Mother’s Day: Cloudy with a Chance of Gosling.

Is it sunny yet?  No?  What the heck!  My back”yard” is starting to get very sink hole-y/quicksandy.  I will not be surprised if one of these mornings I awake and find a tree has slid into the old barn on the other side of the fence, creating a new escape route for PX.  Eeep. 

All the rain aside, this week has been the hardest week for me since the kids’ evals in February.  And it has nothing to do with the munchkins; they haven’t been overly difficult or had a rough week.  It’s just me, a momism, thanks to Mother’s Day on Sunday.  Oh Mother’s Day, that bittersweet bitch of a holiday.  I will explain.

One of my favorite things as a child, and looking back on my childhood, was making gifts for my family (mainly my mom).  I grew up in a culturally diverse yet heavily Catholic area so there was always something to celebrate.  ALWAYS.  Preschool to middle school, art projects for holidays and festivals were a staple of our curriculum, and I quickly grew to love giving my mom macaroni portraits and hand-drawn cards and tissue paper flower bouquets and Play-Do dishes and allllllllllllll that stuff.  By the time I was 10 I valued our time together spent looking through bags and boxes of my past creations. 

So naturally, when I’d daydream about being a mom to my hoard of children, I began to look forward to getting my own hand-crafted kid gifts.  Of going to work wearing my snazzy elbow macaroni necklace and #1 Mom puffpaint t-shirt.  Of hearing “I love you, mommy.”

But now, on my 3rd Mother’s Day weekend, after weeks of therapies and awaiting evals and special needs playgroups, I don’t know when I’ll ever get that. 

I could *probably* ignore this for one final year, if it all hadn’t been impacted at Tuesday’s playgroup.  The daily project?  A Mother’s Day drawing.  PX was pretty into scribbling and putting on stickers, he even let his teacher put his little thumbprints on it to make a flower.  It was cute, and I was feeling good about his interested level in drawing, and started to tear up.  

And then she told PX “Give it to mom!”  And then I cried. 

Because he couldn’t understand her command.  PX can’t understand how to give someone an object.  14 months of us trying to teach him “give ____ to _____” and he just doesn’t fucking get it.  Every typical kid his age, many younger, I have known can give an object to someone.  But not mine.

So, I cried.  I stopped being positive, and stopped looking for the bright side, and got upset and pissed off and cried.  Because why the hell does everything have to be difficult for my kid, my sweet little booger face?  Why does he have to try extra hard to do things that are supposed to come naturally?  Why can’t PX at least understand how to hand me a picture?  And why does his sister have to struggle, too?  Why?!

Rough week indeed.  Thankfully it’s Friday and that means memes to make me laugh at the linky on Adventures in Extreme Parenthood, especially with this week’s picture.  I’m pretty sure Ryan just wants me to hop in and get dirty, but maybe it’s wishful thinking. ;)

Only for you, Ryan.  Only for you.

For all the mamas & papas in bloggyland dealing with shittastic educators; Ryan gives y’all some Billy Madison rogue justice.

In honor of PX finally getting over his vacuum fear, after 13 months of tearful meltdowns every time it came out of the closet.  Now, it’s his favorite tag partner, just like when he was an infant.

Oh thank god, the kids are heavy into hiding things again lately.  Think they’re playing “squirrel.”  I don’t like that game.

And in honor of it being Mother’s Day on Sunday, Ryan did want all the special needs mamas to know just how wonderful and covered in awesomesauce we are.

I knew Justin and Andy had some help with that tune, mwahahaha.

Oh hellz yes!  *BOOM* Ovaries = gone.

Matted Monday #5

I skipped my weekly picture last week for a very good reason.  But now, back to the routine!
I’m pretty thrilled that my kiddos, mainly PX, are thrilled with these toys.  This is obvious proof that I’m doing a rocking job at parenting. 

A Fabricated Week #3 {my etsy shop vs. my blog}

Ah, the magic of some sleep. 

I wasn’t lying when I said I’d had lots of positives lost in a cloud of fatigue over this past week.  It’s a sure sign of May being better than April, I’m convinced!  The biggest triumph of the week was, on the very last day of the shitstorm month known as April, my Etsy shop got its first sale!  3 out of my 4 drawings have since been shipped to their new home on the other side of the States!  To one person!  That’s a big ego boost for me.  And it happened just when I was going to throw in the towel.  I have so much on my plate I might as well just be sitting at a buffet.  And I completely misjudged how much work running an Etsy shop can be.  I’ve wanted to have an Etsy shop since my son was born in 2010 but I just haven’t had the time to really devote to it.   So a month and a half in with no sales, I was very much considering not renewing my listings in July and held off on posting anything new.  But now I think I’ll keep it going.  It may not be as big and varied as the shop of my dreams right now, but it’s worth it.  My work is appreciated.

But while thinking about my Etsy shop, I started to question whether or not I want to keep my blog’s name the same.  I started blogging again with the intention of focusing mainly on my crafting and photography but it’s pretty much taken on a life of its own as my little parenting ranthole.  I will never pigeonhole myself and say I only blog about ___________ yet I feel my shop and blog having the same name, when being very different, just doesn’t set right.  And I kinda miss my old tumblr username, which is much more fitting with my blog.

So I think it’s time for a change.  Again.

Dude, I freaking survive on change.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to buy my own domain; I’ll be wanting a new one within two months.  Or, well, one month if we look at my most current change desire.

Ok this is boring, time for cute pics of kids celebrating a Sesame Street-y birthday!  See?  See?!  Right there, change change change!  ADHD of the blogz.

Daddy Drax said “Make Cookie’s eyes all crazy!”  Mission accomplished. Accidentally. 

Special Needs Ryan Gosling Day!

I’m way too tired to form coherent sentences (or title) of substance.  I haven’t slept longer than 1 hour at a time this week, and Wednesday night?  Forget it; made the mistake of giving little Rizzle something containing cheese so neither of us slept that night.  We just snuggled up together, miserable and whining.  So much for hoping she didn’t inherit my side’s awful gut issues.

So all I wanna do is sleep.  Please?  It’s rainy and I’m tired and I have no flavored coffee/creamer.  Sad thing is, in the big picture, this has been a decent week, so I should be all bouncy happy.  Maybe I’ll enjoy all the positives on Saturday.

Anyway, here’s Ryan to put some interesting into this post because it’s Friday and we all know what that means.  Be sure to head over to the link-up at Adventures in Extreme Parenthood for more sexy RyRy lolz.

Why isn’t he topless?

Is that an order?  I hope it is!  (lil Zac Brown Band for y’all btw)

True fact, both Ryan and Adam Levine (Maroon 5) have ADHD.  Adam’s fairly vocal about it, in a positive manner too.  {the more you know}  I’ve heard him credit it for some of his success.  Don’t think he credits it for his sexy, though.  I’d Google the article(s) but I’m lazy.

The One Where We Meet the OT

It’s 2:30 on a Wednesday.  PX has refused to nap all day and is sitting on the couch, blinking back sleep.  Rizzle has just finished having a complete sensory overload meltdown, hair all frizzed about.  Everyone looks like a zoned out hot mess.  Naturally, this is the start of our first OT consult. 
Luckily, she came prepared with a bucket full of Playdough and Playdough toy sets.  PX’s eyes lit up and, as the Thomas the Train table came out for activity time, his second wind kicked in.  Our services lady had also come prepared with a pressure/squishy vest.  PX didn’t resist one bit when we decided to give it a whirl.  And then he stood, like a typical two-year-old, and played.  At the table.  Surrounded by 4 adults and 1 birthday girl.  For almost 10 minutes.
Vest – 1.  Sensory overload – 0.
And so we spoke of hyposensitive sensory seekers and heavy work and creating a diet high in proprioceptive and vestibular activities.  All the while, I was thanking myself silently that I’d read more than just the checklists in “The Out-of-Sync Child” and have spent my nights pouring over blogs and SPD websites; special needs parenting, you really do have your own language.  I feel as if I’m preparing to defend my doctoral thesis, trying to become as fluent as humanly possible in SPD.  But there.  Is just.  So much.  And even more “trial and error” learning, and discovering your kid can be sent into overload before bed from one wrong move.  Oy.  I will be the Popeye of parenting, SPD my spinach, if it doesn’t all kill me first.  (It won’t…hopefully…)