This one is for you...

Devin has now seen countless people for tests and evaluations. We've run from one side of town to the other and have done everything from reciting the ABC's to getting EKG's. All of this for....ADHD and sensory integration disorder.

It is exhausting.

Since being a little girl, all of my career related dreams were always with high maintenance kids. I wanted to be a guidance counselor, a teacher, a social worker, a missionairy (hahahaha)...the list goes on and on. As it turned out, I wound up working with a program that serviced various groups of children and it took less than one year before they moved me with the inner city group. I LOVED it. I loved working with the kids that were misunderstood. I loved the ones that nobody else wanted. I loved the ones that people called bad or hopeless. Every child has the potential. Some may be broken and need some mending. But, they all have it. They need faith and that's what I was good at. Seeing the potential and helping them figure out how to release it.

Working with kids is not where it stops. Or at least that is what I've always been told and what I tell my staff. We don't just work with children. We work with the family. One of my BIGGEST rules is that if you have to tell a parent something negative about their child, you sandwich it with two positive things. You never know what is going on in their lives and how many people have come before you to 'talk' to them about their child.

All of this leads me to now. I have a new found respect for those parents. Those parents aren't just 'them' anymore....they are now included into a 'we'.

I am one of them. My child is not typical. I never thought that I would one day be on the other side of the fence but am greatful that I had the opportunity to get to know and learn from them for my own sake. I never thought that ADHD could cause so much turmoil in a childcare setting, in a family, in friendships. It affects his whole life, mine and Chris' and his brothers. And, it's not always easy. It's not easy for him. It's not easy to watch him struggle with making or keeping friends. Or struggle to keep up with his peers. It's not easy to watch him not be able to make choices like he 'should' or be responsible like he 'should'. It's not always easy for me to listen to other parents talk about how 'perfect' their children are even if I am truly happy for them.

Things could be far worse. Devin is healthy and happy but he has severe ADHD which does not allow him to function as a typical child during the school days or keep up academically. Mix that with some sensory integration disorder and he's all over the place.

I can deal with the academics. He has private tutors and we're putting some accomodations in to assist him throughout the day. He's not learning at the pace of everybody else, but he is learning. And he keeps steadily pushing forward.

But, here's the difficult part.....

People. People have been the biggest hurdle. And not just any people...but the people that I thought were supposed to be like me. The people that were supposed to see the good in my child. The people that were supposed to provide me with a shoulder to lean on and some wise words of advise. But, time and time again...that didn't happen.

People. People that you think love your child...or have their best interest...don't.

People. People who have no patience and don't understand why he doesn't just 'act right'.

People. People that want to tell you everything that you are doing wrong because they think that the parenting MUST be the problem.

People. People who treat your child differently or say thoughtless things to them. People who give them the look.

People People People People.

Sometimes good people are shitty. That's my new inspirational quote. Everybody messes up. Nobody is perfect. And at some point or another we are all shitty human beings. Some without realizing it until after and some just outright.

But, I have learned. I have learned from Devin. I have learned from myself. I have learned from people.

So, this one is for YOU...

This one is for the ones who have stood by and given me words of encouragement. You have helped me keep faith in myself and my child when others were stripping it away.

This one is for the ones who didn't have faith. Once I was able to see through the fog you have given me the will and courage to not give up.

This one is for the family members who have listened to me cry and helped me by just listening and then allowing me to talk through it by laughing about Devin-isms.

This one is for the adults who should have helped my child but instead humiliated him. You have given him an early glimpse into a world that isn't fair. You've stripped some innocence away that can't be regained. In return, he has gained empathy and can relate to the underdog.

This one is for the few that will dare to come and spend time with him. It isn't easy but he loves going places. And it gives him a break from the day to day things that start to build up.

This one is for you....

It doesn't matter if you were the encourager, the discourager or the one who didn't want to intervene because this wasn't your problem.

This one is for all of you...without the good, the bad and the ugly. We wouldn't have the zest to get to where we're going. Devin will be alright. He'll make friends. He'll one day be a productive man who will remember what it was like to be an awkward child. And hopefully he'll be all the better for it.

Thank you. All of you.

Excuse me, Can I lick your pink eye?

Why am I never sick? Most people would think this is great, but it's really a curse. I'm cursed to take care of sick people. I'm cursed to never have homemade soups and hot tea. I'm cursed to never be able to lay all snug in cozy blankies on the couch with a never ending stream of tasteless reality shows on tv.


I did catch an 8 hour bug from the boys last year. But, it wasn't severe enough to put me out of commission for the entire day. Come on, flu. That's all you got?

Sinus infections...psssssh. That's not a couchable illness. Nobody looks at you with a blown out sinus filled face and says, "You'd better go home and let somebody take care of you".

I once had kidney stones. That was pretty bad. I had an extremely high fever and wasn't able to straighten myself from the intense pain. I was delirious on the couch under a mound of coats and whatever else I was able to reach, croacking out for water and sinking back into fever induced sleep.

......

I want that back.

I want to lay on the couch for an entire day while Chris does everything. I want him to make me food, bring me food and clean up my food. I want to be the remote holder and watch every episode of Sister Wives. I want him to have to tend to 3 boys who have bottomless bellies, always wanting a snack or something to drink. I want him to do bath time and bed time and bed time and bed time and bed time and bed time (for my vampire children who don't sleep).

If anybody has any good communicable diseases, send me a vile of your spit!

Attack of the vacuum

Devin goes back to the Doctor's office to talk about medications this Thursday. I'm a basketcase of anxiousness and hopefulness. I wish people were more open about their children being on medication. Hearing about other's experiences is always helpful. I've got less than a handful of mom's in the same boat as me so we're flying mostly blind and with the help of google.

In happier thoughts...Christmas is coming! Flights are booked and family will be flying and driving in from all over the country. We went out Thanksgiving weekend and cut our tree down.

Yesterday I was attempting to use the vacuum hose attachment to suck up fallen pine needles from the tree skirt when the hose sucked up the tree skirt. Normally this wouldn't be a problem. You would just pull the skirt from the hose. But, you have never met MY vacuum. It's the vacuum from hell. I can't tell you how many times that sadistic sucker has found ways to maim me, blind me and regularly reek havoc on my phalanges. It's a heavy beast that is the only vacuum that has been able to hold it's own in a house of never ending dust producing projects, spills of random candies and lego toys. Chris and I have been together for almost 8 years and we have owned 4 vacuums in that time. The first three lasting all around one year before hacking out it's final fur ball and retiring to the local dump.

Not this one.

It dishes out as much abuse as I can dish. It's an eye for eye, toe for toe....or as in yesterday's case a hose for nose.

As I was precariously twisted around the branches of sappy knives trying to suck up dead pine needles, the tree skirt sucked up into the hose.

This caused a chain of reactions of the Griswald proportion.

1. Hose sucks up tree skirt.

2. Hose gets jammed with tree skirt and can no longer suck.

3. Hose that was stretched to the max recoils up on it's own suction.

4. Recoiling hose yanks vacuum across the room.

5. I turn to see vacuum roaring at me.

6. Vacuum slams into me (I think I heard it laughing too)

7. Vacuum slams me off what little balance I had.

8. Both me and vacuum fall to our sappy death.

Had anybody else been in the room with me, I probably would have been able to find more humor in it all. Instead, I was left pelting ornaments and lights back onto the bottom portion of the tree by calling the vacuum every unholy name I could think of.

ADHD. Over diagnosed or under estimated?

I'm sure it's apparent from reading posts that Devin is not your typical go with the flow child. Unfortunately for him, he's my clone but to the extreme. I'm ridiculously forgetful, I have a hard time doing things that don't particularly interst me and there are times when I feel like my brain wants my body to go ten million times faster than it can. As an adult I've learned how to function (if that's what you call it) and cope with these things. For example: If I have a deadline that I have to meet I will put on headphones and listen to an interesting documentary and have an endless supply of munchies.

Devin was different since the day he was born. While most babies like to sleep the days away, Devin would stay up for hours. He started tracking objects and people with his eyes almost immediately. And the kid didn't like to be still. No, no, no, no, he did not. I would get charlie horses in the arches of my feet from bouncing around all day long. When he learned to crawl he would put his head down and speed towards his destination and at 9 months he skipped toddling around and went straight to running.

Through preschool, he struggled to keep up at the same learning rate of his peers and struggled with self control. Long story short...we found that he had severe hearing loss during preschool caused by otitis media. He underwent surgery to have tubes put in.

I now had "something to blame" for his extreme outburst behaviors and his lack of ability to keep up. His hearing loss had been around a 70% loss. He had missed out on alot and was frustrated with being an environment that he wasn't able to understand or thrive in. His preschool modified everything for him to be sure that he always was aware of what was going on and was expected of him.

Enter Kindergarten. His behaviors were still extreme. I spoke with the principal and teacher enough that year to think that I was the student again. I was at a loss. His teacher obviously did not like him AT ALL. And, he was having hearing issues again. We had to go back for another set of tubes. We struggled through the year with barely getting by grades. I was never so happy for summer as I was that year.

First grade. His teacher was wonderful. But, he still gave her a hard time...not as bad as Kindergarten but still a hard time. Towards the end of the year it was more time with the principal. Referrals for anger problems and attention problems. Suggestions of diagnosis that made my head spin out of control and left me feeling like I had ruined my child's academic career as well as any future visions of a productive life.

After two days of crying and pulling the woahs-are-us deal, I pulled my head out of me bum and got moving. We saw a counselor...went to endless meetings and was promptly referred to medication with no supportive services. While I'm not comfortable with medicine I'm not ruling out that it may help him. However, I know from experience that it isn't a wonder drug. You can't pop a pill in his mouth and expect his whole personality will change. He is who he is and he's unfortunately already learned some non-productive ways of doing things at school. I have since found a new counselor and we are in the process of getting a formal diagnosis and will then be requesting an Individual Education Plan (IEP) for Devin.

I'm not thrilled about it. When you have a baby, you envision them doing normal things in a perfect world. What is the definition of perfect? What is the definition of normal? I think my crazy guy is pretty great. And I'm going to do everything in my power to help the rest of the world see the greatness within him too!

Truly, I was way over dramatic about it. I've always said that I love Devin with a fierceness that is different than my other two children. Maybe it's because I see so much of my former awkward self in him, maybe it's because I see the looks people give him, maybe it's because of the conversations I've heard or maybe it's simply because he needs it. He needs someone to remind him that he's not alone and even when he loses faith in himself, I never will.

Who doesn't love an old poop story?

Here's an old one that I found and couldn't resist posting. Why? Because it is about one of my all time favorite subjects.... POOOOOO

Ah. The joys of being stuck in times of old with a septic tank and little boys who love to flush things.

Here in the northeast, we finally had a break in the cold weather and the temps hit the 50′s! Great for cold spirits…bad for all the snow that melted into our backyard, which is where the septic tank beds are.

For those of you who are not familiar with the septic tank. The definition according to google is..septic tank n. A sewage-disposal tank in which a continuous flow of waste material is decomposed by anaerobic. Or in layman’s terms…all our excrement flows into a 1,000 gallon tank located underneath the trampoline in the backyard where it supposedly breaks itself down allowing for more excrement to be packed in. This makes for a good read during supper….

While anaerobics (I have no idea what this means, but makes me envision turds in neon leotards) are going on, the tank does need to be emptied. The rule is generally, for two people in a household you get it done every 5 years. For 5 people, every two years. Well, we have six people and frequent out of town visitors throughout the year…..and it hadn’t been done in 4 years. Is the post title starting to give you a visual yet?

On Saturday, my dad texted Chris' phone to let him know that a sewer smell was coming from his pipes and said it was probably time to get the tanks sucked out. No problem. By Sunday, the smell emanating from the bathroom showed itself. The toilet had backed up and there was raw sewage floating around, stankin’ up the place. Not a problem, right? Sewage goes in the toilet, so aside from the smell it wasn’t too bad. We went into crisis mode utilizing the water at a bare minimum.

Sunday night brought another snow storm that lasted into Monday and had all of us praying that it didn’t keep the ‘sucker guy’ away. We lucked out and he showed up first thing in the morning after I had left Chris and the boys home to ‘take care of duty’. About halfway through my work day I receive an email from Chris that read, “need to rent snack for train”. What?!?!?!?! I’m at work and him and the boys are going on a train ride! Ok, it was a frantic text full of typos that after calling him translated into, ‘It’s not the tank causing the back up and we need to rent a commercial length pipe snake to correct/unclog the drains.’

After the ‘sucker guy’ had left, Chris started the dishwasher, clothes washer and flushed all the toilets that were full of almost 24 hours worth of (gag). He went to check out my dad’s bathroom when he realized that sometimes the Shit really does hit the fan. Little did we know that little boys can flush things that create a clog. All of the water in the house, including the toilets, was shooting out of my dad’s toilet and shower like a shit spewing volcano.

I’ll stop the story there. Needless to say, I left work to come home and help clean the mess and help him snake the pipes. Love…it’s all about standing side by side with rubber gloves on picking up mushy poop and trying to figure out what it's in it.

My Not Me Pig Roast

Nevermind the man behind the curtain. Or the random jibberish from the previous post below. The conveniences of handy blogging are also convenient for my youngest. I downloaded the blogger app on my ipod touch to stay up on the bloggy world. I guess he wants to make his presence known also. I thought about deleting it but it makes me giggle, so it stays.

While browsing over past blog posts I came across my My Not Me Friday post and decided that the annual family pig roast shall be narrated likewise.

No pigs were harmed in the making of this pig roast. Except for this one. We ate him.

This past weekend was NOT our family's annual pig roast.

I did NOT call Chris and have him bring me blueberry lemonade smirnoff on his way over. I did NOT decide to open one to drink before eating. I did NOT decide to keep on drinking since I had already started.

My aunt does NOT have a giant hammock-like swing hanging high in the branches for the kids to swing on. I did NOT get nailed by said giant hammock swing while pushing kids causing me and my blueberry lemonade to launch and skid across the yard. My shoulder does NOT still feel like it might fall off from NOT grabbing onto the swing and NOT letting it jerk me off the ground so that I could NOT swing kids higher.

This is NOT my grandma. You should NOT feel sorry for her!

I assure that I did NOT run up to people snapping obnoxious photos of myself with them. I have way more class than that. Speaking of class, Peyton did NOT stand behind me and break wind as I was talking to family friends. I did NOT fail to hold in my laughter and then try to claim the broken wind as my own! Who would do such thing. NOT me!

As the sun went down so did the supply of smirnoff that Chris brought. All 6 of them. After I did NOT crack open my fifth blueberry lemonade I plopped myself down to NOT watch a competitive game of cornhole. I did NOT pull off an oompa loompa cartwheel attempting to stand up. I did NOT try to pretend like I had done that oompa loompa cartwheel on purpose. If I had, I think I would have fooled them.

I did NOT decide that I needed to play cornhole with Chris, Tommy and theonly other drunk people at the party. Tommy did NOT tell me that I was only mildly offensive the next day but that it was alright since my sentences were NOT half missing, jumbled and slurred. Chris did NOT try to nail me like a carnival game with cornhole bags for cheating and I did NOT call my conservative aunt Achmed.

And finally, Chris did NOT have to take me home early so that I wouldn't make a fool of my NOT thirsty self.

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