Who Are All These Children…

and why are they calling me mom?

It’s one of “those” days here. School cancelled and all my plans for getting things done go out the window. I sit in the kitchen listening to the banter in the living room and alternate from laughing at their silliness and yelling at them to STOP!

Liam, in particular, gets very hyper when he’s bored…VERY hyper. He tries to find ways to wind his little brother up as much as possible. It backfired this morning though.

Liam: “Colin…you stink!”
Colin: “No I don’t! You’re a fart head!”
Liam: “What did you say? You little stinky kid!” And then mutters a few things in German that I don’t want to know the meaning of.

Colin (who weighs a whopping 34 lbs) runs across the room and jumps on Liam where he’s sitting. Liam (who is 70 lbs heavier than C) gets him in a leg grip and tickles him which produces giggles and then a big round of punching to get Liam off of him. Liam screams at him and starts wrestling him but Colin is like a little fly on flypaper. Once he has his arms and legs around you…it’s a vice grip. This little game rapidly degenerates into Big Brother screaming and getting too rough and Little Brother crying and getting hurt.

So, Mom Referee has to intervene and pull them apart and of course yell at Liam for starting it in the first place. Kiss the boo boos on the baby and give the eldest my best evil eye warning look.

A few minutes later, they had kissed and made up and were sitting side by side on the couch again.

Colin: “Liam, you are such a Kid!”
Liam: “No I’m not, you’re a Kid…I’m a Teenager.”
Colin: “Liam? Can you lift your right leg up?”
Liam: “Why?”
Colin: “Because I want to get under it so that I can get you in trouble again.”

Priceless.

The Preciousness of Others

Is it the recent crippling snow storms, or the cabin fever of winter, or the general desensitization of the human race that is causing people to be such selfish and inconsiderate idiots this week? Perhaps El Nino is messing with brain function and not just weather patterns.

Monday morning I went out to my truck and found the right front door panel bent and pulling away from the frame…hmmm? Upon closer inspection I noticed a strange “V” shaped pattern of scratches fairly high up on the door…hmmm? Walking around to the front of the truck I see an equally strange scratch pattern on the hood…HHMMM?? As if someone pulled a Bo Duke slide across it. Sometime Sunday evening or overnight, someone damaged my vehicle. Nice..didn’t leave a note or anything. Had they done that, I would have been irritated but not angry. Right now, I’m angry. Mostly because it happened in my driveway while I was home!

I would also like to thank the teenagers who have parties under the trees at the side of the property for leaving their beer cans, cigarette butts and condom wrappers behind. These are clearly the same children who threw a mailbox into my swimming pool a few summers ago and moved my neighbor’s decorative landscape rocks out onto the road. Find somewhere else to go!

And then there’s the kid who continuously picture texted my daughter with scary “ghost” pictures and an accompanying message that said something like “if you don’t send this on I’ll haunt you and kill you too.” Scared her so much each time it popped up…

Don’t people care about the preciousness of others anymore or am I just more keenly aware of it for some reason? I have had some wonderful encounters with humanity this week too, but the idiots ruined the glow for me.

I would like to thank the lab technician at the hospital yesterday for being so gentle with Erin as she drew her blood. I should also thank the gentleman who held the door for me at the pharmacy and the new acquaintance of mine who asked me to go for coffee next week. She has an Aspie too and she’s willing to talk me through some things. Very gracious.

So, this weekend my resolve is to find the goodness around me and try to filter out the idiots. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Say it isn’t Snow!

I am looking out my big kitchen window at what remains of two snow storms that hit Lancaster and surrounding counties nearly two weeks ago. The pictures are from the first snow storm that wandered through Super Bowl weekend…four days later we added another 14″…all in all 37″ here at my compound. Grass is starting to reappear, my driveway can now hold two cars side by side again and some of the boxwoods are showing their tops. A balmy 42 degrees according to the thermometer on the porch…a regular heat wave!

However…this will not last long. Andy’s obsession with the weather channel has seeped over into my life lately and according to those guys I will have up to 12″ of new snow by this time tomorrow. How lovely…how pretty…how flippin’ annoying!!

The icing on this snow cake is that, once again, I will be here alone with the young and the elderly. Andy managed to be in Oregon and California during the last two storms. I fought with the snowblower (and the two teenage boys that somehow are always here) and the wind. My bruises are still covering one leg.

My husband was delayed coming home by two days and my dearest friend and I took those two teenage boys to the airport to dig out his car. Today he left, a day early, for Iowa and North Dakota in order to avoid getting snowed in here at home. I’ll take a little pleasure in knowing that he’s somewhere “freakin’ cold”, as he put it, instead of Malibu like the last time. And…very happy to know that he took a shovel to Harrisburg with him! So…we’re off duty on that end.

I do want to thank Andy, though…he bought me all the milk, toilet paper, dog food, wine and snacks that we’ll need. He made sure I have enough heating oil. There’s gas in the snowblower and the shovels are at the ready.

We’ll manage though…we always do. Still, I’d give anything to be able to park my car INSIDE the garage instead of having to dig it out of a snow drift. Or better yet, live in Hawaii, which is the one state in the union without snow this month.

Sticky Note Tuesday

So…it’s been an interesting coupla weeks to say the least…glad I don’t have to blog but can instead just tack up these notes….

To make yourself part of the sticky note parade…just click the button on my sidebar!

It’s Our Fault They’re Here

Do we as grown ups know the power we have over the children in our lives? Not just our own..all of them…they run in packs.

I sat back last night and watched my youngest daughter get giddy, silly and crazy with an equally hyper ten-yr-old girl. As I watched them, I flashed back to my childhood. I was class clown, hyper, silly, whacky and fun. No “diva” in me…just total fun. These two babes embodied me and my friends “back in the day.”

Watched my teenage son and his best bud at the Globetrotters game. Torn between having fun at a crazy show and texting their friends and girlfriends. The show won out but that won’t last forever. I’m grateful he has a best friend that I trust and love. Grateful that both of them still tell me everything…how long will that last. I never told my mom anything…i guess I’m “cool.”

I sat with my little baby on my lap. Not so little. He stroked my cheek, rubbed my leg, made strange noises, took a walk, flew his airplanes and flapped his arms….but he liked the farting noises the globetrotters made.

All in all it was a fun nite. Successfully entertained multiple age groups….managed to get through the evening without a meltdown…had fun watching trick basketball…

Maybe we made some memories for them.

Either way…they live because we do…

Breathe…Baby…Breathe

Living with a child who has Asperger’s is like living with a football referee…or anyone who wants to control everyone around themselves. Tell people what to do, point out when they screw up and blow a whistle on any behavior that doesn’t jive with your world view.

Tonight I had four extra kids here while their mom went to a meeting. Lovely kids…close friends…but Colin totally wigged out cause I allowed them to play Mario Kart on the Wii, which is his domain and he is undoubtedly the expert in all things Mario.

Taking turns was tough, but they worked it out alone. We have only two Wii remotes and two Wii wheels, so Colin had to take turns with two others. The schedule of play they worked out was fair…”It’s a nice pattern, mom” he says.

However, he didn’t stop talking, advising, yelling, cadjoling or subtitling the whole event. Commentary included…
“NO!!! You messed up!”
“That’s great! Oh WOW!”
“Don’t go that way…you’re so stupid!”
“Gimme that…you don’t know what you’re doing!”

Here’s the conversation we had:

Me: “Babe, you can’t always tell people what to do. Let them play by themselves.”
Him: “But they don’t know how to do it!” Stomp feet…thrust fists down at sides.
Me: “They have fun anyway, it’s okay if they don’t win or if they mess up.”
Him: “But they are slow! They can’t do it right! They push the left button instead of the “A” button and the whole thing stops working!”
Me: “But that’s okay baby…they don’t care. It’s fun anyway.”
Him: “AAARRggghhh…..”

Here’s my imagined conversation:
Him: “Why won’t anyone listen to me? I know what I’m doing.”
Me: “We’ll listen, but won’t always do what you want.”
Him: “Why not”
Me: “Cause we all have different ways of doing things.”
Him: “But why…it’s dumb”
Me: “It’s how the world works buddy. Everyone does things and says things and sometimes we don’t like that…but you can’t always be right. Not about everything.”
Him: “But I AM RIGHT!!! ALWAYS!!!!”
Me: “No you’re not…Breathe, Baby, Breathe.”