I’m trying to blog more often. However, when I do, I always feel like I should blog about some event or something major that happened. But I’ve seen people blog about everything under the sun (I’ve read some blogs that have me thinking, “Whoa, I don’t think I could share something THAT personal!” But some folks do).

Today, Kevin took the car to work. We only have one car to share and usually on Mondays & Fridays, he takes it to work, and the other days, he’ll take the bus and leave the car home. When we first married, we had two cars, however, mine (a ’77 Ford Grenada) was no longer running. He had a little Nissan pick up (’84 I think) and it was not an automatic, and for some reason, the seat wouldn’t move forward very well, so I couldn’t really drive it. So Kevin did the majority of the driving until we had a baby on the way and needed a working car with a back seat. The only time we had two cars was for a 9 month period when Kevin had another truck and I had a minivan (the nicest car I’ve ever had and by then we had two kids and needed more room). Anyway, we’re back to one car. Maybe one day, I’ll blog about my car history.

So this morning, the kids and I went for a walk. I try to get a 30 minute walk in every day. I started taking my son with me because he’s just so full of energy, I thought that perhaps a walk would help burn some of that. I started taking my daughter with us because, well it’s exercise and can go toward PE credit. Kylin, likes to announce every car that comes by, and what make and model it is. He likes to also announce everything he sees in every yard, on the street, every berry vine, etc. Heather, is anxious to get back home and for the walk to be over. The one thing that does catch her eye when she’s out is a cat. She loves cats!

Also during the morning (and sometimes it’s in the afternoon too), we do have school during the summer. It’s not a tight schedule, due to errands, and Regal Cinema’s showing of free movies two mornings per week (free air conditioning on those hot days when you don’t have an A/C installed in your house). Yesterday, was our day to see the free movie. It was also the day that we went to the library. And the day to go to the store and get some last minute things for Heather to pack for camp (She’s packed & repacked a few times already, and I still need to check and make sure that she packed everything that she needs). And we had to return the last of the soda bottles & cans collected to raise money for her to go to camp.

So after a busy day like yesterday, I’m happy to be home today. Just happy to not have to be anywhere. I can get some much needed things done, like blanching and freezing the produce from the garden, and try to get some areas organized. The only place that I needed to go to was church tonight. Heather had her youth group and Kylin had a boys class (which I sat in on with him because lately, he doesn’t want to go and acts up in class sometimes, but he can’t stay home with Kevin because he’s a handful and Kevin hasn’t been feeling well at all). I also had to turn in Heather’s money & paperwork for camp. She’s all set to go now. On Monday, she’ll be off to have fun.

So now, we’re home from church, the kids are asleep in bed (I know that Heather is, and I think that Kylin is because I haven’t heard from him for at least an hour). I did have to drive up to the local little market (Dari-Mart) for more milk (chocolate milk for Kevin, which Heather heard about and said, “I hope he shares!”). I bought myself a little ice cream too. Now it’s time to sleep. I have no plans to go anywhere tomorrow. However, we’ll have the car, and when the car is here, there’s always a reason to go somewhere.

Lp

So Summer arrived without much fanfare, at least not here. We’re still having some school during the summer so the kids won’t have a harder time getting into a routine in the fall. Heather leaves for a week of camp in just over one week. It’ll be a quiet week here. I’ll miss her and Kylin will too. For as much as Kylin gets easily annoyed with his older sister, he does miss her when she’s gone. On the other hand, Heather is very excited. She has a whole week of fun and no interference by her brother.

We recently had Kylin tested to see where his strengths and weaknesses (in behavior, academic and intellect). It’s called an SOI (Structure of Intellect). He scored extremely high in art and drawing (we knew he would). There are some exercises (Sensory Integration) that we were given to work with him on so as to stimulate his brain to make some connections that it hadn’t been. The first one that I tried on him was pretty much like massaging his hands. He was in a sour mood to start with, and he wanted me to “be done”, but at the same time, his eyelids were drooping. He was calm for at least an hour. Maybe I should massage his hands just before he goes to bed. Maybe he’ll get to sleep quicker!

Something that I thought I’d do, since we have a trip to Crater Lake coming up and alot to do before that trip, is to put my “to do” list on my blog (everytime I write one down on paper, it gets lost or else someone throws it away).

So, here it goes:

~July~
-Make reservations, and send invites & order a cake for Heather’s birthday party
-Get a gift ready for Nephew #1 (he’s turning 2 near the end of this month)
-Finish shopping for Heather’s birthday and for her week at camp
-Purge broken or neglected toys out of the kids rooms
-Sort through older magazines & donate to friends or the library
-Buy or make valences for the dining room & kitchen

~August~
-Paint dining room & kitchen
-harvest and preserve the produce from the garden
-Clean out garage
-A trip or two to the Goodwill to donate
-Make a new school schedule for the new school year
-Make lesson plans for the Fall semester
-Get cooler cleaned and ready to hold snacks & beverages for the trip
-Shop for snacks for trip
-Gather some DVD’s for the mini player (which the kids will be more interested in while traveling)
-Pack, pack, pack

This list is more or less a list of goals for me before the summer is over. Some things (like the painting) may not happen until after we get home. My husband has been not feeling well for the past 3 weeks, so I’ve been a bit busier taking care of my own chores as well as some of the ones he’d normally be doing. He’s been to the doctor (actually 2 so far) who gave him some meds. I hope that they work. It’s a bummer to spend your summer feeling sick.

So that’s really the end of my report. I’m off to cut out some fabric to make more pj’s for the kids!

Lp

About a month after our daughter’s first birthday, my husband & I discovered that she was not going to be an only child. When we found this news out, we were still in our duplex, surrounded by packing boxes, because we had just bought our first house (which is the house we still live in today) and we were moving that week. Two new starts, a new house and a new baby. So during this pregnancy, we discovered that it was going to be a boy, and that he had a cyst in his brain. The cyst issue eventually resolved itself in a few weeks, but not before 3 more ultrasounds and a meeting with a genetic specialist.

Also during this pregnancy, my step-father kept telling us that this child would be so different than our first one. Hard to imagine because we only had the one, and she was a happy little kid. What would be “different”? We were hoping that this one would be quieter, because our happy firstborn was a rather chatty little gal. So our son was born, and he had a high pitched, screaming cry. Once he calmed down, (thanks to having a nice warm bath and being swaddled), he was just a quiet baby. So all through that first year, he didn’t cry alot (unless he was hungry or teething).

Something that we did notice is that he was very observant. If we gave him anything thing to play with, he didn’t really play, but he would just study every aspect of the item and when he had nothing left to study, he’d toss it on the floor. This continued into his toddler years when we would give him a piece of paper to color on and he would just study the paper and then drop it on the floor. Something also changed when he turned 1. He suddenly didn’t want to eat anything, but peanut butter sandwiches. Overnight, literally, he went from being willing to eat anything, to refusing everything and only having PB sandwiches. For the next 3 years, anytime that we took him anywhere to eat, I had to have a PB sandwich in my purse for him to eat while we ate something else. In restaurants, we just felt like folks were watching us and wondering why we would let our older child eat something ordered from the menu and not do the same for our younger one.

He screamed about everything too, shrill piercing screams. He screamed if we were going to certain restaurants & stores. He screamed if we didn’t carry him from the car to the house once we came home. One day, we came home and the boy screamed to be carried and my husband decided that the boy could walk to the house by himself. So Kevin pulled up a chair and sat in front of the garage until finally, the boy started walking toward him, at which point, Kevin moved his chair closer to the front door, which would then frustrate my son. He finally made it into the house by himself, but not with out screaming so much and so loudly that I was sure that the neighbors were going to call us in for abuse. We had a kid who would rather be waited on than have to do anything for himself (he’s still kind of that way).

Other differences included, not speaking. He was 2 1/2 and still hadn’t even tried to speak. I finally started singing simple words, sentences & phrases to him and he would mimick them back. Every 6 months, his vocabulary would expand a bit and he would finally start to put a simple sentence together. He also didn’t interact with other children. I’d send him to Sunday school and he pretty much kept to himself and was the only one who didn’t do a craft. Sometimes I’d keep him with me in the main church service, sometimes I would leave him at home with his dad.

So here we are 11 years later. He’s an 11 year old boy, who still thinks more like a 6 or 7 year old, and he’s nearly as tall as me (I’m not considered tall). He just recently received a diagnosis for being on the autism spectrum. Something that we pretty much knew but waited until now to get. He’s certainly not the quiet child, he’s full of chatter (mostly about things that interest him such as cars, trains, states, countries, flags, the weather, a favorite movie), and sound effects. We’ve been homeschooling him from the very beginning and I think that has actually helped him. He’s not one to sit still for long periods of time and he has a few “tics” that would be distracting to a classroom full of kids. So he does all of this at home, for his parents and sister to hear. He’s quite an artist as well and has impressed several folks with how well he draws (yes, he finally stopped analyzing the paper and started drawing on it).

I don’t think that my step-father had this in mind when he said that the second child would be different from the first. We love our boy, and wouldn’t have him any other way. And that boy is 11 years old today and he’s “cool and very smart”

At 9:00, I told the kids that it was time to start school. My son, who had been drawing pictures (of cars) asked, “Does that mean I have to stop drawing pictures and do school work?”. I asked him, “What do you think?” and he answered, “no?”. Nice try kid!

Lp

Over the weekend, my husband took advantage of the beautiful weather (in the 80’s) and took care of some much needed yard work and patio cleaning. Our Saturday included a trip to a local landfill, or “the dump”. Our son has never been to a landfill (it was a regular occurrence when I was a kid), so he was very excited (and he likes to hang out with his dad after a week of being at home with his mother and sister). So here is a picture of my guys, just before leaving in our neighbor’s truck. My son is holding his latest di-cast truck to show that “the truck is in the truck”. Anyway, he was having a good day.

Oregon in the Spring!!!

Our 10 year old son, Kylin, doesn’t always hear things in the way or manner that they were spoken. He also tends to use words or phrases that don’t always mean what he thinks they do.

A couple of examples:
A few months ago, something came on the TV that the kids didn’t need to see, so I told them to “avert your eyes”. Kylin repeated it as “INVERT” your eyes. Kind of hard to do! He has it straight now though. Several times if there is something that he shouldn’t see or doesn’t want to see, he’ll say “avert your eyes!”.

Another example happened yesterday. I gave him the job of cleaning the toilet and it quickly became apparent that he needed some more guidance in that job. So my husband was showing him how to clean it and when I walked by the bathroom, Kylin said, “We’re organizing the toilet!”. Lately, we’ve been doing some decluttering and reorganizing and cleaning, so he assumed that “organizing” was synonymous with “cleaning”. I guess he’s partially right. But the joke for the rest of the day was “how do you organize a toilet?”

Since this weekend was the time to change the clocks ahead, Kylin also reminded us that it was time to check the smoke alarms. The boy thrives on a schedule and remembers when things are supposed to happen, like checking the alarms. So Kevin checked them and the boy is happy and won’t remind us again until November. I wish that he was as much of a stickler about the need to do his schoolwork.

Heather has been known to say and do some funny things, but she’s at the age where she’d be mortified if I blogged about them. I’m sure that I’ve done things unintentionally to embarrass her, so I really try not to do it on purpose!

However, the most recent thing that I did with Heather was to take her to see Kutless in concert. Concerts I had been to in the past were for Don Francisco, B.J. Thomas, Charley Pride (I was really little then), and Weird Al Yankovic. Fairly mellow, great acoustics, not too loud. The Kutless concert was held in a church that was built with the intention of having concerts, but this group and the opening acts were rather loud (and there was a lot of screaming…something else I wasn’t used to). It was so loud that I felt the audience was absorbing the volume. I had to laugh at one of the groups though. Long hair shaking all over the place and screaming rap (I wasn’t expecting that and neither was Heather). I was sitting in the back, where parents sit. My first concert as a parent. I felt a little old (but I’m not old, I’m only 40, and that isn’t old!). We’re going to see the Newsboys in a couple of weeks. I like them, and I’m hoping for better acoustics and hoping that the opening acts won’t scream at me….too much.

Lp

So January is coming to a close and I’m already feeling that time is moving too fast……..because it is.

We’re enjoying the dining room set immensely! About a week after the dining room set arrived, my father-in-law brought over my mother-in-law’s curio cabinet and it’s sitting in the dining room now (as shown in the above pictures). Already the way the house looks is improving!

The next few pieces of furniture that are due to come soon are “new” dressers for Kevin and I. So I’ve moved my dresser into my son’s room (because he’s been lacking a real dresser for a few years, because he was too rough on the last one he had, I think he’s ready for a real one again….I hope). So I’m currently living out of a couple of suitcases that are sitting in our closet (which one of our cats seems to want to use as his bed). We’re also getting night tables. So mine is emptied out and moved into my son’s room. My intention is to paint before any new furniture moves in, because right now, we actually have space to walk around and move the bed in order to paint walls.

The fast that I mentioned in my last post is nearly over (just in time for SuperBowl and all of the treats that go with that……my daughter has requested Oreos……..I will try to resist those…….or most of them!). It’s time to shop for some sugar (not much though)!

Lp

(I would normally share when I originally posted this blog, but the title is self explanatory)

It’s nearly 2 1/2 weeks into the new year. We’re back on our “schedule”. School is back in full swing. As I’m typing, my son is giving me the verbal inventory of his CARS collection (it’s not the first time I’ve heard it either). My church is doing a “Daniel Fast” which means that we are fasting caffeine (missing my coffee), meat (not a problem right now as I’m a vegetarian) sugar (really missing this too), cutting back on tv etc. So far, one week into it, we’re doing alright. At the beginning of the fast, my husband (who is not participating) offered to buy me a coffee (and I let him, it was my last one) and then made a joke about being the little devil on my shoulder trying to tempt me into breaking the fast. Before anyone might possibly get offended by his doing that, he was joking. In the past, he’s been rather understanding and has never intentionally tried to get me to break the fast.

The table and chairs that I mentioned in my last post have arrived. They are sooooo nice and they were so well taken care of that they seem practically new.

I discovered that I like Hummus this week. I was at a ladies Bible study and one of the snacks that was brought had it. Very tasty!

On a lighter note, at 9AM today when I announced that it was time for school to start, my son was rather distressed because his clock was about 5 minutes behind so he thought that I should wait for school until his clock read 9:00. He said that the other clocks in the house were experiencing “technical difficulties”.
Suuuuuuuure……..

Lp