Can we please, PLEASE think outside the box???

So my oldest, Thomas, got GeoTrax for his birthday and Christmas.  Like my kids need more TRAINS!  We now have oh, like SIX types of trains in this house.  Thomas Wooden Railway, Take-along Thomas, GeoTrax, Leapfrog Learning Train… TOO MUCH!  Some of these trains may have to go to the “station” in the attic for a while!  I would have preferred to keep building on our existing sets, but he had his little heart SET on GeoTrax.  And when he sets his mind on something… -hoobaby-!  I love him very much, but let me tell ya that boy can OBSESS.

Thomas can be VERY particular and opinionated and rigid and sometimes has to have things JUST SO or he gets very upset.  If I do something WRONG he will cry for a REALLY long time.  Really.  LONG.  He also struggles a bit with anxiety.  Basically, he has a head start on OCD. 

One of his fixations is the boxes that package new toys.  We must save ALL the boxes (I HATE the clutter).  He loves to take the toys out, put the toys back in.  It used to be that if the toy didn’t fit back in EXACTLY the way it first arrived he would get hysterical.  Thank goodness that passed- I think he eventually realized that was NEVER gonna happen.  Sometimes when he is asleep I will throw a box away.  Sometimes he doesn’t notice.  Sometimes he even AGREES to let me throw one away (or recycle! *wink*).  But tonight he cried for 30 minutes, THIRTY, because I had thrown away one of the GeoTrax plastic clamshells.  It wasn’t even a freaking box!!!  The packaging was LONG gone, and I felt so bad (and a little lot frustrated).  He sobbed and sobbed until I had a revelation.  I searched the recycling and found the INSERT from the clamshell and he was appeased.  Turns out all he really wanted in this case was the pictures.

The most wonderful time of the year!

 

 

Do you all know what the most wonderful time of the year is??  Why, Post-Christmas bargain shopping time, of course! 

I kid… sorta.  Not really.  I am currently fighting off the urge to go out and indulge in another round of frenzied cosumerism.  

I hope all of you had a wonderful, wonderful holiday full of love and laughter.  Our holiday was kinda unusual.  It was a “Christmas Story” sort of Christmas, I will write more about it later.  Short version: it was disrupted by the dreaded INFLUENZA.  Mapman tested positive for it after waiting THREE HOURS at a doc-in-a-box on Christmas Eve.  Junky way to spend that special day.  Not what we had in mind.   Then he spent most of the next 2 days sleeping.  It was lonely sometimes.

By the way, he was the first case of Flu at that office this season, and one of the very first in the state.  Always the leader, my husband.   

I then had to schlep the kids alone to my Mom’s for Christmas Eve.  Then we totally MISSED two family gatherings on Christmas Day.  As disappointed as I was, I still found Christmas and shall keep it in my heart all year through.  I know I have a lot to be thankful for and spent Christmas Day making memories with the three people I love the most (when my husband was awake).  We made very merry, thank you very much.

By the way, I think it may have been good that we didn’t do the holiday family crush as we had planned, which was spending the night at my Mom’s Christmas Eve, & then his Mom’s Christmas Day.  Instead we spread it out and finished family celebrations yesterday because Mapman is finally feeling better (thank you, Tamiflu).  Even with that little bit Percy has been in meltdown mode and really having a hard day today.  I shudder to think how hard things COULD have been on him.  For those of you who don’t know, my son has an Autism Spectrum Disorder.  Too much stimulation and disruption in routine can create explosive results.

Anyway, the day after Christmas I got to go to one of my very favorite events– the Target HALF-OFF HOLIDAY SALE!!!!!  Do any of you recall the debacle of the post-Easter sale?  This time I went SANS kids.  It was glorious.  I know you want to hear about it! 

Let’s Keep Christmas

Henry Van Dyke wrote these words are approximately 100 years ago, yet they still hold just as much truth today.  I clipped it out of my newspaper last year… and kept it up ALL year to remind me.  That’s the whole point.

Keeping Christmas by Henry Van Dyke

Are you willing…

to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you;

to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world;

to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground;

to see that men and women are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy;

to own up to the fact that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life;

to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness.

Are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

My secret is out!

I feel VICTORIOUS!!!!  Anyone ever visit PostSecret?  I had a flash of inspiration on Monday, mailed my secret in on Tuesday, and my postcard showed up that very SUNDAY!  Which would be today, yes.  I SO rock– they posted my secret immediately!  It was the first time I had ever mailed in a secret, too! 

This experience has made me giggle.  I needed a giggle today.  Guess which secret is mine?  I’ll give you a hint… think green.

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

12/19/2008: 

Want to know my secret???   (drumroll please)

Too funny to pass up

This had me rolling.  Sorry about the language…

Poor Monkey

Those are words I never thought I would say- “Poor monkey”.  It all stems from a  childhood incident with one that apparently left me scarred for life.  So much so that if even just a squirrel comes too close to me I take off running.  Don’t trust monkeys.  Nope nope nope.  They are all furry and teethy and scary and generally up to no good. 

But when I saw this headline, “Woman ‘pregnant’ with monkey convicted of smuggling” I just HAD to read it.  And I actually found myself feeling sorry for the monkey.  I mean, that is just plain WRONG.  “Congratulations!  It’s a monkey!”  And did you see the picture?  The little guy looks… almost… CUTE.

Did I just say that?

What is wrong with me?

A very sensory birthday party

I LOVE the Dollar Store!

I just survived (barely!) hosting my first childrens’ “Friend Party”.  Now I understand why people shell out a couple hundred bucks to have it NOT AT THEIR HOUSE!  I am still proud of how the day went, and wish to announce that Martha Stewart ain’t got nothin’ on me!

My firstborn Thomas turned FOUR years old this week  (SO big!).  He has recovered nicely from his pneumonia and was well enough to celebrate his birthday with 8 other children.  And can I just say that I am officially glad the other 3 weren’t able to come?  I love them, but it would have added a whole new level of chaos to the chaos.

It was a dinosaur party, and I was able to get most of the supplies, even for treat bags, at the Dollar Store.  Throw in a few plastic dinosaurs from Target, some balloons from Party City, and -BAM-  Dino-party!!!  Thomas has been waiting for this for MONTHS and was so very excited.  He has also been asking every day for over a month, “Am I 4 yet?  Am I 4 now?  How ’bout NOW?”

I had a little trouble with the writing!

Thomas has some mild sensory issues (like oral & tactile sensitivity) and doesn’t “do” birthday cake.  He doesn’t like the texture of cake, and icing makes him uncomfortable because he says, “It might get my hands all dirty!”  So I had a moment of brilliance and decided to make a Rice Krispie cake!  He eats those! (although I have no idea why!) 

He loved his “cake”.  (I had yummy brownies for the Mommies!)  I had to of course give him one of the squares with NO writing.  I thought I was all brilliant, the most resourceful sensory mom ever, offering this alternative.   Well, turns out there are some other creative moms out there who have devised similar “alternative birthday cakes” (like cinnamon rolls!).  Aren’t we all so clever!!! (and terribly humble)

Fun with FEVERS

Wow, yesterday was ROUGH.  Thomas is sick, Percy is sick, and Mommy is EXHAUSTED!  Both boys are quite crabby and understandably miserable, too.  And then there was the throw-up drama.  DRA-MA!!!  Gross out alert: STOP READING HERE if you have a weak stomach!  But then you will miss the chance to point your finger at my life and laugh, laugh laugh…

“Old Air”

We just got back from the pediatrician.  Dear Thomas has a small pocket of pneumonia in one lung.  I sure hope he gets well quickly!  He has a DINOSAUR BIRTHDAY PARTY to host this week!  He says that “Old Air” has made him sick.

It is an awfully helpless feeling to have such a sick child.  At some points his fever was 103.8 and he was delirious and struggling to breathe.  When he woke up from a nap that way and complaining of a headache I was headed OUT THE DOOR to the ER, but just then the Tylenol he had taken an hour earlier finally kicked in and he started to improve.  (A fever of 105 is an automatic trip to the ER, but under that you should go if their condition suddenly worsens, as his did).  The illness had started with a dry cough, and a fever that started out at only 100.5 and stayed that way for over a day.  Then all of a sudden he was spiking high fevers, his cough deepened, and he had trouble breathing.  I could tell something had changed, and it seemed different than just bronchitis. 

We went to the doctor first thing Monday and the doctor didn’t THINK it was pneumonia (even though I said that’s what I  thought it was), but ordered chest x-rays JIC.  Sure ’nuff, he called me when they read the screens and I cried “I KNEW it!”… not that was I happy to be right or anything.  BTW, when they X-ray a boy’s chest they place a lead apron over only his waist.  It looks like a lead loincloth, LOL.  I thanked them for helping preserve my chances at future grandchildren.