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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Nuby starts school

Another school year has begun and with the new wave, my second child has been sucked out to the sea of school never to return to the days of all play. Sad, but exciting. He was in his glory on the first day of school getting to wear his new Lightning McQueen book bag that comes complete with a plastic hood attached to the top. He jumped on the bus and didn't even look back. The school does all of their "testing" on the first day and then decides which classrooms they will be placed in. We got the call at the end of the week to let us know that he was going to be placed into the same classroom that Devin had in Kindergarten. If you all remember...Devin's first year of school was awful.

By the end of the second week in his classroom, he was in full crazed mode about not wanting to go to school. He was crying and refusing to get on the bus. He couldn't fall asleep at night. And the principal even had to chase him in circles around me and then drag him into the school, all while he was screaming at me to help him. It was awful. I cried the whole way to work and I'm sure he cried for quite a while too.

When his attitude towards school continued to get worse instead of better my aunt and I went up to the school to request a room/teacher change. The principal was happy to oblige in light of all of the issues we had with Devin. Christopher's outlook on school changed over night. Literally. Overnight. After his first day in his new class he no longer cried. He went to bed fine. He still says it's boring but he's not afraid. He told me that his new teacher "is a lot a bit nicer". And that makes me sleep better at night too.