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Taste of Summer

2/17/2014

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Yes, I know it’s only the middle of February, but it’s beginning to feel like summer. Not in the weather sense, although it is warming to nearly sixty degrees today with a sky just blue enough to remind us that we’re near winter’s end. Pockets of snow are the only telltale sign that winter has overstayed her due. So, too, have the kids who are now into their sixth day at home. Days that have felt more like an unwelcome teaser for summer break. That’s a time of year that, given the chance, I’d rather hibernate away from it all more so than I’d like to sunbathe with a six-pack of Corona Light. I’ve come to the conclusion that the sun’s rays are equally as damaging to my face as the stress from being a mother.

I remind myself that I’m in the homestretch with less than twenty-four hours to go. By then I’ll be in recovery mode, overcoming this acute brain fog. The one that most mothers knows (and sometimes wives, too) when caring for underlings zaps our mental faculties.

I can’t argue with the prior days off after the last ‘snow’ incidence with buses on icy roads. But, doesn’t it seem that today, President’s Day, should be a mandatory attendance day devoted to our past leaders? Perhaps a day where students learn to recite them all in order. Instead, the kids are home, wallowing on the furniture, eating me out of house and home while asking, “What’s for dinner?” at 9 a.m. They’re groggy from the late nights and days off, confessing that they aren’t ready to go back to school as they sit eating a bowl of raisin bran, bodies slanted and their chins resting inside their cupped palms. Oh, the pressure to be young. (Insert sarcastic cough.)

The kids know better than to ask me how I feel. I think my perturbed expression and yes, maybe even a juvenile eye roll, tell my sentiments. I love them, though. Really, I do. Absence does make the heart grow fonder, though. And, I know what you’re thinking. But I’m not going to give them a history lesson at home because you know how I feel about home schooling. Not to mention, history has always been my worst subject. I’d rather deal with the present than try and understand the past. Naïve? Yes, maybe.

It’s not surprising then that I wasn’t familiar with all of the Presidents’ names when completing this word search. Hopefully you’ll recognize them all.  

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Source: Brain Games 2012 (Pardon the crookedness. I've got kids waiting at my door.)
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Summer Boredom

7/17/2013

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"Find something to do!" I think that's every parent's summer tag line. And for a child on the spectrum it's almost impossible. Finding something to do for Peter usually means reorganizing the pantry, vacuuming the house, or sucker punching his siblings who just wished he'd go away.

The house is usually in turmoil because he's barging into someone's room, harassing the cat, or banging his older brother's bedroom door with his feet. And then there's that unique guilt every parent of a special needs child feels. I worry about the other children, wondering if their entire childhood is marred by the ripple effects of having to focus on that one child who simply can't be controlled.   

Children with autism can't just hang out and amuse themselves. At least that's my experience with Peter. I'll suggest coloring, drawing with sidewalk chalk, swinging, playing with his army men, or riding his bike. More often than not he tells me those things are for "babies" and he'll wallow at my feet not knowing what to do with himself. And when none of those things work, I find myself wishing he was more like his siblings. I continually mourn for my old life.

I think that handicap was the cause of my early frustrations with Peter. I never understood why he couldn't, at the very least, just play with the plethora of toys at his fingertips. I had milk crates full of hand-me-down trains and tracks that just didn't interest him. Instead he made huge piles of the pieces in his room and pretended it was a fire. And years later he's still obsessed with fires even waking up with nightmares that he's been lit on fire.

Peter debunks the proverb, "And this too shall pass." I worry that this might only be the beginning.


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    Young, hot mother with boundless energy on track to be the next Sara Blakely.

     (In real life, burned out mother of four, waiting to feel like my old self, knowing it's but a pipe dream.)


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