The Boy: A Retrospective

Today is The Boy’s 9th birthday. Here is a pictorial retrospective of his life thus far.

This is him at just a few hours old. He was exhausted from being born and getting his shoulder broken in the process, but he retaliated for the break by peeing on the doctor the moment he was born. He gets a real kick out of that story.

This is my all time favorite picture of The Boy and I. Mister made it into a calendar for me.

This is him on his first birthday. Look at those cheeks! He was such a little chipmunk at this age.

This is shortly after they wrestled the microphone away from him at a pre school program. He loves to be the center of attention. I wonder where he gets that from. Stop snickering!

This is him riding what he called his ‘fast motorcycle’. It really wasn’t all that fast, but he thought he was racing the wind. This was his second birthday.

This is The Boy at his Kindergarten graduation celebration. The reason why there is only one friend in the picture is because he and the friend next to him were home schooled for Kindergarten. My precious baby was much too young to go to public school! We sent him to a private Christian school for first grade. He didn't get to start public school until second grade.

This is Mister and The Boy on the first day of first grade. It's kind of funny that this photo has the edge of my older son's car in it. It's a reminder to me of how many years there are between them.

The Boy is in 3rd grade now, but I don't have the recent pics on this computer. Sometimes I think he's growing up at the speed of Microsoft. You know what I mean. A Microsoft minute can last anywhere from 2 seconds to 20 minutes. It speeds up and slows down and makes no sense at all. But since he is the last of my children, Mister and I are treasuring every second.

He's 9. How did this happen?

In a few short hours The Boy will be 9 years old. I'll post a bunch of pics of his life tomorrow. Right now I'm lost in a memories of where I was 9 years ago tonight.

The scene wavers and then reclarifies in a backflash:
I already had two children. Childbirth was not a mystery. But Mister was a novice. This was his first - and as it turns out, his ONLY - baby. He was such a great student. He attended the baby classes and watched the films with me. He was not going to be one of those sit com dads that panics and gets half way to the hospital before he figures out that he left his wife at home. So I told him it's time to go and he stayed so calm. He knew that I would be in labor for days. So he said to me, "We have time to make a pot of coffee." (I love this man so much. I torment him horribly with this story. If he thinks it's mean, I will delete this.) Anyway, I'm thinking, COFFEE? I'm in labor here, and it kind of HURTS. But being the devoted wife I am who also knows her own penchant for over dramatization, I think to myself, "He's right. I'm overreacting. I can't go through this if he isn't hopped up on caffeine." So I agreed, and he made a pot of coffee. Meanwhile, I'm practicing my breathing and calmly calling the folks to let them know. My mom-in-law, who is the most spectacular mom-in-law ever, agrees to drive two hours to our house and stay with my older kids. They are 13 and 15 y/o at the time, so it's ok if I go ahead and leave for the hospital now. I mean, as soon as the coffee is ready.

Guess what? When I got to the hospital, I was dilated to an 8 and it was too late for an epidural. But Mister is wide awake, so it's all good. We got to the hospital at 11:15 pm and The Boy was born at 2:12 am. That's what I call close.

That's where I was 9 years ago tonight. Was your evening that memorable? I bet not.

Happy Birthday Chicklet!!

My family has a LOT of February birthdays. Tomorrow is my grandbaby Chicklet's birthday. She will be 2 years old. I mailed her some presents including an Elmo hooded towel, a new outfit, and a pair of sun glasses. She lives in California, so my little sun bunny needs to be beach ready at any time! Here is a picture of Chicklet wearing the sunglasses.

Isn't she absolutely the CUTEST thing you've ever seen? Just in case you need to see more, here are a few other birthday girl pictures from her party Saturday.


Let the present opening begin.

Look at that Tinkerbell cake!

Don't tell Grandma, but this towel really annoys me.

I mean really, a TOWEL for my birthday?

Build Your Own Pizza

We never eat out. We're just not that kind of people. First of all, we don't really like other people all that much, so why would we choose to surround ourselves with them after a long day? We also never order in. I can make fried rice much cheaper and tastier than the delivery place! So imagine my surprise when Mister wanted to go out to eat on Valentine's Day. It's all the more special to go out with your soul mate when you don't take it for granted.

So that means we're on a roll and I decided to throw caution to the winds. We decided to order pizza tonight. (I know. The extravagance is shameful.) I can't remember the last time we ordered pizza. I think it might have been in 2006. Maybe.

Now, since we don't order very often, this is a process of unfamiliar steps that we have to learn as we go. First, we have to decide which franchise is going to get our money. Since I didn't have time to look up their policies and practices to choose the least environmentally offensive option, we decided to choose based on coupons. This necessitated an excavation of the paper recycling bin. It never occurs to me to save pizza coupons. (See paragraph 1.)

Domino's it is. I found some almost expired coupons with a note that we can order on line and TRACK our order. Cool. This is almost as much fun as tracking my Christmas packages on Fed Ex and UPS. I'm all over that.

When we got to the Domino's site, another surprise awaited us. You can build your own pizza online. You choose the size and the crust and then check options. The pizza avatar changes as you check and uncheck boxes. (Really, this is amazing. Who thinks up this stuff?) So then, I get elbowed out of the way. The Boy wants to build the pizza. Oh what an amazing pizza he built. You can add ingredients to half the pizza, the other half of the pizza, or the whole pizza. He clicked. And he clicked. And he clicked. Eventually, I made him stop. So then he unclicked. And he unclicked. And he unclicked. We ended up with a pizza that is Italian sausage/black olive on one side and pepperoni/pineapple on the other. I couldn't talk him out of the pineapple.

Then, we got to track our pizza. We watched a flashing status bar with text below it. Byron prepped our pizza, then it was cooked and boxed. Ashley left the store to bring it to us at 6:20. At 6:28, The Boy ran to the window to see if she was there yet just as she pulled up. We yelled 'woo hoo' and ran for the door.

Oh Good Grief! We are so easily entertained here. Poor Ashley had to walk backward all the way to her car because she was afraid to turn her back on us.

Our Words Betray Us

People First has two meanings - at least in my world there are two.

First, it's the name of a group for which I am a local advisor. It's a grass roots, civil rights organization that works hard at supporting people who have disabilities to make their voices heard, especially in the political process.

Second - and the subject of this post - it refers to the way you should speak. There is so much backlash about politically correct language that people who demand it are mocked by comedians and subjected to eye rolls from the general population. The truth is, the way you speak is a reflection of the way you think. So when you say: 'There is a disabled man' you are putting the word disabled before the fact that he is a man. Now maybe that might be the first thing you notice, but for that man and for those who know him, he may be a great juggler, or a good listener, or be a funny storyteller. For anyone that knows better, the disability is NOT what defines the man. It's typically pretty low on the list. The better way to speak is to put the person first. If you absolutely have to mention the disability, you might say, 'There is a man who has autism (or whatever).' The even better way to speak is to say, 'There's Jack.'

Also, you don't say someone IS disabled. You would say that they HAVE a disability. That way you're clear that the disability is a piece of the person, not the definition of the person.

I heard a speaker at the MACDDS conference this year. I was really moved by one of her power point slides. It said:

Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words.
Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions.
Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character.
Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny.

That was your daily lesson in both semantics and respect. Go forth and spread the gospel.

The Jezebel [Not her real name. :-)]

For the past two weeks, The Boy has been talking to me about ‘Jezebel’. His friend really likes Jezebel, but The Boy likes her, too. Suddenly some other fu – um -female has the power to make my son happy or to crush him like a bug. She gets to decide which it will be. I have no power here. Do you see where I’m going with this? We have the beginnings of a soap opera playing out with complete sincerity and accompanying heartbreak in a third grade classroom. I want to laugh. I want to smack the little tramp. I want to hug The Boy so close that he squirms and pushes me away.

I met her last week at the Valentine’s Day party. I’m sure I must have met her at the Halloween party (sorry, FALL party) and the Christmas party (sorry, WINTER party), but she held no importance in The Boy’s life and so I did not commit her name or face to memory. Now it’s different. Now I eyed the enemy child up and down with a calculating squint. I’m sure the theme from High Noon was playing in the background while I squared off with this 8 year old floozy. Clearly, he can do WAAAY better, but that isn’t the point. The point is that he wants to ‘go out’ with her. (Seriously? They call it going out? There’s no car involved. No movies. No romantic picnics. Just chase and catch games on the playground. Phhht. Whatever.) Anyway, I had no choice but to smile my fakest smile and tell her how much I loved the Valentine Box she made. (It actually was pretty creative.) Then I winked at her and gave her an extra fruit roll up. See? I’ve got my boy’s back. That roll up may sway the balance. Maybe Mom’s not so powerless after all. I’ll keep you posted.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

By the way, I’ve gone back and edited my previous posts to remove names. There are some really weird people out there. Nuff said.

Happy Valentine's Day

This is my mom and dad on their wedding day, February 17, 1961.

I'm pretty sure the greeting card companies made up Valentine's Day. I've never much cared for it except when I was in elementary school and Valentine's Day meant party day. That was pretty cool. Now the best part of the holiday is chocolate covered strawberries. (I'll wait here while you run out and buy some for me.)

On a completely unrelated topic, I took The Boy to rent a movie last night. Whatever happened to his heart-warming-cartoon years? You know what I mean. The movies with the cuddly, loveable characters and simple themes of morality and goodness. I think those years are gone. He now mostly loves anything related to Star Wars. He wouldn't watch Lion King or Cars again if you paid him. We compromised last night on Fly Me to the Moon. It was so bad that we turned it off and watched the animated Clone Wars tv series instead. At his Valentine's Day party at school yesterday, he opened a box of red and white Nerds. Then he promptly arranged them on his desk into battling armies. The white ones were clone troopers, of course. Three other boys crowded around right away to provide input into the battle strategies, so I guess he's not alone. I just want to keep him little.

On ANOTHER unrelated topic, I skipped the 5K run today and the bake sale, too. Go ahead, tell me I'm a loser. I feel like a whiner, especially considering that some of my friends are jumping into icy water today to raise money for Special Olympics. If you think that's a cool (pun was intended) thing for them to do, then please send money to Special Olympics.

Sorry if this is a repeat..

I just spammed all my friends with this link. Only those who are lucky enough NOT to be on my email list have missed out on this one so far.

http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/338674/close-but-no-cigar.jhtml#id=1603732

It’s a link to the premier episode of ‘How’s Your News’. It’s a new show on MTV. It follows a group of reporters who travel around in a bus and do 'on the street' and celebrity interviews. The catch is that all of the reporters have developmental disabilities (DD). They met at a summer camp for adults who have DD. Some of the celebrities are kind of patronizing. (NO! You don’t say!)

What I really like is the portrayal of the people who have DD as PEOPLE. They talk about all sorts of topics that the media usually pretends people with DD don’t think about.

In case you don’t work in the field, here is my soap box lecture for the day…. Forget all the Hallmark Channel stereotypes you were raised with. People who have DD are not adult children. They have grown up bodies with grown up desires. They have opinions and ideas and the ability to contribute to society. People who have DD are the only group left for whom it is socially acceptable to label, stereotype and openly discriminate against. Stop it right now.

OK. I’m done. Go on about your business.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Well, today is my father’s birthday. He would have been 66 today, but he died last October. Don’t worry. I promise this won’t be a depressing post. Instead, I thought I’d post a couple of the many reasons why you should be sorry that you didn’t know my dad.

The first reason..... He was funny. Really funny. He didn’t have the dry sense of humor that my mom and my husband have. You usually have to stop and think about what they say and then, after a ten second delay, you laugh. Not my dad. He was slapstick, in your face, 3 Stooges funny. He made goofy faces and he laughed harder at his jokes than anyone else. As a matter of fact, many times it really wasn’t his jokes that were funny. It was the way he cracked himself up that made everyone else laugh.

Another reason..... He made up food and then he forced you to eat it. I would go to see him and the conversation would go like this:
Daddy: “Porge!” (That’s what he called me) “I made up something new. It’s delicious. You have to try it.”
Me: “What is it?” (Sounding cautious.)
Daddy: “Just try it!”
Me: “Not till you tell me what it is.”
Daddy: “It’s tomato soup with mashed bananas in it. Then I added a little honey and horseradish.”
Me: “Not just no, but HELL NO.”
Daddy: “Why do you have to be like that….” And then the emotional blackmail would begin and not stop until I agreed to try it.
Daddy: “Isn’t it great? Didn’t I tell you that you’d love it?”
Me: (Between retches) “I’ve never tasted anything like it before. You sure are ….. creative.”

I betcha Daddy is in heaven right now pushing the chef aside so that he can add secret ingredients to his birthday cake.

Bye for now!

Bizzaro World - Canine Version

You haven't met my dogs yet. I've been remiss.

This is our Sheltie. Her name is Melody and she's 4 and a half. She has startlingly pale blue eyes. She is definitely The Boy's dog. She picked him out right after we got her and has clung firmly to her conviction that he is HER boy. Probably because he lets her sleep with him. That's ok. It's kind of cute. Shelties are herding dogs, so it never occurs to her to bark when someone comes in the house. She barks when people leave.

This is Scully. (Yeah. We were X Files geeks.) She's a 13 year old lab mix that we adopted from the pound. She was still a puppy when we got her, but she was past the cute phase and well into the gangly, clumsy, unadoptable phase. But she picked us out and we have never regretted it. Scully has arthritis, so we baby her a lot. She was our child before The Boy came along. Scully is a singing dog. She does a dead on rendition of Happy Birthday, for which we get frequent phone requests.

The reason we call them the Bizzarro dogs is because at my mom's house, she has a sheltie (Melody's mom) and a black lab mix (no relation), too. So I go there and see her dogs and feel like I'm in an alternate universe. Actually, mom's lab just died a couple of weeks ago, so I guess that joke isn't funny anymore. I wonder if it ever was? Just humor me.

Anyway, except for the mutant fish that are big enough to eat us all in our sleep, you've met all the members of my household. Lucky you.

Day 2 of my new hobby...

Look! I'm back! Didn't think I'd make it, didya? Oh ye of little faith. It'll be at least a month before I lose all interest in blogging. (Just ask the dusty collection of former hobbies that cry pitifully for attention in the guest room closet.)

I thought I should tell you about my geography. I live in a tiny little town. It's a historic river town with awesome people, but no mall. We have a Wal Mart, but it's very small. How small is our Wal Mart? It's sooo small that it doesn't have a traffic light in front of it. That's a real problem because sometimes traffic gets backed up with all of ten cars on Main Street. A year or so after we moved here, I asked the lady in the blue smock if they had freezer tape. She said no, they only carry that during deer season. On a later trip, I asked if they carried kool aid. (I don't drink the stuff, but Mister likes it.) She said no, they only carry that in the summer. While preparing for yet another trip, I asked Mister if there was anything he needed me to pick up while I was there. He said, "Yeah. We're out of light bulbs. But you'd better wait till after dark." He's funny.

Unlike some small towns, the people here have pretty broad horizons. There is a historical society and a theatre troupe and lots of other really cool things. Unfortunately there are still some pretty conservative roots here. I think we were the only family in town with an Obama sign in our yard. But hey, he's their president now, too, so it all worked out in the end! :)

Now I have to go make a lasagna. We like lasagna. Years ago I was a leader for a certain weight management organization who's initials are WW. But alas I have lapsed. I do go to the YMCA on my lunch break every day and walk on the treadmill. Then I stop on the way back to work and get a Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich. I need validation. Tell me I'm not doing anything wrong. I can quit anytime. Really I can.

Bye! Talk to you later!

Look at me! I'm blogging! Wheeeeee!

Ok, so I'm not exactly a technophobe, but I just started texting a few months ago. Now I'm going to try my hand at blogging. I'm on a roll. Maybe by next year I'll figure out how to get email on my phone. I think you have to pay extra for that, don't you? Anyway, here is my blog. It was inspired by an old friend from high school who has a wonderful blog. (Check hers out. She's so awesome. http://teamnugget.blogspot.com/ )

This is my husband. I'll call him Mister. He is the smartest man I've ever met. He's funny and kind and a wonderful father. But mostly I love him because he puts up with me. It's a very tough job. He should get combat pay.

Mister and I met in 1989. I was a newly divorced single mom. He was in the Air Force. I was a full time college student and a part time basket case. We were married in 1993. It would be great to tell you that it's been a bed of roses, but that would be a lie. I'll just have to settle for telling you that he is my soul mate and 80% of the time I have no desire whatsoever to kill him.

This is my daughter, I'll call her Chickie, holding my first grandbaby (Chicklet). This was taken in March of 2007. There's another grandbaby on the way now. Time flies like the wind. (Fruit flies like bananas.) Chickie is in a car on her way to Missouri even as I type this. I haven't seen her in over a year.

This is me with my son, Buddy, at his high school graduation in 2005. I'm ashamed to say that I can't find a more recent picture of him. What kind of mother am I? Oh yeah, the kind that doesn't take pictures of anyone over 10. What is it about little kids that make you want to record every minute? He tells everyone he's a Mama's Boy. I like that. Yup. He plays me like a fiddle.

My youngest child is The Boy. He'll be 9 in a few weeks. The Boy is a St. Louis Cardinal's fan. I should take a picture of his bedroom so that you realize what I mean by 'fan'. He has Cardinal's memorabilia everywhere. He is also an excellent guitar player. His father has been teaching him to play since he was a toddler. He can play riffs from Smoke on the Water, Iron Man, and a few others. I'm not talking about Guitar Hero. He has a Yamaha electric with a whammy bar and a practice amp. This is him at 2 just getting the feel of one of his dad's guitars.

That's our introduction. I will either sign off of here and forget about it for another year, or I'll blog myself silly for a month or so and then get completely burned out and move on to some other hobby like knitting doggie sweaters. Only time will tell.