Forgotten Milestones May 15, 2012

My sister is in the hospital tonight, getting ready to have her first baby!  I will be going down tomorrow to join in the fun, but tonight I am thinking about all the things to come as she prepares to meet her son.  More specifically, I am thinking about milestones, all of those major life moments that you look forward to as a parent.

Any baby book will highlight events like birthdays, first words, first steps, and first lost tooth.  And those milestones are great.  They are beautiful, and memorable, and often captured in photographs.

But some milestones, you don’t see coming.  They are surprising and more meaningful than you ever expected, and they take your breath away.

Here are some milestones that I think the makers of baby books everywhere forgot:

First time they use their own money to buy a long coveted item.

First time they outsmart you.

First time you walk in a room to find them praying.  Double points for the first time you find them spontaneously praying for their someone else.

First time they hurt themselves and try valiantly not to cry.

First time they use “y’all” correctly.

First time they see you cry.

First time they independently throw up into a container or toilet without your help.  (this just happened to us yesterday–YES!!)

First time they let go of your hand to walk ahead of you and take the hand of a girlfriend.

Oh yes, there are many firsts to look forward to and remember.  But what about the lasts?  Because that’s what is so heartbreaking about motherhood.  You can’t record the lasts…..because usually as it’s happening, you have no idea that it will never happen again.

The last time you rock them to sleep.

The last time they pronounced girl as “goy-el”.

The last time they used the ipod bear to fall asleep.

The last time they cry when you leave them at daycare.

The last year they believed in magical elves and Santa Claus.

Sometimes the lasts are just as memorable as the firsts but they don’t strike you until you realize they aren’t there anymore.

So my dear sister, on this the eve of motherhood for you, my only advice is to enjoy it all as much as you can.  {But don’t feel guilty on the days when frustration reigns supreme.}

The firsts will burn themselves into your brain, but the lasts……the lasts can get lost in the drudgery of the everyday.

So breathe him in everyday, committing those memories into your every cell.  Because while sometimes the days seems to crawl by, I can assure you that the years fly by.

Buckle up for this life changing journey you are about to take.

You are ready.

Sometimes I Wish it Had a Name May 9, 2012

Last Thursday was Kindergarten Kickoff at the boys’ new school.  It was a time for the kids to have a little while to explore their new school and for the parents to get informed about everything we need to know.

We were excited about it for many reasons, but mostly because we were going to meet Matthew’s friend.  THE friend.

You see, after 2 years of preschool, Matthew has identified one child as Friend.  His name is Sam, and Matthew talks about him with a smile on his face.  Matthew plays with Sam and if Sam isn’t at school, Matthew plays alone (this is his choice).

Actually, there are many kids who would like to be Matthew’s friend, and perhaps he is friendly with them at school.  I’m not really privy to what goes on there.  But I can tell you this–we have run into kids from Matthew’s school out in the real world….at parks, at stores, at the doctor’s office.  And the same thing happens every time.  Their face lights up, they say, “Hi Matthew!” and he immediately says “NO” and walks away.  Matthew consistently denies even knowing them and then leaves me standing there trying to smooth things over with a confused child.

So we were overjoyed to find out that out of every single child in Matthew’s preschool, there was only one going to the same elementary school as our boys.  And it was Sam.  Better yet, Sam’s mother is part of the instructional support staff at this school and she has recommended that Matthew and Sam be in the same class to help ease their transition into kindergarten.

We were going to meet Sam and his mom at kindergarten kickoff and for 2 days when we talked about it, Matthew would say, “we see MY FRIEND there.”  He was so excited.

When we got there, we scanned the crowded lunchroom and Matthew identified his friend, and then he did what I had hoped against hope wouldn’t happen.  He cried, he refused to look at or speak to his friend, he wouldn’t sit at a table with him.  All the kids were supposed to get nametags and have their picture taken.  When Matthew realized that they needed a picture of him with nametag clearly displayed, he crumpled up the nametag on his shirt, shoved the whole thing in his mouth and hid his face.  It would have almost been funny if the situation was different.

I was so disappointed.  Sam was disappointed.  Isaac was disappointed (and I’m sure annoyed, because most of the important occasions like this take this sort of stressful turn.  One day in another post, I will have to write about how my heart breaks for Isaac in situations like these).

Sam’s mom came to talk to me and asked me what it was that Matthew had been receiving services for (she was aware that he had “graduated” from the special ed program).  My answer was speech, but the glaring elephant in the room was that there are serious issues going on here, and speech is basically the least of our concerns.

But I have no name for this.

My son is socially and emotionally crippled in a lot of ways.  But he is not autistic.  He is not “on the spectrum”.

My son has some sensory issues.  But he does not have a sensory disorder.

My son has some attachment problems, but he does not have reactive attachment disorder (and yes, I am thankful for this).

And I don’t wish these diagnoses on him, I don’t.  But sometimes I think it would be easier if I had something like this to fall back on.  Some explanation of his behavior.  And I also know that I don’t owe anyone an explanation of his behavior, but it is hard to see these searching looks from people, wondering what is wrong.  And maybe if there was a diagnosis, it would make me feel a little better at night as I lay in bed thinking about all of it, worrying if he will every really have friends.  Because I know that soon, no kids are going to want to put up with that kind of reaction from him.  I can’t blame them.

My son has special needs.  Glaring special needs that don’t really have a name, and that is harder than a diagnosis, I think.  Because when they don’t have a name, there is also no clear treatment.

And that is hard.

After kindergarten kickoff, as we walked to the car, Matthew looked around expectantly and asked, “where’s my friend?”.

“Matthew, we saw your friend, and you wouldn’t talk to him.  He talked to you and you wouldn’t even look at him.  Kindergarten kickoff is over now.”

“Oh,” he said as his smile disappeared.

We climbed into the van and buckled up.

“Matthew, why didn’t you talk to your friend?  He likes you and it made him sad when you wouldn’t talk to him.”

His face clouded over as he looked out the window and whispered, “I don’t know”.

 

Husband and Kid-Approved Healthy Muffins….oh, and gluten-free! May 7, 2012

Muffins are a constant around here.  The kids seem to love them, no matter the ingredients (we like to use pumpkin, butternut squash, bananas and other things), they are a healthy breakfast, snack, lunch (I put them in Matthew’s lunchbox instead of a sandwich because he is gluten free), and sometimes even dinner–last Friday night we had these muffins, homemade hash browns and locally made bacon.

They were the first thing I knew I had to learn to make gluten-free because I love them too.  I’ve been fiddling with this recipe and I think it’s pretty good now.  The kids are gobbling them up as we speak:

Yummy Molasses Muffins

1 single serving cup of unsweetened applesauce

1/3 cup molasses

1 cup plain yogurt

3/4 cup ground flax

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1-2 tsp grated orange zest

1 cup chopped dates

1/3 cup local honey or pure maple syrup

1/3 cup oat bran

2/3 cup + 1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose GF flour

3/4 tsp xanthan gum

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Blend the first 9 ingredients together.  Then in another bowl, mix the dry ingredients.  Blend the wet and dry ingredients together and then transfer to greased muffin cups.  I used coconut oil for this–I am very new to this oil.  As a matter of fact, that was the first time I used it for anything!!

So there you have it, these are pretty much ALL ingredients that I feel pretty darn good about, especially when they are organic, which the applesauce, flax and yogurt were.  And when everybody in the house happily gobbles them up, I feel even better about them.

PS–if you want to make them, but you don’t have to go gluten-free, just use 2/3 cup + 1/4 cup of whatever flour you choose, and omit the xanthan gum.

Enjoy!

Whatnot Saturday May 5, 2012

• Isaac got some new Spiderman underwear the other day.  Mostly because I was getting sick of him updating me like this, “Moo-ooom, I only have 2 underwears left in my drawer–you need to do laundry!!!”.  So the solution here is not so much to do more laundry, but to buy more underwear.  See how that works?  Anyway, he wore a Spiderman shirt to school and had on Spiderman shoes.  When a teacher was getting him out of the car, she commented on that and he promptly began to pull his pants down to show her his new underwear.  Which makes sense–it’s kinda cruel to have underwear that awesome and not be able to show them to anyone.
• Is it weird that for our anniversary, I asked my husband to make me a place to start a compost pile?
• Isaac’s version of Ring Around the Rosie includes the line, “Achoo, Achoo, we all fall down”.
• I have this fantasy.  It involves a day with nothing to do and no kids to take care of.  This fantasy is me, in bed, watching crappy Lifetime movies.  I say if you’re gonna dream, dream big.  So this is kind of a sad dream in many ways, but mostly because even if I get the chance to do it, I never do, I choose household chores or computer stuff every time.  So months ago, I DVR’d a crappy Lifetime movie, much to the amusement of my husband.  And Tuesday night, I got my chance.  Jason was at church til late helping out with something and the boys go to bed at 7.  So I sat on the couch and watched a Lifetime movie called “Blue Eyed Butcher” and ate sea salt caramel gelato.  And it was everything I hoped it would be.  At least until Jason got home and talked loudly over the last 20 minutes of the movie.  {le sigh}
• Isaac climbed into the car after school and asked me, “Mom, do you know why Lizzie-Lu wasn’t at school today?  Because she has a BUG living in her tummy!!!!”.  {she had a stomach bug–had to explain that one to him}
• Isaac to me:  Mom, you’re my BEST friend!!  Me:  oh buddy, you’re my best friend too.  Isaac:  Well……maybe not my best friend……
• Have you seen those new Swiffer commercials?  They are hysterical.  The ones where the woman finishes cleaning faster because of the awesome Swiffer products and then she has this unexpected extra time and she says things like, “I’m gonna drink this coffee…..on the porch!!!” or “I’m going to read one of these books!”.  You can tell a woman wrote that because it’s so true.  That is what I imagine my life is going to be like when the boys go to kindergarten.  A girl can hope.
• Isaac was excited to tell me about a party at our library to kick off the summer reading program.  The main selling point:  it costs FREE!!!!
• Isaac has a shelf of bins in his room to keep toys in.  If you look at it, it looks totally chaotic, but there is a method to his madness.  One day, he was playing with this cheap hat he has and it broke.  I said we should probably just throw it away and he said, “no, we will put it in my bin of ‘broken things and things I don’t understand’ “.  Yep, he’s got a bin for that.  It contains old glow necklaces that don’t glow anymore, a broken giraffe hat, and a chopstick he found at the park that has chinese characters on it (hence, the things he doesn’t understand).
• If you can find something cuter than Isaac saying “easy, peasy, lemon squeezy” with his missing tooth lisp, I would really like to know about it.

The Birthday-versary May 3, 2012

Re-posted from last year……..

Nine years ago, I married my best friend.  It was a day much warmer than today that started out with storms, but ended with sunlight.  Actually, it ended with cake and champagne and karaoke.  It was a good day.

Nine years ago, I doubt we could have imagined our life as it is now.

Nine years ago, I thought driving a Saab was a priority.  (Now I covet minivans)

Nine years ago, we had 2 dogs, 2 cats and lived 2 blocks from the beach.

Nine years ago, we were different people.

———————————————–

Five years ago, on the other side of the world, a baby was born.  The baby was born to a woman that we don’t know.  Her face, her personality–we have no clue, although I imagine we see glimpses of her everyday.  She gave birth to a child that would later be our son.

Five years ago, South Korea was not on my personal radar.

Five years ago, I wasn’t even sure we would adopt.

Five years ago, I was consumed with being the mother of a 6-month old baby named Isaac.

Five years ago, I had never even heard of bulgogi.

But our youngest son was born that day.

——————————————–

Tonight we will celebrate it all–another year older for Matthew and another year together for his parents.  Bulgogi for dinner.  Something I am rather good at preparing, and to think, 4 years ago, I had never heard of it.  Cake–gluten free cake, at that.  We will celebrate family.  Family around our table and family around the globe–known and unknown.  We will celebrate surprises.  Like saving for a minivan and finding your family in the most unexpected places.

Oh, you naive lovebirds, how could you ever have guessed it would be this good?

i like…. April 25, 2012

This year for Easter. we got the boys a special gift.  They each got a “like book“.

It’s not a book for them to write about what they like.

It’s a book for us to write in.

Every day, Jason and I write something we like about them.

They absolutely LOVE hearing what we wrote.

And I have to admit, it feels good to sit down and remember the good things they do each day.

It’s a great way to build their confidence and reinforce their good behavior.

In short, I like…this book.

If you would like to order a “like book”, you can visit their website and use the code “likebook” at checkout for 25% off.

This post was not sponsored by Like Book–I just like it and there was a coupon code on a flyer that came with my order.  So there.

Whatnot Wednesday April 18, 2012

• Is it bad that I’m too lazy to even put my Whatnot Wednesday picture on top of this post?  Yes?  Whatever.  Picture a neti pot.  Now picture me pouring water into my nose.  Now picture all of this text falling out the other nostril…….So let’s do this.
• “The New Adventures of Old Christine” is absolutely hysterical.  I catch the reruns on Lifetime sometimes, but then I ordered some of the seasons on Netflix.  Seriously.  Very, very funny.
• Let me talk to you about spaghetti squash au gratin.  You know what?  Just make it.  You can thank me later.
• My veggie garden is coming along nicely, but there is some kind of varmint that keeps bothering my spinach plants.  I thought it was squirrels, but this morning, it was definitely a cat.  I know for sure because it dropped a deuce right there in the middle of my spinach.  I don’t know if cat poo has the same kind of fertilizing properties as manure, but I removed it hastily.  Cause that’s just gross.
• The other day at the grocery store, we ran into a set of twins that take karate with Isaac.  Matthew is always there at class, so the twins know him, but they don’t interact much with him because he doesn’t take the class.  So we stopped to talk to them and their mom at the store, and the twins immediately started to ask me questions about Matthew.  You can tell they have probably been asking their mom about him and that she explained to them that he was adopted.  Their curiosity and interest was very sweet and it is the first time that kids have asked so many questions.  They wanted to know if Matthew was always his name and how old he was when he joined our family and if Isaac went with us to Korea.  Their questions were all innocent and didn’t cross any privacy lines, but I think their mom was nervous that I would be offended (I wasn’t at all!).  I answered all of the questions, but Matthew totally zoned out of the conversation, and I am really ready to sit down with both boys this summer and do the W.I.S.E Up Powerbook.  It is Matthew’s story and he should be the one to decide how he wants these questions (the innocent ones and the harder ones that are bound to come up as well) answered.  Isaac needs to go through it as well because, for better or worse, he tends to do a lot of Matthew’s talking for him.
• Speaking of Isaac and adoption talk, he brought up adoption the other day.  I can’t even remember what we were talking about, but I asked him if adoption was always a happy thing.  He said, “no, it is happy because you are a part of a family, but it is also sad because that means you lost another family”.  I was so proud that he already recognizes this!
• I’m making date sugar right now.  Well, I was trying to make it yesterday, but after I baked and dried out the dates, my food processor spazzed out when I tried to pulverize them.  Everything I read made it sound like this was gonna be easy.  But instead, I have one ziploc bag with perfectly powdered dates, one with rocky powder and whole rock-hard dates.  My counters and floors are sticky from date dust and last night, I blew my nose and everything that came out was brown.  Being healthy is, like, hard.
• I’m back on coffee.  I realized I still don’t want hot coffee, but I’ve been drinking a lot of iced coffee.  I make a pot of coffee twice as strong as usual, then refrigerate it.  Then I prepare it with half and half, a little bit of organic sugar and a drop or so of almond extract.  Yum.  The perfect iced almond latte.
• So coffee is back, but meat and gluten are gone from my diet.  Gluten is gone for good–it is definitely the source of my headaches!!  I even got a headache after eating the communion wafer at Easter!
• Matthew calls artificial colors “fishy fishy colors”.  Which is kind of right.
• One of the ladies in my water aerobics class did the sweetest thing for me last week.  She bought me a thank you card and wrote me such a nice note, thanking me for being so encouraging to her.  She included a gift card to my favorite grocery store!  That really made my week.  I always say that God puts the most awesome people in my classes.  I love my job!
• I just read a book called “Divergent“.  It was for a book club that I recently joined.  It is kind of Hunger Games-esque.  You know–strong teen girl, dytopian society, romance.  I thought it was just okay though.
• Tomorrow, we have kindergarten registration for both boys!  I’m not really ready to talk about it.  Not because I’m sad–I’m really not.  Mostly because all anybody ever says to me is “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO???” like I suddenly have to have a grand new plan for my life.  And mostly, I’m just ready to take a deep breath and make myself a hot breakfast.
• That’s all for now.  I think I have more to say, but I’d rather just watch “The New Adventures of Old Christine” and drink an almond latte.

{Insert Bee Pun Here} April 8, 2012

Dear PawPaw, We are so sorry that your birthday card is late, but……

a.  We forgot!

b.  The dog ate your card.

c.  We are heartless jerks who simply don’t care.

d.  5000 bees invaded our mailbox right after we put your card in there.

True Story.  If you are friends with me on Facebook, you will know that my facebook page was “abuzz” last Wednesday with hysteria over a bee invasion.  It all began about an hour and a half after I had put some letters into my mailbox.  There was nothing strange going on out there at that time.  Just a little while later, I was walking through the living room and noticed something odd….a triangular thing hanging on the bottom of the mailbox.  This was my first view:

I realized it was bees, and frantically texted Jason, who seemed annoyingly amused.  Can I stress here that I was FREAKING OUT?  My friend, MK, was on the way over and I called her in a panic, warning her to have her windows closed when she pulled in the driveway and to drive as close to the house as she could.

The panic may or may not have escalated when she got there.  I may or may not have used the term “killer bees” and scared the stew out of Isaac.

The next hour involved me calling our pest control company, trying to locate a beekeeper, trying to make dinner, making frantic Facebook updates (because I wanted everyone else to know my plight), almost having a heart attack when an elderly man walked by my mailbox completely oblivious to the swarm there.  I was at the window, frozen, wanting to yell and warn him, but all that came out was a frantically concerned moan.  You know that sound.  Thankfully the bees left him alone.  Passing cars were stopping to take pictures.  My mailman nearly had a coronary and pulled into my driveway honking like a maniac.  I finally located a beekeeper who came straightaway to collect them.  By the time she got there, the cone o’ bees had grown to this size:

At that point, Jason was at home and while I was trying to make dinner, he was directing traffic and I was intermittently yelling for him to take pictures for the blog!!  The beekeeper’s strategy was that if she could get the queen into the cardboard box–yes, she was going to drive home in a regular car with 5000 bees in a cardboard box!!!!–the rest of the bees would follow.  But darned if it took forever to find the queen.  (And yes, this woman was scooping them into the box with her bare hands–talk about the heebie jeebies!!).  Finally, we had to remove the mailbox from the stand and the queen was underneath it.

So the question everyone want to know is why so many bees?  Why my mailbox?  And how did they get there so fast?  Basically (as I understand it) when a new queen is born, she takes a bunch of bees from the swarm and starts her own swarm.  A few bees head out to scout out a new location, and for whatever reason, they chose our mailbox.  So in a group of 5000, they traveled together to get to our mailbox.  The queen is heavier and flies more slowly and tires very easily, so when she stops to rest, the whole swarm waits there with her.  So basically, they had been traveling in this large group together.  So when I put the letters in the mailbox, there’s a pretty good chance that 5000 bees were hovering under the dogwood tree by the mailbox, resting.  Or maybe across the street somewhere.  We know they were close because of how fast they invaded it.

Also, how do I know there were 5000?  It was an estimate by the beekeeper.  She said that 1300 bees weigh about 1 pound, and that once the box was full of the bees, the box felt like it weighed about 5 pounds.

I was amused at the way my cheapness manifested itself during the bee emergency.  Here was my thought sequence:

This is gonna cost a fortune!

I don’t care how much it costs, I want them gone.

(then I find out that beekeepers will remove them for free, because they are honey bees.)

What a relief.  I am so lucky that this is going to be free.

You know, now that I think of it, I should charge them for the bees!  This is money in their pockets!

Okay, calm down, just be grateful that the bees will be gone very soon.

Well, they should at least give me some free honey.

And that’s exactly what they did. 

I guess you could say it was a win-win.  They got new bees.  The bees got a home where they are actually wanted.  I got some free honey and a good blog story.  What more could you ask for?

Whatnot Wednesday April 4, 2012

• Since we eat such a strict diet around here, you probably aren’t surprised to hear that I don’t give the kids artificial colors either.  One day we were in CVS and Isaac saw a Spider Man pez dispenser.  He really, really wanted that candy, and I told him we couldn’t get it because it had bad ingredients and artificial colors.  He walked up and down the aisles of the store bemoaning very loudly, “I just wish I could have artificial colors!!  Why can’t I have artificial colors??”.
• And believe it or not, you can do a fun easter basket without putting crap in it.  I went to a local store yesterday and stocked up on crap-free candy.  Even better, the chocolate was even fair-trade.  Talk about guilt free candy!
• On the way home from vacation, we stopped to eat at a Cracker Barrel and Isaac was working in the little kids book they gave out.  With our help, he figured out this word scramble, which then read, “When you have a book, you can never be lonely”.  I read it to him and then he said, “of course not because someone would be there with you, reading to you!”.
• Lastly, while we were on vacation, and eating out at a restaurant, Isaac announced loudly, “I have to go uber cray cray poo poo!!”.  Can’t remember if that was before or after he pulled a super absorbent tampon out of my purse, held it over his head, and cried, “Mommy, what is THIS???”.  Good times.

Need to clear your head?  Write your own Whatnot Wednesday post and link up below so that we can all see the randomness that fell out when you rinsed your brain.  Just don’t forget to link back here or grab my button–get your HTML on.

Protected: Spring Break in Pictures April 4, 2012

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