to try and help him control his feelings and thus his behavior. He’s only been on it for a few days and the doc said it’d take a few weeks to notice any real effects, so I’m trying to just be patient. LOL

The kids both competed in the Putt-Putt event through the ‘league’ or whatever the school is in. They said that their school split into groups and both my kiddos placed FIRST in their group! Too cool! Of course, they don’t have any idea how that compares to the other schools, so no clue yet on whether they did well enough for a ribbon, but they had tons of fun. That’s right. They BOTH went and had fun.

I’ll say it again… clearer… MATTHEW, the kid who was terrified to even go on the field trips if I went with him and would not go play with the kids or even go to Sunday School class without me… went on a school field trip while I stayed HOME. There were several other schools there and HE HAD FUN! =)

Here’s where I drop my jaw, squeal with delight, and do a happy dance!

And no, the new medicine is NOT an anti-anxiety med and in fact he didn’t even start it until the next day. Meds ARE responsible, though. It’s the antibiotics. No doubt. Antibiotics, of all things, enabled a kid who has lived in perpetual fear and who was downright terrified of being around strangers, especially large crowds of them, to spend all day at a new place packed with strangers and far away from Mom. Amazing!

Matthew and I aren’t the only ones with new meds. Meagan is now officially starting treatment for Lyme Disease, too. She is on the same antibiotics Matthew is taking. My doc said something at my appointment about babesiosis being infamous among the co-infections of Lyme for causing nausea. I’m going to mention that to her doc who when I see her next, because that is the symptom that bugs Meagan the most. Every day since the virus or whatever it was in January that had her vomiting every hour for several hours, she has felt like throwing up at least once. She feels like she is going to collapse a lot, too. I think she’s trying to describe being woozy or lightheaded. We’ll see what her doc thinks about the babesiosis. I know she tested negative through a standard lab, but it doesn’t show up in the bloodwork very often, apparently.

Anyhow, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s babesia causing the nausea. After all, I did test positive for it and I have symptoms of it myself (nausea, severe headaches, air hunger, hot flashes and chills, sweats, and more). Personally I don’t see how I could have passed down only one of my infections to the kids. Seems much more likely that whatever I had/have got passed down to them both.

I’m going to be going in for a consult for Meagan’s behavior soon too, though for much, much different reasons than for Matt. This is more for the ADHD and CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder) that I’ve suspected for years and years but had not been able to get the previous pediatrician to do anything about.

So lots of changes in the air… so far all for the better. We’re feeling better, we’re functioning better, and even better? The docs say it will continue to get better and better. =)

I didn’t get any of my projects done last week, but I might get a chance to work on the secret project for the kids this week. They got their room clean enough finally that I just might get to.

I can’t wait. They’re going to be sooooo tickled! =) I am absolutely planning on taking pics and blogging about it.

Posted: September 13th, 2008 under Lyme disease, Matthew, Meagan, kids, the changing me.
Comments: none

It’s done. The kids are BOTH in some other school than our own Bullfrogs and Butterflies Learning Center. I have to say I hate that. I know, I know. I should be happy for them, blahblah. And ok, I am… a little… or at least I’m TRYING to be. Truth is…

I want to homeschool! I love teaching them and am going to miss it something fierce. I already missed teaching my girl. Meagan didn’t and doesn’t miss it, of course, but I did. She doesn’t care a fig newton who teaches her or what her curriculum is like or what she learns or anything along those lines. All she cares about is whether or not she is surrounded by PEOPLE! She absolutely thrives on being surrounded by people. She has been (naturally) just beyond ecstatic for the new year to start. No more stuck with only one or two playmates!! WOOHOO! She made cupcakes for the whole school for lunch today. She “can’t wait!” to meet the new kids and to spend all day with her friends.

Matthew and I? Not so much. We pretty much shut down around people. Stammer, stutter, tense up horribly, and anxiety levels blast through the roof. The anxiety truly is just unbelievable. It’s worse than awful.

I hated that I’d passed on the “super shyness gene” to either of my kids, but I had expected it. It always flabbergasted me that Meagan was SO outgoing, SO fearless, SO comfortable around other people. It’s always been this way, this extreme social anxiety for Matthew and me and extreme social butterfly for Meagan…it’s just weird. It has gotten a teensy bit better for me now that I’m an adult, but not a whole lot, and there are still times when it is more than intense. For Matthew, though, it *seems* to be letting up some… with the outlook of STAYING that way.

I can not believe I just wrote that! I never thought I’d see the day. Honestly. His anxiety has always been much worse than mine, and that’s saying something, so I am truly shocked that I can write that. It’s true though.

The anxiety (we know now) stems from the borrelia, bartonella, and other bacterial infections. Matthew started antibiotic treatment right at one month ago. Two weeks ago he went to a 3hr/day daycamp at the library and loved it. He was fairly nervous and scared about it before going, but he went without hanging on to me (or Dad since he took him) and he ended up loving it. I suspected the antibiotics helped some, but it seemed so ‘out there’ and so I wasn’t really sure.

This, which was so much bigger since he knew that not only was it ALL DAY as opposed to 3hr, but was ALL YEAR as opposed to one week, and also full of tons of rules and lots of big kids and so forth and so on… well, he was a “little bit nervous” last night, but also “excited”. His words.

He walked in, deposited his bags and cowboy hat (he has to stay out of the sun because of the antibiotics he’s on), then went to his desk. I saw him standing there and he looked ok, and so I started to just walk out and go on home, but he hadn’t said anything to me yet. Something niggled not quite right, so I didn’t dare just leave him without checking on him, so I signaled him out of the classroom real quick and asked if he wanted a hug. Sure enough, he hid behind me and almost broke down.

But only almost! Not DID! “I’m scared” he said. I told him he’d be fine, reminded him of his bible verse about being courageous, and walked him back to his seat. The problem all of a sudden turned out to be simple seating arrangements. He apparently thought his sister would be sitting beside him and instead she is on the opposite side of the room.

Once I got him back to his spot, I turned around and walked out.

I expected he would hang on to me and cause a scene. I expected I’d have to pry him off me, crying. I expected to have to fight him to even get into the car so we could leave the house this morning, to tell the truth. There wasn’t ANY of that, though.

Two months ago there would have been.

Two months ago it would have been a HUGE ordeal. Fighting, kicking, screaming getting him to the car. He would’ve been hurling “I hate you”s, “I won’t go”s, and “I’ll just run off”s the whole way. At the school he would have sat in the van and refused to get out of the seat. I would’ve had to haul his stuff in, then come back out and physically pry him out of the seat and half drag/half carry him inside. I would’ve had to take him off to a corner or a side room or something to try and threaten him with spanking, as under-my-breath as I could, to get him to walk in there and sit down and then realize (very late to class by this point) that that is just NOT going to ever happen, and so half drag/half carry him in to his seat myself. He would’ve been clinging to me. Holding so tight and fast that depositing him on the chair was impossible. I’d would’ve discovered that quick enough when I pried his fingers off one at a time and tried to get them to STAY off.

Then I’d finally catch a break in the arm-clinging and manage to slip free of his grasp and start for the door. I might even have made it all the way to the door, but then he would’ve all of a sudden been in front of me, arms tucked in, hands clinging to me in front of him, trying to burrow his head into my stomach, and press his body into mine in an effort to hide from the dozen or more pair of eyes watching us.

And then the process would start all over again.

Probably I would’ve ended up sitting with him, alternately threatening (and then the actual spanking, of course), lecturing, consoling, encouraging (yes, I’ve tried each of these in massive amounts!) in the bathroom or the lunchroom or somewhere else hopefully out-of-earshot of the rest of the class who were TRYING to have school.

That is EXACTLY the way it would’ve happened two months ago. How can I be so sure of exactly? Easy… the scenario played itself out time and time again over the years. Sunday school class, vacation bible school (incl. this summer… only I was too sick to mess with trying to fight him so I just didn’t even bother trying this year, his anxiety was high enough just in anticipation that I was going to make him go, it was evident that actually trying it would be disastrous), various extracurricular daycamps and/or sports, various ‘playdates’ and family get-togethers, sometimes even with well-known situations like going on an outing with his dad.

It’s never been the ‘being away from mom’ that bothers him so much as it’s been the ‘being around large groups of people, especially if they’re unknown’. He’s never had a problem spending the whole day off playing in the neighborhood. Most days he wasn’t supposed to be doing his schoolwork, he was off playing. Not home. Away from me. NO problem.

The problems have always come in when there are groups of others involved. A small handful of well-known friends (three or four…maybe five at most) and he’s ok. More than that, or strangers, or WORSE… BOTH… and the crippling anxiety attacked.

You can imagine why I was more than a little concerned about the possibility of putting him in public school. *shudder*

Starting school, even in a private school with only about a dozen students, is was a situation perfectly engineered to set the anxiety monster loose.

There is NO doubt in my mind that without the antibiotics this would have been the case. It’s ALWAYS been the case. And now it looks like it’s not. =)

I’m not going to say he is ALL better, completely cured, though, cause that’s not true, either. It will take a long time for that, but absolutely the antibiotics are responsible for getting him to the point that he COULD go off to school today.

Antibiotics.

Just wanted that to sink in. NOT anti-anxiety meds (though those are not completely ruled out as an option… we’ll be discussing those and other meds at a consult with the doc the 8th). The kid needed simple antibiotics. All these years of literally disabling anxiety and all he needed was antibiotics. It blows the mind!

Excuse me while I go back to my no-more-homeschool-pity-party now. =(

Posted: August 26th, 2008 under Lyme disease, Matthew, kids.
Comments: none

You know it’s been too long since your last post when the WordPress log-in thingy does not automatically let you in, but instead pops up with your user name and password prefilled and a little unchecked box that says “Remember Me”. I totally think that was WordPress’ way of saying “hey! What’s up with the no-posting?! Hello?! Remember me… your blog?! You know, the one YOU wanted to start. Hello? Hello?! Remember me??”

Yeah, so it’s been awhile, and I can’t even say that it’s because I’ve been oh-so busy. Well, I guess I could, but then I would be lying through my teeth. No, the lack of posting is a combination of being a little busy, a little feel-like-death-warmed-over, and a little trying-to-avoid-all-forms-of-reality. (I find it’s easier that way… just don’t think about stuff. Unfortunately for me this does not always work. Actually it rarely does, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I’m nothing if not persistent!!)

So, about this end of an era thing…

Yeah. It sucks more than a little, I’ll be honest. I don’t even like to think about it, and it has nothing to do with ‘letting go’ of the baby, either, so don’t go there. (That’s where most people seem to go when they realize I’m not exactly ‘ok’ with Matt going to the private school.) I am SOOOOOOOOO looking forward to the time away from my precious baby!!! Oh my lands you have no idea!! I know that sounds horrid, but really it’s BEEN horrid the last couple of years and I NEED a break from him, oh PLEASE! So yeah, it’s so not ‘letting go’ of the ‘baby’. Nope. It’s letting go of the homeschooling life/dream. That’s what is crushing me. I can’t stand it.

Every time I look at school supplies, teacher supplies, new workbooks, catalogs for teacher resource materials or homeschool curricula, or anything that might vaguely resemble a ‘teaching the minds of young children’ slant… I want to scream and kick and wail and gnash my teeth and cry and cry and cry. =(

Enough of that, though. I do have a few other things to mention. Like….

My house is clean again! (Well, ok, the bedrooms are in progress and the pantry…well, let’s just not talk about the pantry, shall we?) But on the whole, my house is clean again! I’d done ok with keeping it picked up and clean after the folks stuff got sorted out and we did the initial clearing out and cleaning up, until about March when the fatigue and aches just got to be too much for me. Since then stuff had been piling up and getting worse and worse and the kids’ pitching in was a no-go. Not that I didn’t try… it just didn’t work. *sigh*

My grandmother called early last week, though, and wanted to know if I’d be home Fri around noon, and if so could my mom and her bunch come over, as she and PawPaw would be coming through town around then and they’d like to stop in. Sure! I told her. And then Mom called me and said “Do you need some help cleaning?” and I said back to her “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You are so funny to ask that! That was a stupid question! You saw my house two days ago… you tell me!” haha

So come over she did, and help me clean she did, and visit we did on Friday. Granted, it cost me. Friday night I was in so much pain! UGG! I popped 2 pain pills then went and writhed in bed for about 4hr while the very worst of it passed. Saturday I slept all day. No really. All day. Sunday was church and by that point I’d mostly recovered. I did nap Sun. afternoon, and my head was killing me Sunday night (TWO rounds of 2 pain pills and I still couldn’t sleep Sun. night.).

Yesterday we did some more prep for Operation Start-to-School. We took Matt to the uniform store and sized and purchased him 2 pairs of pants, 2 short sleeve shirts, and 2 long sleeve shirts. He actually could use more than that obviously, but we are el cheapo private school folk. We can’t even afford this, let alone a complete weeks’ worth (which would have been another 3 pairs of pants, and another s/s and another l/s, since they only wear the blue uniform-store shirts 3 days a week and plain white WalMart button-ups the other days). Meagan has the same line-up… 2 jumpers, 2 s/s and 2 l/s. It’s not an ideal set-up since the jumpers and pants either have to be worn twice or be washed mid-week, but it’s what we can do.

From the uniform store, we went to a nearby boot store (HUGE place) to see about finding a pair of cowboy boots for Matt to wear to church. He LOVES wearing suits and ties to church, but has not in several months because he has no appropriate footwear. I’ve looked everywhere and haven’t found a thing in his size. Granted everywhere is pretty much our local WalMart and one time a Payless when we were out of town, but still… He really prefers boots to dress shoes, but I haven’t even found dress shoes to fit, so he’s been wearing jeans, t-shirts, and tennis to church. Oh the horror, I know. He doesn’t like it anymore than me, actually I think he probably is MORE bothered than I am by it, but oh well.

Anyway, this huge boot store was supposed to have massive amounts of boots to pick from…and they do… if you are a full-grown adult with a FULL-grown wallet. Oh my stars!! They had about 4 styles in his size and he liked none of them. Also? They all were too narrow for his feet. Thankfully there was a pair at a local high-falutin’ drugstore-cowboy kind of joint on clearance that he liked AND that fit decent. They are not the black I was looking for, though. Instead they are a chocolate brown lower, with a mustard gold top. Personally I think they look like sick baby poop. Blech! Matt loves them, though, and has been buggin me all day to go get them for him.

Unfortunately I could not do that because he picked today to throw another all out tizzy massive meltdown of epic proportions. Screaming and hitting and biting and growling ensued. I ended up having to sit with him on my lap, one leg wrapped on top of his lap and one hand on each arm trying to keep them still in order for him to be able to get calmed down. Mike called the dr, because even though I have a consult set up for the 8th, I don’t know at what point we QUIT the waiting and just take him in to be admitted. Seriously he gets that bad with these rages or whatever they are. True, this is the first in a couple of months (I totally think the lackadaisacal no-pressure/stress summer is to thank for the brief reprieve…), but we all got lucky in that today I was not hurting super bad or super weak or whatever. Most days I would not have been able to physically restrain the kid because on most days he is far stronger than me. If that had been the case today, Mike would have been wholloped on the head with a metal pipe and I would’ve been bit up pretty good.

So the official word from the dr was… can’t do anything till the consult. FINE, but could you answer the whole question of what to do in the meantime?! I mean we totally got lucky today that I could hold him still, most days I can’t! What do we do when he goes all berserk like this and I can’t help Mike… or worse… Mike is at work. I sorta-kinda got the answer to that in a roundabout way… dr told Mike that if we think he is going to harm someone, take him to the childrens hospital an hour away.

Ok, so at least we have a plan… sorta. I mean by the time we got to the hospital I know he’d be calmed down, these tirades don’t typically last for hours once he’s restrained (which he would be in a car seat…), but then there’s the question of HOW in the beegeebees do we get him in the car and strapped down when he’s like this? We’re doing good if we can keep him in the house and semi-confined to one room. If we have to try to move him, he’s liable to take off into the street without looking (he’s done it before) or maybe climb the roof (again, done it before), if we lose our grasp of him which is not that difficult to do considering all the writhing and kicking and pulling and squirming the kid does.

And what if he pulls this kind of thing at school?

Sad thing is, just before this tirade, I totally thought I saw improvement in the whole moodiness thing. First there was the library daycamp thing a couple of weeks ago, of course. That was a huge sign of progress. Then this morning he had been out playing and when he came in and told me who he’d been with, I told him he needed to stay inside now since #1 he wasn’t supposed to be playing with this kid and #2 he wasn’t supposed to be in the sun. Ordinarily this would have provoked a massive meltdown. Yelling and screaming at me that he hates me, he hates his life, it’s not fair, he can play with whoever he wants, yadda yadda. Instead, this morning he took the disappointment very well and calmly said ok, and then asked if he could go to another friend’s house and go in and play video games instead. (Ok playmate, and out of sun) I agreed and off he went, no fuss, no fighting at all. I was shocked! I thought between the daycamp thing and this… surely the antibiotics were hitting the target and helping with the moods/behavior/pysch.

And then the meltdown. *sigh*

I guess it’s still possible the meds ARE working. After all, this was his first major meltdown in a couple of months, and it is about one month into treatment, so probably due for some herxing/cycling about now, too.

On another note (kid)… Meagan got back up out of bed around 11pm tonight and came looking for the thermometer. I asked her if she felt like she had a fever, and she said she did. Thermometer read 97.3. This is becoming quite the familiar scene around here… Feeling feverish? Your temp must be low! Matt did this a couple of days ago and his temp was 96.1!! Mine comes up anywhere from 96.4 to 97.6 when I feel feverish. Thing is we’ll really feel feverish on the outside too. Like Mike will put his hand or lips to my head and tell me yup, I probably have fever, but then we check it and it’s so low! Weird!

Posted: August 19th, 2008 under Lyme disease, Matthew, blogging, family, just life, kids.
Comments: none

Such a bag of mixed news today. Could explain why my feelings are mixed. Or maybe it’s mixed feelings and that’s what makes it mixed news.

The big where-are-the-kids-schooling question has been answered. Mike decided it would be best for everyone if I took a break from homeschooling this year and the kids went to our church’s school. He called today to set things up. Praise the Lord Meagan still has a scholarship, so we will only have to come up with tuition for Matthew.

I definitely have mixed feelings. Of course, Meagan loves the school up there, so she is ecstatic. No mixed feelings for her! LOL Matthew? Yeah, he’s just as mixed up as me, though for different reasons.

Don’t get me wrong… there is nothing WRONG with our church school. Good school, good environment, good teachers, good curriculum, good extracurricular activities, etc. Nothing wrong with it at all. I just don’t like giving up homeschooling EITHER kid… not that I’m losing THEM, just losing the opportunity to teach them. I really enjoy the homeschooling (that is, the way I like to/was homeschooling a few years ago… the last couple of years I have been unable to homeschool to my standards). It stung a little last year when I lost one student, but I definitely saw the special opportunities it opened up for one-on-one teaching. This year it just downright hurts.

It’s not the difference in the kids, either, although there is a difference in how each kid views this change. Meagan, of course, is thrilled to continue on in the private school. Matthew, on the other hand, is less than thrilled. He’s apprehensive at best, and terrified at worst. He has a lot of concerns about going, not the least of which is all the PEOPLE. (He is also not exactly excited about the loss of textbooks and the gaining of small workbooks… the kid likes to READ, and he’s loved reading his schoolbooks.)

The reason this year is so hard on me, is not because I’m losing Matthew this time as opposed to Meagan, it’s because I’m losing ALL students as opposed to just one. I don’t favor one kid over the other, though I’m sure to strangers it probably appears that way because of the difference in the kids’ personalities (Matthew is mega-clingy and sticks to me like glue, Meagan is super-independent and can hardly be seen with me for more than a second before she takes off to do her own thing.)

Homeschooling is all I know. It’s been my ‘thing’, my job for 10 years. It’s been my life. I don’t mean that homeschooling has been more important to me than anything else and that nothing else holds any meaning whatsoever, I just mean that homeschooling… or at least the way I like to homeschool… is a lifestyle. It’s not just what we do did during school hours, it is was the way we live d.

I’m not going to lie and say I’m excited, or that I’m even happy about this. I will say that I gave the decision over to Mike, and I will stand by what he chose. I will even do so without complaining (too much…at least… I’ll TRY not to complain!). I can’t promise I will do this without a couple of bucketfuls of tears over what I’m losing.

No, it’s not the end of the world, and yes there are even aspects of this change I AM looking forward to… like Matthew learning to pray in front of others (they take turns asking the blessing at lunch). I just feel like in the last year everything I knew, everything I did, everything I was able to contribute has been slowly but surely taken away from me. This… the homeschooling… was the biggest contribution to my family and to the world and certainly to the Lord that I was making. It was and IS the only thing I knew how to do even remotely well enough to be considered a *good* thing… and now that’s gone.

With no longer being able to homeschool even, I feel like a complete and total failure in every regard. I mean I knew I was failing at the raising of the kids in terms of discipline and making them feel loved and accepted and so forth, but at least I was training their minds academically decently. I might suck at handling sibling squabbles or chores or hurt feelings or spiritual questions, but at least I could teach them how to use a dictionary or how to do long division. I might not know what to do or how to do it when it came to the “parenting” part of raising these two, but at least I could see how they each learn differently… what they have difficulty with, what they excel in, how they think, etc… and was able to fine-tune the curriculum and teaching methodology to suit their individual needs.

Proverbs 22:6 has SO much meaning to me… so many layers. I believe that each child’s training needs to be individually tailored in every way… that is tailored based on the way the learn, their personality, their spiritual gifts, their talents, their weaknesses, their strengths, their physical, mental, and emotional help… just completely and 100% tailored for them. Train up a child in the way they should go… (pronoun choice and emphasis mine to illustrate what I mean by individualizing everything). This is what I’ve tried to do, and while the private school is a good school and the teachers are good and the curriculum is good… they can’t tailor every little thing the way I can here at home. Not because I am so much better at doing so, just that they have to use ONE curriculum, ONE schedule, and they have several kids. It is perfectly understandable that there has to be some level of standardization amongst the class… whereas here at home I only had two kids to ‘tailor’ for and a vast array of curriculum and schedule options. (Plus, I had the added bonus ‘leg-up’ of knowing each child very personally from the time they were born. lol)

Now it’s someone else’s job. I don’t doubt that they can DO the job, that’s not my problem. My problem is… the teaching was the only job I felt like I could do even a little bit ‘well’. It’s like… my academics… my knowledge… my brain was all I had to give the kids, and now that that is gone…

It just hurts so much.

And also? What in the world am I supposed to occupy my time with now?? I mean, sure, I can crochet, sew, read, learn, etc, but do you have any idea how GUILTY I will feel doing things I enjoy but have no benefit for anyone aside from my own pleasure instead of doing something else I enjoy but that actually BENEFITS the kids (i.e. Homeschooling)?!!

I hate this.

Posted: August 12th, 2008 under Matthew, Meagan, kids, lettin' hubby lead, the changing me.
Comments: none

This post is going to have a little bit of everything, and a lot of nothing. haha I just wanted to throw out a few different things and instead of a bunch of little posts, I’ll do it all in one.

I got Meagan’s denim cowgirl swirly skirt finished finally. Somehow she managed to pooch her tummy out enough while I was trying the elastic on for fit (twice!) that the skirt now falls down to the top of her hips because the waist is so loose. It’s a pretty long skirt to begin with (it’ll be great for winter with a pair of tights underneath… nice and warm), so it looks like she should be able to wear it for a couple or three years.

This past week brought us a first. It’s one of those “developmental milestones”. One of those “growing up moments”. The kind people make scrapbook pages about, although admittedly it is one that typically happens as a toddler, and I don’t HAVE any toddlers…

Last weekend Meagan got a call from a friend of hers, inviting her to go to a daycamp the local library was having. It was going to be from 9-3pm, M-F, so bring a sack lunch, we were told. Mike decided that since it was quite possible Matthew would be GOING to school this year (man do I hate giving up the homeschooling!), it would be a good thing for Matt to go to the daycamp as a way to get used to being off ‘by himself’. So when Mike took Meagan to sign up, he signed Matthew up too.

Well, of course the rest of the weekend he was more than a little anxious, and definitely not pleased with the situation. We went ‘lunch-sack shopping’ Sunday afternoon to get goodies for lunches, and he did enjoy planning what he would pack/take.

Monday morning was liable to be disastrous, though. I told Mike ahead of time that I should stay home and he should take the kids and drop them off, because I figured that would lessen the chance of a knock-down, kickin-screamin, pry-him-off-a-parent fight. So I stayed home and waited for the report of horrible crying and fighting…

It didn’t come!!!

Mike said that Matthew went in and sat down next to his sister (all weekend he had been on her case making sure she knew she had to sit with him and not leave him alone at ANY time…) at a table to one side of the door, while the teacher was at a table on the other side.

No kicking!

No screaming!

No clinging!

No tears!

We got a phone call at noon from Meagan to say “whoops! It’s only till noon, can you come pick us up?” When I got there I found BOTH kids happy and excited and trying to tell me all about their day and what they were going to be doing for the week. The kids had all been put into groups, and while mine were both together (whew!), there was one other kid with them… a girl, even… and Matt was ok with it! He was not only resolved to having to go back the next day, he was EAGER!

Told you it was scrapbook worthy! The kid’s 9.5y and he just went to his first no-mom (or dad or grandma or uncle, etc) activity/event! AND he did it without any histrionics! And it wasn’t even just a quick 30min thing, either. He went in thinking he wouldn’t get to go home for 6hr!

I know he hasn’t been on his antibiotics long, but I can’t help but wonder/think that they had to have played a part. I tried to get him to go to VBS just a month or so ago and the anxiety/fear that caused was WAY more than what he had with the daycamp. In fact, it was such that he didn’t go… at all. He was hysterical just thinking I was going to make him go, there was no way I could have gotten him deposited in his class without a massive meltdown (that would, of course, have been very distracting to everyone else not to mention embarrassing for Matt and me).

Another clue that the meds might be helping some of his mood/anxiety/psych/whatever stuff came last night. He had been playing a video game online and was getting really frustrated. He’d done the same thing the day before and it quickly devolved into a massive frustration meltdown of yelling, hitting, slamming, stewing, etc and I had to ban him from the video games the rest of the day. He did get off the computer, but the meltdown effects carried on the rest of the day and into the night. It didn’t get better until he fell asleep. Anyway. Last night he was getting frustrated and so I told him, “You need to chill out. You’re getting all worked up again, and then I’ll have to pull you off again…”

He replied, “I know. That game was too frustrating. That’s why I’m going to a different site.”

I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped just a little. He not only recognized the frustration, but came up with -and instituted- a solution on his own before I’d said anything to him! He was already loading up a different game when I came through with my warning. Never. NEVER before has that happened. Not once, despite the 5 billion times the exact same situation, with the exact same outcome, occurred.

On another topic… I think I may end up taking Meagan to a GI before too long. She had a tummy virus back in Jan that had he puking every hour for several hours. It only lasted a day or so, but ever since she’s complained of feeling like she is going to puke a LOT. Like every day. She says it is mostly when she eats. She also says her tummy feels full a lot, and then she says she is hungry when she lays down. (????) Last night we each made our own pizza for dinner and they were all cooked one, then the next in the oven. Meagan’s was cooked first. She let it cool while Matt’s cooked, then started eating when I put Mike’s in the oven. She complained about the pepperoni making her feel like throwing up, so I told her not to eat them, then.

My pizza was last in the oven (since I’m the cook… you know how it is…) I had to keep reminding both kids to EAT!! and get ready for bed. Matthew was playing a video game (NOT the frustrating one…haha), and Meagan was just avoiding eating. I let my pizza cool for about 5min, and then settled in with my food and my handful of pills to watch Everybody Loves Raymond. Meagan had still only eaten about half of a piece of pizza… 30min after starting. I told her again to hurry up and eat (and then told Matt again to get off the computer and do the same). Meagan told me, then, “I am! I have to eat it slow or it hurts my stomach.”

Umm… ok? She ate slow, all right. Another HOUR and she had about another half piece eaten. (She basically left the very bottom of the crust of both pieces.) I sent her to bed at that point. She put the other 2 pieces of her pizza in the fridge (I think). I don’t know what is going on in her gut, but this is getting ridiculus!

With Meagan’s skirt done, the next project(s) I have coming up is a stack of culottes for her for P.E. (provided she gets to go to the church school again this year), and get this… a western shirt for Matthew for his un-birthday! It won’t be the first western shirt I’ve made, but it’ll certainly be the teeniest. I made a couple for my stepdad when I first started sewing back in high school. He barely ever wore them because they were “too special”. I’ve warned him a million times since then that since I made them to be WORN, if he didn’t wear them, he wasn’t getting anymore. haha It’s been 15 years and he has not gotten another yet. I wonder if he’s figured out I really meant it yet or not. haha

This is also going to be the wildest western shirt I’ve made. The two I made in high school were not sedate, but this one! Oy vey!! Matthew picked a black fabric with BRIGHT blue flame pattern, and then for the yoke he picked a black fabric with BRIGHT red flames…and gold Chinese dragons! He wants me to put one dragon on each yoke! What a combination for a cowboy shirt, huh? HAHA The pattern calls for something like 1/4 of a yard for the yoke… I bought 1 full yard since he wants a dragon centered on each side. I’m going to have to do some creative pattern placement, I think. haha

Little man was so shocked to learn that Mom could make cowboy shirts and even put those fancy-shmancy pearl snaps on them! HAHA So cute! I went ahead and bought myself the pliers for putting them on, too. I just used a hammer to put the snaps on before, but if I know my son, this will definitely not be the last cowboy shirt I make, so I figured why not? Do it right this time. haha

Posted: August 9th, 2008 under Lyme disease, Matthew, Meagan, family, just life, kids, projects.
Comments: none

Things have been so busy (and so tiring) the last 3 weeks (or has it been 4?… 5?) that there hasn’t been much getting blogged. It’s not so much that I don’t think about the blog, or posting about this or that… it’s just I’ve been doing a lot of “I’ll post tomorrow” and “I’ll finish x, y, and z and then post” kind of thinking about the blog.

I didn’t really anticipate using this blog as a means to update anyone on things going on around here in any kind of family newsletter kind of way, but it seems that the last few posts have ended up that way. I’m going to sink real low and pull a “it’s because my brain has been too sick to think/do anything else” with the posts problem.

Since the posts have taken the newsletter-y turn to an extent, I suppose I should continue that to an extent, just in case there actually is a lone reader out there somewhere following along. I’d hate to leave them hanging going “ohmigosh! She has Lyme and got some meds and thinks the kids have it…WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!?! Did she ever find out about the kids? Did she ever get better? What about the whole freakin’ out about going to a dr thing? Or the telling her family and folks about what was going on?”

Of course, I don’t really expect that anyone is following along. And certainly if they are, they are doubtless NOT concerned to the extent of sitting on the edge of their seat with bated breath to know what happens next…

BUT I’m living in a reality of my own choosing at the moment and so I’m going to go with the whole exciting melodramatic scenario and make-believe that there really is a valid reason for me to continue to ‘update’ in the dreaded newsletter-y fashion.

Thus…the long awaited (humor me and edge forward on the seat, would you?) update of the last few weeks…

*drumroll*

I’ve had 2 appointments with my Lyme doctor so far. One week apart. I go back in next week for the 1 month check-in. It will be interesting on so many levels.

I never did list a complete rundown of all my symptoms/problems because that would be TOO boring and complainy but suffice it to say there are/were a lot. Before going in for that initial appointment I kinda figured I had at least one of the infamous co-infections of Lyme (Lyme in this case referring specifically to the infection of the borrelia burgdoferi bacteria as opposed to a more generic all-encompassing name for the condition of multiple infections of which the Bb is only one). I highly suspected…to the point of pretty much took it for granted… that I also was infected with bartonella (one strain is responsible for an illness commonly referred to as “cat-scratch fever”). At the initial Lyme appointment, my doctor decided to test for some co-infections, but in an effort to save me (the uninsured and BROKE) some money opted to NOT test for bartonella since my symptomology (is that actually a word? it should be…) was so strong for it. He decided that if I was ok with treating based on symptoms (i.e. based on a clinical diagnosis) then, in a sense, the testing for bartonella was unnecessary. I don’t think, though, that he actually wrote bartonella down as a guaranteed. Semantics, I guess.

Anyway, I digress. I had blood pulled and sent off to be tested for only 2 different co-infections. There are many, MANY more possible (even outside of the bartonella), but for now anyway, we were only testing for 2. Erlichia (or HME- Human Monocytic Erlichia) and Babesia (specifically just the babesia microti strain… there are many strains but the test only looks for the one…). I also had a CBC done to check my kidneys and liver.

Now… it doesn’t seem like there is a point, but there actually is…

I’ve had 2 appointments, but I’ve spoken with my dr on the telephone (yes the DOCTOR how awesome is that?!?) twice since my last appointment.

Lemme back up (only the teensiest amount) to catch-up on what happened between the blood draw and the first phone call…

Aches, new meds, tired-so-tired, brain-fry, July 4th at Bro3’s (shout-out to my wonderful snow-buddy… LOVED the whole thing… you did great at hosting, gal!) complete with exaggerated startle reflex (by-the-by… exaggerated startle reflex + fireworks = heart-that-feels-like-it-just-may-EXPLODE), more aches, more new meds, more tired. Absolutely no grocery shopping, very VERY little cooking/cleaning/laundry/etc, and only a teensy bit of crocheting and a little MythBusters (thanks Netflix!) thrown in.

Ok, that covers the 2wks between the appt and the phone call that shook things up a bit, sotospeak…

The phone actually woke me up that day and it was my doc. Wow, I thought… the DR called with the test results. A positive and another positive. Hmmm… The Erlichiosis was already being treated with the doxycycline I’d been given, but the babesiosis? Not so much. Babesia is a malaria-like parasite. In the same sense that borrelia is a ‘cousin’ to syphilis, so babesia is a ‘cousin’ to malaria. Its presence means the probability of needing to add a whole different class of meds to my cocktail at some point…anti-malarials.

Remember I said I never threw out a whole list of symptoms, but that it would be long if I did? Well now it’s beginning to make sense as to WHY… I now have 3 different ‘for-definite-because-the-test-even-came-up-positive’ infections and 1 ’symptoms-are-such-that-its-presence-is-so-obvious-we-don’t-really-NEED-to-test-right-now’ infection on top of that. That makes 3 big-bad bacterial infections and 1 malaria-like infection. Sheesh! No wonder that list would be so long and varied, huh?

Anyway, doc said at the next appointment we’d look at my symptoms again (re-assess, kinda, to see how the antibiotics, etc are working out) and if they’re not all being addressed we may add the anti-malarial. My initial thinking the first few days after that phone call was that even with the positive for babesia, the anti-malarial meds were probably still months away since it wasn’t currently responsible for any of my symptoms. This, however, was before I did much looking at babesia symptoms. The only ones I was really thinking of were night sweats and air hunger (feeling like you can’t get enough air)…neither of which I have or have had any time recently.

Then I did a little more looking into the babesia symptoms and discovered that some of my new-ish symptoms the last couple of weeks or so (lightheadness/dizzy, loss of appetite, nausea, base-of-head headaches…) could very well be the babesia rearing its ugly head. So the next appt. should be interesting on that note…

I said I talked to my dr twice. That was the first phone call. The second needs some other updating first…

I think I had mentioned that I had gotten the new pediatrician to sign the orders to test Matt for the Lyme, but that Meagan’s first appt with the new ped wasn’t for another week or two, so she still needed to be tested. The week of Meagan’s appt, the kids both ended up sick with the chest congested, asthma stuff. In calling to get them a sick appointment (to possibly end up on a short course of steroids and antibiotics) I discovered the ped. was on vacation that week. We tried to get them in to Urgent Care and that was a disaster. We ended up just giving them neb treatments at home and they’re doing much, much better now. Anyway! I cancelled Meagan’s check-up appt. that week because I thought she’d be seeing a dr at Urgent Care… and anyway I didn’t want the fill-in… I wanted the actual ped… because of the whole issue with the Lyme testing.

Well, the next week when I still hadn’t heard from the ped’s office on Matt’s test results by Wed, I called to check. I figured it’d been 3+ wks by that point, so I needed to do a little squeakin’ perhaps to get things movin’ again. They’d look into it and get back with me.

Turns out the results HAD come in the week before, but the fill-in doc didn’t know what to make of them or do with them or what-have-you, so they didn’t call. The ped. got them out and read them and lo and behold… he came up positive. I’m so shocked…NOT! haha

Doc didn’t really know what to do about it, though, and since she knew I was seeing a Lyme doc suggested I have him look at Matt’s results. Our kids’ insurance being what it is, though, that would N-E-V-E-R work as far as any kind of ‘official’ look-at-and-treat, so I suggested that perhaps the ped could call him for info and/or suggestions on what to do or where to go for info on what to do.

Today my dr called (yea HIM) again. Said he’d gotten a phone call and he’d passed on a little info along with directions on where to find more. He said the ped was going to send Matt to a dr who specialized in infectious diseases, but the reality is most of those docs don’t treat long or well enough (IF they even concede that you could, in fact, have Lyme since we don’t live in… you know… Connecticut. Those ticks must be very obliging to respect state borders or something, huh? UGG). Anyhow. My dr also said that it sounded like the ped would be treating Matt soon. He was basically REALLY shocked and REALLY surprised and dare I say… really EXCITED that this ped here in our little podunk town was actually… maybe… going to look into this and learn and TREAT.

I went about ‘business’ for the day (that means I called my mom…again… more on that in a min.), totally figuring ok… in a couple of days we’ll get a call from the ped’s office to make an appt and bring Matt back in to talk about what to do. I figured it would take at least that long for her to be able to get started on the looking into things.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the phone call at 15min till 5pm was NOT one of the kids’ friends, but was in fact the ped’s office calling to say that the dr had talked to my dr and what pharmacy should they call the scripts for the 2 different antibiotics into?

WOW! How cool is that? =)

Meagan’s check-up is this comin’ Monday so I’ll be able to at least briefly ‘check-in’ with the dr about Matt then and tell her way THANKS, while talking about getting Meagan started on treatment also of course.

Now, I said I’d talk more about Mom in a min, but I think for tonight I will leave that updating off. Why? Because this post is already long enough and I want/need to do this instead…

PRAISE THE LORD!!!

I don’t want to go any further without making good and sure that anyone reading and going “wow, what an amazing set of good fortune/coincidence” is fully aware that it is SO MUCH MORE than that. It is the work of an amazing, wonderful, powerful, loving God. Nothing less.

God has been leading me through all this from the get-go. From my first looking up my symptoms online, through giving Lyme a second glance, finding a doctor to sign the orders, finding a doctor to treat me, and now finding a doctor for the kids and ever-so-much-more in between! In so many big and little ways. Big scary leaps of faith like my going to a doctor for the first time in nearly 10yrs and telling my mom what was going on even though I was terrified of her reaction. Little, tiny, but-oh-so-important-and-specific details like exactly what bands need to show up positive and exactly what words/phrasing to use at the dr’s office and exactly what date to go and shirt to wear and a billion other things.

This whole health/Lyme/etc. journey for myself AND the kids has already involved a lot of prayer on my end… and I’m so thankful for it… a lot of guidance and answered prayers on the Lord’s end.

I can’t even begin to fully or adequately express just how blessed my family and I have been… and continue to be. ALL the glory belongs to the Lord Jesus in all of this. Again…

PRAISE THE LORD!

Posted: July 23rd, 2008 under God's Guiding Hand, Lyme disease, Matthew, blogging, faith, family, kids.
Comments: none

Matthew has had a couple of interesting days. He saw the new pediatrician yesterday. She is SO not happy that he has had to be on so much medicine “every day of his life” and so is running some RAST testing to find out what enviros he is allergic to so we can look at “immunotherapy“. We were having to pull out the big-gun words because Mr. Smarty-Words had already started freakin’ out over the whole “vaccine” thing. Having just read about Salk and the polio vaccine in history… he was totally clued in to what would be taking place in the next few minutes.

So this is cool! Maybe she can get him off the massive doses of antihistamine, and the other half-a-dozen things he’s been relying on to keep his asthma and allergies under control. She also signed the paperwork for the Lyme testing without batting an eyelash. In fact, she was WAY cool with it. yea!! So after a couple of pokes yesterday, and then the blood draw today (for which the dr gave him some numbing cream…yea again!!), he was feeling very put-out.

As we left the dr office after the vaccines yesterday, I said something like, “So was it as bad as you thought it would be?” To which he replied, “Yes. It hurt, but it still didn’t hurt as much as giving away the dogs. I still miss them.” The last half of which I had to squint to understand through the high-pitched whine and tears. Poor kid.

After the blood draw today he declared that he hated the age of 9. It has been the worst year of his life, ever! he says. I can kinda see where he would think that… giving up the dogs, getting into big trouble with the police, missing out on a fishing trip with his pastor, and now… horror of horrors… shots and blood draws! Actually, it is likely to get worse for him, as I can not homeschool this coming year. That means Mr. EXTREME-O Shy will have to go to a school of some sort. That is not going to be easy on him.

Even so, personally I would think Meagan has had a rougher year, though to be sure her yuckiness started back at 9.5, so maybe there is something to that whole the-age-of-9-is-the-worst after all. She’s had braces put on, an ingrown toenail cut-out, started monthly OW! shots, had a case of stomach bug that left her puking every 30min for about 12hr, gotten glasses, had a huge abscess from one of those monthly shots that then drained… at school, had 7 teeth pulled at once, and added another nightly shot.

Ya know? Now that I really think about it? I was 9 when I had a slumber party that only 2 girls out of the whole class showed up to, we moved into my aunt’s on-the-market-home and then into an apartment, discovered that homeschooling did NOT mean you didn’t have to do schoolwork, and got my face slammed into the concrete by the girl next door. Oh, and I had two break-ups. One boyfriend moved, handing me off to his best friend, and then *I* moved.

Oh the horrors of being 9!! I wonder if anything horrible happened to Mike when he was 9. Doesn’t matter. I definitely had it worse, don’t you think? ;-)

Posted: June 10th, 2008 under Matthew, Meagan, family, funnies, kids.
Comments: none

So the dogs went… and sooner than expected… in came the kitty.

Yuppers, skippers. We have a kitten. A little gray tabby kitten, presumed to be female (like I’m gonna check…even if I did I would never be able to tell at this age because like I don’t know a thing about cats), and named Chloe. She’s been here one week now, and she actually went through 3 name changes the first day. First she was Heidi, then Clover, then Brogan, and finally the kids settled on Chloe.

It’s definitely her name, though. It’s weird, but I had actually thought of Chloe myself before the kids came up with it. That’s creepily reminiscent of how Mike and I chose Meagan’s first AND middle names (a month apart, by the way). We both kinda came up with them on our own and when we discovered that fact…well, obviously there was no other option, then, huh? =)

I would show you a pic since true to prior pet history the kids have taken approximately 19,236 pictures of the new little one, BUT true to prior digital camera unloading history… I haven’t. So the camera is full and the computer, and by extension this blog post, is not.

S’alright, though. Just imagine a teensy little thing small enough to sit in even the kids’ hands. Dark and light gray stripes, with a dark-tipped tail, and the prettiest little blue eyes you ever did see.

Ok, ok. I confess. I’m smitten with the kitten.

And my cat-allergy? Well it was a problem the first couple of days and so I did the Benadryl thing until I could get to the store and get some Claritin. I took that once, and have forgotten every night since, but the eyes and nose? Doin’ just fine, thank you.

Maybe I’m just allergic to new kittens or cats that don’t like to curl up in my lap for their nap.

The kids had cleaned their room (I know, I think I just fell over dead, too!) a couple of days ago, but then one or the other of them got this creative spark that caught fire.

Tonight I had to bulldoze my way through the tangles of cardboard boxes, wood, and duct tape that they’ve declared is “Chloe’s Playground”. It completely fills their room. Seriously. And it’s a big room, too.

I’m so glad this creative spark did not come a month ago. Can you imagine the size of the playground they’d have made for Butterscotch and Brownie? Those pets were bigger than Matthew, whereas this one is only slightly bigger than my coffee cup! I guess that playground would’ve covered the HOUSE, so basically I’d have to blog from the interior of a cardboard box and duck every time the basketball sized bouncy monkey came swinging in from where it was duct-taped to the skylight.

I’m thinking Chloe might make the blogging a bit safer… at least until she learns cats are meant to walk across the keyboard while you attempt to type. Maybe she’ll be too busy with the ramps and skylights and hangy-down-thingies in her playground to ever figure that out.

In other news:

Mike has put me in charge of taking care of the weeds and has declared that under no circumstances am I to go anywhere near the trees. Franny the Fern is looking a little… ummmm… well, she has a fast-receding hairline I guess. And what’s left isn’t just real healthy looking. I think she might need a VO5 hot oil treatment or something. =/

I did get a little housework done today, and shockers of shockers… I even got the kids to help. Basically I told them uh-uh-no-way to any and all fun ANYTHING until we had the dining room clean. (Just one room. The three of us. Not great expectations. Just a leetle was what I was aiming for…) I swept the entire floor into a pile and the kids were told to pick out what was not trash and put it away. Then I had Meagan dustpan it all into the trash, I cleared and wiped down the table, and Matthew picked up some of his strewn school stuff. Then I mopped. I also gave Meagan a little help (shhhhh!) with her chore of dishes by unloading 2x and loading once without her knowing. I did this because I wanted to actually find the countertops sometime this week. I even made dinner tonight! Tacos, rice, and beans. Mmmm!

After having done so much today, I decided I could do a little fun stuff and not feel too guilty, so I got out the super-secret crochet project I have going (I’m actually about half…maybe more… done, so it IS coming along…) and popped in the Mythbusters DVD from Netflix that finally resurfaced.

I only managed about 15 stitches before my hands and fingers were screaming “We’re tired. PLEASE don’t make us do this. Ok, that’s it, we’re going to outright revolt, and HURT on top of being tired.”

Pathetic, huh? Some days it’s like that. Other days? Well sometimes I can crochet for 2, 3, even 4 hours (at a pretty steady quick clip) with no problem whatsoever. If you’re wondering how I can type but not crochet– crocheting means fingers held in towards hand with tension, typing has fingers spread out… crocheting requires arms to move and hang in the air to a certain degree, typing means (for me because I am a lazy typer) my arms nearly glued to the desktop and fingers resting on keys. Oh, yeah and pills. =)

So anyway I gave it up and just watched the show…with a snoozing kitten in my skirt-turned-kitten-hammock.

Then I got the kids to bed (all three…two in their beanbags, and the littlest one is curled up in the dustpan…I have no idea why) with minimal muss and now I’m going to go watch another episode of Mythbusters and go beddy-bye myself.

Posted: June 5th, 2008 under funnies, just life, kids, projects, the cat.
Comments: none

I had two thoughts today… (shocking, I know. Probably the ONLY two thoughts I had today. Keep reading and you’ll see why I say that….)

One: Matthew’s behavior has historically been “he’ll do ok for a week or two, and then he blows it and is right back to being a terror for a couple of weeks” That is something we’ve all said/noticed about him for MONTHS, if not years.

We were TOTALLY seeing a pattern, just in a broad kind of way. I kept looking for a pattern in the smaller things, like what sets him off? Anything can. Can’t find a pattern. He’s always been so volatile. Stupid little things might set him off, but great big things he might handle just fine.

The pattern isn’t in activities or events on a day-to-day basis. The pattern is in TIME.

He’ll have a couple of weeks in which he keeps the massive meltdowns and rages out of the picture almost 100% (maybe a few very brief moments of getting upset, but then getting over it again real quick before massive meltdown) and then have a couple of weeks in which that is pretty much the standard. The first week nearly all day every day, and then the second maybe better, but still not “good”. Like maybe only 2 or 3 big huge meltdown/rage/tantrum things, instead of 2 or 3 (or one looooooong one) a day.

Thought #2: I noticed that a lot of times I tell the kids to go do something and they get upset because they are doing something else I told them to do. The aha! part is that I’m telling them the 2nd thing because I’ve FORGOTTEN the first thing. No, I mean REALLY forgotten. I only realized it because tonight I caught myself. The kids have pointed it out to me before, but it never clicked what they meant. (I totally figured they were just trying to get out of doing whatever…)

I told Meagan to do something (I can not remember now what and it’s only been an hour) and walked by the bathroom door; saw her in there and started to tell her to go do something but then actually remembered, “hang on, I just told her to go do that other thing, so I’ll wait till she finishes that”.

Of course NOW, I have no idea whether I actually did tell her the second thing or not.

I don’t remember.

Posted: May 21st, 2008 under Matthew, funnies, just life, kids.
Comments: none

I’d like to say we eat dinner together as a family every night. I’d like to, but I won’t because that would be wrong. Because basically it would be a lie. A big lie. A big, fat, WHOPPING lie.

Upon further reflection I’d like to change the above introduction to read: I’d like to say my husband and I eat a nice quiet dinner, with meaningful conversation ALL BY OURSELVES miles and miles away from the nearest 9yo with an inquiring mind and nearest 10yo with a case of the preteen pouts.

The reality is we eat dinner together as a family a couple of times a week on average. Oh sure there are the weeks when I’m feeling very Carol Brady-ish all week long, but most of the time I’m feeling Roseanne-Barr-ish or perhaps Lucille-Ball-ish. So on average, twice a week.

I was feeling pretty Brady-ish today, so I actually got some chores done. Let me just say that any time mopping is involved you know I’m feeling Brady-ish, which is actually kinda weird, because didn’t Carol have a housekeeper for all the mopping-like chores?

When I’m in a Brady kind of a mood, you know I’m all about the home-cooked meal (again very weird since I’m pretty sure Alice did most of the cooking, but the messed-up workings of my mind are infamous, so there ya go!).

I’m all about the having the kids cheerily clear and set the table while I’m whistling and smiling contentedly (what? that’s not possible? leave me alone, I’m having a delusion of grandeur here!!) as I lovingly(?!) chop the veggies to go with our healthy salad, the kids and I patiently waiting on Daddy to get to the table to say the blessing (that just sounds so much nicer than the munchkins bickering at each other while I fold a load of laundry, don’t you think?), and of course… the delightful dinner conversation. Little vignettes of our happy, productive days being shared back and forth, with loving compliments on accomplishments being passed right along with the parmesan. (We had Upside Down Pizza for dinner!)

Yeah, right. OR…. the 9yo might have asked just how is it that a condom keeps the sperm from getting to the egg anyway…

Then, upon receiving an answer to that question, he just might have asked some other questions.

And it just might have evolved into a big, long discussion on just exactly what happens to all those thousands of eggs we females are born with if they DON’T turn into babies?

And being female myself I have to say that while we (ok, I) shared with our kids the ugly truth, I really do wish the truth were prettier.

About here my dahling 9yo asked if it hurt when we, ummm, get rid of unused stuff. At which point my not-so-dahling-right-now husband told him, “I didn’t feel a thing!” and laughed. He LAUGHED, ladies! Can you imagine?!

Don’t worry. =) Conversation soon turned to more pleasant things… what? You don’t believe me? Neither do I. How about pit bulls and how they have been known to tear poor little babies’ faces off? (This was because the kids had recently been offered a pit bull puppy. We were explaining just WHY this was absolutely, uh-uh, no-way, never ever EVER, gonna happen. To their little minds “FREE PUPPY” meant Mom and Dad would certainly say yes because after all, we HAD told them we would get another dog, and we ARE cheapskates, so FREE and PUPPY = New Friend!!! Right? WRONG!)

So anyhow, the whole pit bull attack thing, of course, led the kids on a google image search of pit bulls. And THAT led to (among other even sadder and scarier images that are just TOO horrible to reproduce here as they involve precious little children and I am now trying to scrub my eyeballs and heart free of those images, but which are probably included in the search results that will pop up if you click on that google link) — this:

Yeah, I don’t think this family will be winning any dinner conversation awards. I’m thinking it’s probably a good thing we don’t eat OUT together as a family more than a handful of times a year! Oh, and I’m also betting that the restaurants we visit are very grateful (whether they realize it or not!) that we do not own a google-enabled laptop with which the children can easily pull up visuals for the entire restaurant’s patronage to enjoy… because pretty much? I’m betting they wouldn’t enjoy. At all.

Bet you’re not eating dinner now, but if you WERE, I’m sorry for ruining your pizza. Truly.

One more thing. Do you think the conversation problem is because we don’t have enough practice with the whole sit-down eat dinner together thing? Or do you think we don’t sit down and eat dinner together BECAUSE of the conversation problem? I’m leaning towards the latter since right now just thinking about a repeat performance is making me want to run and hide.

One more, one more thing. Rest assured, this post really does NOT have a thing to do with the last one, although admittedly it could LOOK like it… The whole itching ovaries thing was not mentioned around the kids, though it IS common knowledge round these here parts that Mom would NOT be adverse to another baby or six. ;-)

The question that started this whole mess I think came about because we had a discussion on how/why identical twins look alike the other day that involved chalkboard drawings of eggs being fertilized and then splitting. That coupled with a prior knowledge that condoms = no babies, which could have been learned from a billion different places. I can’t remember how long back the kids knew that little nugget of knowledge. It is a shame, but it is the sad truth. Throw all that in the mind of a 9 year old boy, and let it stew for a day or two…

And ok, in hindsight I really CAN see how it would have been MUCH better form for us as parents to hand out a “that’s not polite dinner conversation, we’ll talk about it later” statement, and then follow it up… later… away from the dinner table. Thing is? My mind doesn’t work that way yet. I’m trying, but I’ve just not gotten there yet. Really, the only thing that crossed my mind when the question was popped was just exactly how NON-graphic could I make my response while still telling him the truthful answer.

Kinda explains this post, too, huh?

Also those ovaries aren’t itching near so much after tonight’s 3 and a half hour long getting-ready-for-bed battle. It’s 11:30pm for pete’s sake!! Sheesh-ka-bobs!

Posted: May 19th, 2008 under dogs, family, funnies, just life, kids.
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