3 in 3 Days

Mother's Day, Our Way

The past several years we have celebrated Mother's Day with a trip to the Seattle Arboretum. We usually have a picnic lunch and just let the boys wander. This year, despite the cold, we opted for the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. For some miraculous reason, everyone behaved and we had a very nice time.

See Baby Girl Come Home for my super special Mother's Day present....

Latest Handiwork

This is either the "Mystery Machine" (from Scooby Doo) or his toy monster truck/van, "Rollin' Thunder": (drawn at OT)
Here we have two dinosaurs.... (drawn at school)
This is a picture he drew of me during Sunday School. The dot by my head is a star sticker. Not sure of the significance!
And my personal favorite, drawn at school just last week, an assortment of bugs:

Cabela's

One boy loved the shooting gallery, the other did not. (Thank goodness for Mommy's coat.) Both boys loved playing hide-and-seek in the camo section. One boy hid and could not be found, the other filled his diaper and could easily be found. Both boys are photogenic, Mommy is not.

Quote of the day: Upon hearing Daddy's exclamation regarding the numerous roundabouts taking over Lacey, Washington, the eldest wryly remarked, "Well, they have to put them somewhere."

In Over My Head

"I can't do this," I thought to myself as I followed the distant figure of my 5 year-old son across the sand dunes. "God, please give me the words to say to him. I have no idea what to say to him."

He looks back over his shoulder...and picks up his pace. The distance between us is increasing, but I don't run after him. I steadily trudge through the thick, tall grass, up and down, up and down the dunes. He is nearing the houses now, a good distance from the actual beach where we started. I call to him, asking him to slow down and wait for me. I don't tell him to come back, as I know that will only make him move faster. Stubbornly, he keeps walking. "Fine," I yell at him in my mind, "I'll follow you all the way to town if I have to, but you can't get rid of me!"

"I can't do this," I tell God in defeat, as my little boy stands on the balcony above his occupational therapist, myself, and the packed waiting room spitting down on us. Moments before, when we briefly had him pinned to the ground, he was screaming hateful words, kicking and punching. Then he took off again, tearing around the therapy center, laughing and calling out gibberish. "What do you usually do when he acts this way?" his therapist asks. Crying, I shrug and mumble, "We don't know what to do."

"I can't do this," I think again, as I stand surrounded by parents of "normal" children at kindergarten registration. I feign confidence as I hand my packet to the secretary and deliver the message my son's special ed teacher had given me. ("He is enrolled in a full-day special ed program right now. The district has arranged for him to have a spot in the full-day kindergarten program. You can talk to CM at Special Services.") "I can't do this!" I declare, as I walk away, red-faced, after the secretary simply tells me 'no' like I'm crazy, cutting off my explanation, tossing my son's packet with the others, and moving on to the next parent.

"Really, Lord, I can't do this!" I tell Him again, only two hours later, hurrying across the busy store with beeping pager in hand. "I only dropped him off in the kid's room 10 minutes ago, so I know this can't be good news. What am I going to do?" I apologize to the attendant, explaining lamely that the reason he didn't give her eye contact when she tried to tell him that no, he can't throw things at the other children is because he has autism blah, blah, blah and whisk him away.

Such has been our life lately.

For some reason that nobody has figured out, he has become increasing difficult in the last two months or so. While he still continues to do well academically at school, he has become more and more of a behavior problem there. Perhaps he is becoming bored? It frustrates me that I am not more on top of his issues to be able to determine why he seems to be progressing in some areas and regressing in others. Shouldn't I have this figured out by now?

Each day is such a battle to fight, I don't have the brain power to break each moment down and deduce, for example, why he felt he needed to destroy all my tulips. And that is part of the reason why I have concluded that I simply cannot do it. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to figure out what to do. I'm not a brave enough person to argue with a rude secretary. I'm not strong enough to fight for his rights when I don't even know what he needs.

I don't know where to go from here. I feel so inadequate to parent this child that God has given me. The Lord has carried us up this mountain the last 9 months since his diagnosis, but now we've tumbled into the valley once again. I'm in over my head, waiting once again for Him to pull me out. Psalm 121....

** If you have stuck around long enough to notice that I seem to have a bazillion pictures of him standing alone in the surf, its because I DO have a bazillion pictures of him standing alone in the surf. And they are all different. And they all make me weep. It seems to be the place where he is happiest. I think he would rather be there than pretty much anywhere else in the world. Hey, at least I've figured that much out. **

Untitled

There is a stain on my carpet to remind me of how quickly life can change. My youngest son suffered a febrile seizure last night and to say that it was traumatic would be putting it mildly. I have had countless assurances of how "common" febrile seizures are, but it does little to assuage the horror of watching your child go through one.

I had just moments before called my mother, my son's doctor, and my husband fearing that he was close to something serious. He had spent the day growing warmer and warmer, increasingly experiencing single spasms that would cause his whole body to jerk. Prenatal reading had warned me of actual seizures, but when it actually happened it defied all descriptions I had encountered.

Nobody wants to be that hysterical mother on the phone, trying to convey the urgency of her circumstance to an overly-calm dispatcher -- just as nobody wants to be that father driving home, pulling to the side of the road for an ambulance he fears is destined for his own home.

Over 24 hours later, I am finally able to lift the towel I hastily threw over the telltale stain on the carpet, where my little boy had emptied his stomach mid-seizure, and truly thank God for His Hand in my life. Last night I alternately wallowed in the mire of the many trials God seems to see fit to send our way and, as I so often have when going to the Children's Hospital, clutching at the rope of His Grace because I wasn't one of those other parents who has to spend multiple long nights at such a hospital. Tonight I can finally process, to a certain extent, what our family went through the night before, and just be so very grateful that we truly weren't the only ones holding our little boy.

He sleeps fitfully beside me as I write this, his little body still fighting off whatever infection has invaded his system. We hover over him as his temperature still fluctuates every four hours, the length of time between alternating dosages of Motrin and Tylenol, between 101 at its lowest and 105 at its peak. We know so many out there have been praying with us and for us, and we have no doubts as to the power that your prayers have...Thank you.

**An extra special thanks to one precious woman who only two weeks before was calling 911 on behalf of her loved one...she called us this morning with words of prayer and encouragement, a blessing that has touched us deeply.

**I apologize if this post comes across as melodramatic. I realize in the whole enormity that is life something so "common" may seem trivial. This blog has always been more of a processing tool for me than anything else. It just happens to be public. Please bear with me in that regard.

Something's Very Wrong

Ah, people. Standing in line at the bookstore the other day, I was fortunate enough to be privy to the observations the clerk was loudly sharing with the customer ahead of me.

"What a darling little girl!" she said, indicating the tiny blonde toddler waiting patiently beside her mother's leg.

"Thank you," replied the customer.

"And so well-behaved!" gushed the clerk.

A smile from the mother, as she handed over her credit card.

"Let me tell you," the kindly employee continued, "I see all kinds! Why, yesterday there was this little boy in here...it was unbelievable. And I've seen a lot in my time. I've done this for years and I've never seen a child like him. Unbelievable. I mean, there was something very wrong with this little boy! He had his feet on the books. I had to ask him to get his feet off the books. He was walking on the piles of books! Something was very wrong with this boy. And his mother! She had no control over him!"

"Hmm, that's too bad," murmured the mother, now taking her leave.

Lucky me. Now it was my turn.

I could only think of the Saturday prior, when at a nearby furniture store my own little boy felt inclined to run the length of the armchair section -- on the armchairs. But I also thought of the many times I've made snap judgments about the behavior of other children. And their mothers.

I don't know what was more troubling to me...the bookstore employee's public tirade or the times I've indignantly had the same opinions in the privacy of my mind. Another lesson to ponder, courtesy of the Tuesday Machine.