7 Quick Take Friday

Before I realized that there are no Quick Takes this month I wrote my seven this week, so.... here we go.

-1-

Last week I had a sponsored post on Facebook.

Which is both entirely my doing and also slightly embarrassing.  You see, if you have a non-personal Facebook page for long enough and ignore the regular Facebook "sponsored posts" (basically "this could be your ad") for long enough they will (or may? I'm not really sure how it's decided) give you a $10 coupon code so that you can see how super cool it is to have a boosted post.  

It usually comes in the form of "Hey we're giving you $10 to boost this post" and I'm like "Nope.  No way.  Why one earth would I want to boost that? I am not boosting an update on being sick. You literally cannot pay (for) me to boost it. I barely wrote it and posted it on Facebook."  

But they asked again on the "Finding Me" post and I thought "why not?"  

So I clicked to accept the coupon and set the limit at the amount of the coupon (half expecting the advertisement to somehow try to sneak beyond the limit, although it worked exactly as it was intended last time) and submitted it.  Almost immediately it came back as accepted and gradually began to tell me I was getting "paid views."

And almost immediately I was uncomfortable.  I mean, I knew what was going to happen.  I know what a sponsored post is.  Facebook had given me a coupon once before, but it hadn't really bothered me when I had my Etsy shops up and going.  Sponsoring the shop was no big deal.

But sponsoring my writing feels... kind of strange.  

I mean, don't get me wrong.  Facebook's algorithms can make it pretty hard to get posts out to readers, even when they do follow pages, so if I am lucky enough to get another one of those coupons I won't hesitate to use it.  

And I'll probably feel awkward about it every time Facebook gives me a cheerful little update about views until it expires in that imaginary future, too.

-2-

The first sign that the last child in the house to get sick, was getting sick (with this round of this virus), was when she lay down like this in the doctor's office, instead of continuing to fight her way past me as she tried to ransack the unsecured drawers full of supplies (and let me tell you the pulmonologist has some neat to a 17 month old supplies).    

The second sign was when the pulmonology PA said she has a very red throat.

The third was when she tried to fall asleep in the shopping cart at Target where we stopped to pick up a few quick last minute supplies after sleeping all the way from Lansing to Grand Rapids.  

I think the last of the kids has officially succumbed to whatever the virus (fourth virus) of the season is.  

On the (barely) sunny side, I'm hoping this means that she'll be feeling better by Christmas because this bug only seems to last for a couple days.

When I snapped this I thought she was just tired of doctors...

-3-

M is for Mermaid.  Or Merman.

I still haven't figured out who this superhero is, but I did speak with Maggie's teacher today and determined that none of the boys in her class are missing a dearly cherished toy, so at least there's that.

I'm guessing she loves it because of the M.  M is always for Mermaid around here.  Even on a superhero.

Do you know his identity? 

-4-

"Mom!" Patrick called to me, yesterday, from the living room.  "I caught a Pikachu!  I'm not keeping him in his ball."  

I turned to see the Pikachu, lingering near the staircase.

I just had to hope that it wasn't going to electrocute anyone.

I did dance around after catching a Delibird last night.  I know, I know I might be the last person on the planet playing Pokemon Go (okay, my Facebook Pokemon Go group tells me that isn't true... I think I just got a little bit geekier with that admission).

Anyway, here is  the Pikachu that Patrick caught:

-5-

As with the scissors it took her longer than I expected to overcome this gate.  

Sigh.  

And now it's really, really easy for her to get past it in about three seconds.

-6-

Yesterday was Patrick's last day of school before Christmas break.  

I was worried he might have been feeling a little shy, switching schools midway through the year and starting at a new school, and having to make new friends.  It was a relief to see our little social butterfly bouncing around, including being the first one to race across the room when a special guest arrived:

-7-

The other night we were scrolling through our various Netflix and Amazon options for the movie portion of family fun night when I came upon it.  The obsession of my Kindergarten/First Grade years.  

She-Ra Princess of Power.  

I may have squealed.  There was definitely giggling.  

By the time it was on I had Patch and James convinced that it had to be The Best Thing that they had ever seen because of my descriptions.  Or that it might be nearly as cool as Wonder Pets.  

James volunteered that he was Battle Cat, because Battle Cat is Green like Gecko.  

And unlike many shows it was just about as good as I remembered it being.  

If I don't blog before then, have a very Merry Christmas!

Mermaid Hair

Dying my hair "mermaid" colors is not the first, nor will it be the last, unusual thing that I do, in my quest to make Maggie smile.  It worked.

I started with blue and when she saw it she said "Gil hair?" and was moderately impressed by the lengths I had gone to to obtain "mermaid hair."  

I tried pink next and then purple and finally green.

The rainbow of colors grew steadily less novel.  

Maggie loves to play Toca Boca on iPad and her favorite thing to do in Toca Boca is dying everyones hair pink.  She plays the hairstyling games, but she also dyes all the characters hair in the other games as well.

But after a few (of twelve) months the novelty faded.

Although it was fun while it lasted.

Sadie, forever sensible, was too polite to voice her thoughts, but did say:  "When I am thirty five I will not dye my hair an 'unnatural color.'"

Finally I decided it was time.  I drove to Meijer after an IEP meeting and trudged through the slush to find a $2.50 box of brown/black hair dye that couldn't have been any more boring if it tried.  I suspect that the marketing team was not trying particularly hard.

But the price was right and the little chart on the back of the box suggested that the bleached barely-green hair might resemble the rest of my hair, if it worked the way that it was supposed to.

On Saturday I put on gloves and mixed Part A of the hair dye with Part B.  I will admit to a certain level of skepticism as I put the top half of my hair in a pony tail, the skin along the edges of my scalp coated with Vaseline, and began to apply the mixture.

To begin with, the thick dye was yellow as it began to go on.  I'm so used to the bright hair dyes that come out of the bottle looking exactly like the color looks on your hair, that I was pretty certain that the almost off white dye was not going to turn my hair "brown/black."

But anything had to be better than "faded green" (I'm a fan of the bolder colors) so I kept coating it and sure enough, by the time I slipped the plastic cap over it, it had transformed into a dark shade.

And the estimate on the box didn't do the results justice.

I went downstairs once it had dried and showed Sadie.

"How does it look?"  I asked, pleased with the results.  I hadn't accidentally dyed my hands or forehead this time, so I was calling it a win.

"Hmmmm."  She said.

"Is it the right color?"  I asked.

"The right color for Maggie!"  Patrick said.

"It's like Maggie's hair Mommy!'  James echoed.

"It looks okay.  From far away."  Sadie finally allowed.

"Just far away?"  I asked, stiffling a laugh.

"Up close the bottom half is way darker than your regular hair."

So there you have it.

I really like the new color, but I have yet to impress the nine, five, or three year olds.

I'm going to say that Tessie is impressed because she's too little to tell me what she thinks.

Her Hair

It was bound to happen, sooner or later, but maybe she had lulled me into complacency.  

I had begun to believe that it would never happen to us.  At least not with her.  Maybe with Tessie, if I was careless.  But we were past the danger with Maggie. 

So I thought.

That morning, as I brushed her hair, I thought to myself how lovely it was, now that it could finally be kept long and clean and brushed.

I'm pretty sure that that was some sort of dramatic foreshadowing for what was coming next.

Sigh.  We went and saw Santa.

I powered through and made it to Mass for the first and only time in a month and a half (sitting in a separate room away from any and all people in case I am contagious).

And we got home and had lunch and the kids scattered to different parts of the house to play.

Here's what happened next, unbeknownst to us.

Maggie moved a large heavy chair and climbed up on a doorframe and got down a long nail, that had one end filed down.  She used it to pick the lock of the door to Sadie's room.

Yes, she picked the lock, quickly and expertly (because of course she did).

Then she went inside and found Sadie's school scissors and did what we all would have expected her to do.  Then she went back upstairs.

She didn't look different at first.  Only one strand of hair fell off in the beginning.

Sadie found it and brought it to me.  I picked up a brush and started to brush Maggie's hair, fearing the worst, but hoping for the best.

And gigantic pieces began to fall away.  Here and there and everywhere.

I went and found my scissors and began to do damage control.

And then I came back and evened it out a bit more.  It was truly a mess.

It is easier to manage now.

But wow.

I feel like I should have seen this coming.... the moment that I thought, "her hair certainly looks lovely..."

The Kid that Never Napped

James stopped napping when he was sixteen months old.

I remember discussing it with his physical therapist, and with the early interventionist who came to work with him.  "When did he stop napping?" she asked.  I remember thinking hard.  "Oh, when he was sixteen months old.  Exactly sixteen months old.  When he weaned.  After that naps were a thing of that past unless I was holding him and the second I set him down he was awake."

But I couldn't hold him forever, or even for all that long, because by then I was gigantically pregnant with Tessie.  

And so he had a nearly two year hiatus from naps where the only time he really napped was when he was in his car seat.  

All of the sudden he has decided to make up for it. 

Every time I turn around, he's asleep.  

On the couch.  In the big bed.  In the car.  On the floor.   

Here there and everywhere, James is a champion napper.

I guess this means he's figured out how to self sooth.

And I'm thrilled.

Finding Me

One of the reasons I've been somewhat reluctant to write in the last year is that as the months went by I've felt increasingly like I just didn't fit in, in the Catholic mom blog world.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm still Catholic.  I still believe in all those teachings of our Church.  And obviously, I'm still a mom.  And sometimes I'm still a blogger.

Me.  Catholic.  Mom.  Sometimes Blogger.

Which I guess makes me a Catholic Mom Blogger, and that in the past gave me an amazing sense of community.

But by the end of 2016 I found that I felt out of place.  Many of the topics that I'd blogged outspokenly (and even obnoxiously) about in the past I had (have) done a 180 on.

I have "I'm very disappointed in your wearing pants" messages to prove it.

And often I feel like I'm moving in the opposite direction, on non-Church matters, of most of my friends.

Now I'm going to take a deep breath and start typing and trust you guys.  And I'm going to trust that for some of us, we can believe radically different things and still be friends.  And I'm going to try to tone down the defensiveness that have developed about some of these subjects (especially the ones relating to autism) and if that seeps through I hope you'll understand.

Here we go:

I am not the same mom I was when I began this blog, know everything and wanting to share all of my advice with the world.  I have happily discovered that my kids are okay eating gluten and casein.  And non-organic food and sometimes hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.

I have discovered that topamax helped Maggie and I with our migraines more than any essential oil ever could.

I am politically homeless and while I'm prolife I'm also pretty passionate about the good that I believe social programs do in our nation.

I've opened a hundred blog drafts on my computer and started posts about the problems of racism and sexism that I've felt compelled to speak out about that are probably the last thing many readers want to see here, before chickening out and closing the window.  Someday soon I want to be brave enough to not do that.

I don't wear a veil anymore in Mass because there were too many hands yanking it off and no matter how cleverly I sewed in the combs or selected my fabrics, they could get it off.  I still think it's a lovely practice, but with a sigh I have set it aside as something that is not for me at this time in my life.

And perhaps most shocking in these parts, I'm excited when my kids are up to date on their vaccines (yes I've done my "research," no not really because talking to doctors and specialists and googling and reading other peoples studies isn't really research, at least not when we're talking about "medical research," which we usually are when vaccines are mentioned, but I have educated myself on the topic and reached the conclusion on what is best for my family), and I also enthusiastically hauled five kids in to get flu shots this year, which is something that can get you an equal number of angry and (sarcastically?) laughing faces on Facebook if you admit it these days in certain Catholic moms' groups.

Okay, I should probably apologize a tiny bit for that last part.  And not just for the run on sentence, right?  When you have kids with different medical needs, including kids on the spectrum you get a wide variety of people with helpful suggestions about alternative medicine and comments like "don't you wish you hadn't vaccinated now?" in your inbox and in real life and after a while it can make you a little bit... snarky... about the whole subject (For the record, no, I don't believe that's why we have a bit of neurologically diversity in our family.  As I'm sure our doctors would enthusiastically tell anyone our genes play a big, big role).

The reaction we all wish we had.  Some might be wishing they can use this one after the last few paragraphs, am I right?  Hang in there though.

And now we're getting to the point of this post, that I've been warming up to.  The part that some of you may even have guessed at if you follow me on Instagram, or that you know about if we're friends on Facebook.  If you've hung in here this far, thanks.

If you've been a long time reader of this blog you know that from the time it began, really from the time I was pregnant with Sadie, I was adamant that I was going to homeschool, and there was never ever going to be a reason that I wasn't going to homeschool because it was always and ever going to be the Only Best Thing.

I mean, sure, I might have allowed, that there might have been other best things for other families, but not for us.

And then reality arrived, and hit me like a Mac truck and I admitted that perhaps I needed a little bit of extra help and that perhaps Maggie needed in home therapy.  And she thrived.  And after a few years of in home therapy she began attending a therapy center, where she made friends and had a blast.

And then Sadie asked to go to school.

So it happened that Sadie and Patch went to our parish school, and Maggie was placed in a special class room at a local public school.

For a little over a year we gave parochial school a try.  And academically it was fantastic.

Academically I do not have a single complaint.

But unfortunately the school experience is not entirely based on academics. There were bullies.  And one day the phone rang and I jumped when I saw that it was the school, my heart in my throat.

A list of possibilities ran through my head.  My child had been shoved to the ground, in the mud and spit on.  My child had been hit in the head twice (and it was repeatedly called "teasing" like "flirting").  And there was just the day in day out bullying that wouldn't stop.  Sometimes it was physical, sometimes it wasn't.  The days when it wasn't were nearly as bad as the days when it was.

Sometimes it was witnessed and taken seriously and sometimes it was dismissed.

The child in question loved school.  They were learning and flourishing academically.

But when the phone rang that day I was so afraid of what had happened, what the call was going to say, my heart was racing and my hands trembled as I fumbled to press the button to answer the call.

It was nothing.  The voice was automated.  The schools phone system would be down for an hour.  If we needed anything we could call the parish office.  But in that moment I knew.  We needed to take them out.

I called Paul.  This had to stop.  We couldn't go on like this.  Because sooner or later it wouldn't just be an automated voice.

The next day I went to our public school and picked up applications.  And a few days later the bus arrived at our house.

The kids are happier.  I'm happier.  We spend less time driving, less time in the car, more time as a family.  We're getting to know more people in our community.

It's been a month now, a glorious month and my greatest regret is that we didn't do this sooner.

Years ago.  Really I regret that it took me so long to figure out that this was what was best for our family and for our kids.

Now if the last years have taught me anything it's that best isn't static.  It's that right now best is public school and that something else could be best later.  That while that might feel impossible now the one thing the last decade has taught me is that in schooling choices at least to never say never, because the best thing this year for this kid may not be the best thing in five years for that kid.

We shall see.

Things used to be a lot harder.

I believed that they were harder because they were making me holier.

And sometimes suffering is the path to holiness.

But sometimes hard is just hard.

Sometimes something is hard because it isn't the right path, and you aren't meant to be miserable, and your children could actually be learning from loving, caring adults, even if those loving caring adults aren't their parents.

Sometimes the extrovert that was bored at home, no matter the program or curriculum, will come home chattering and excited and reading chapter books and with the highest math grade in the class from public school and when you mention to their teacher in passing that a year ago they could hardly read, despite the fifty seven curriculums the two of your poured over every day, she will be absolutely stunned.

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Labels used to matter so much when I was writing here.

In the blogging world it seems like they still do.  I mean I guess that's what that whole first section of this blog was, me figuring out who I am not compared to who I used to be, in a way that probably made some people uncomfortable, or even angry.

I guess if I was writing a blurb I would say that I'm a Catholic mom, with a gaggle of kids in public school, and a couple still at home, who likes to knit and write.  But doesn't that sound silly and awkward?

I'm not about to begin to pretend that I can write something that can tear down all the divisions that we create and throw up between ourselves and others.  But I'm writing this in case there's someone out there reading it who doesn't see a reflection of themselves in the other blogs that they usually read, who might see it here.

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I've probably offended half of my readers with my first few paragraphs about who I'm not, which wasn't my intent.  It's just that sometimes it can feel like there's a box in this little corner of the blogging world that some of us have called home and if you don't fit in that box and meet certain criteria you don't really belong.  

I was just about to stop writing here when I realized that maybe, just maybe there were other people who felt the same way.  

I mean you don't have to be the same, that's the whole point.  Or part of the point.  

And that is where I am beginning again with writing here, for now, knowing far less than I did when I started out, knowing everything.

If you're still here, welcome.

The Grumpster

James is fantastically verbal.

Which is strange sometimes for me because the three older kids all have varying degrees of speech delays (and are all in speech).

James does not.

He graduated from Early On the day he turned three, shortly after graduating from the PT that started when he was seven months old.  He's taking gymnastics once a week now, which I think is helping him continue to get stronger and stronger, and you really can't tell that this same little kid couldn't sit up until he was nearly a year old.

I, not infrequently, have found myself marveling at how easy speech is for him.  And by extension how much easier life is with a two, and now three year old, who can tell us what's wrong.  Because he has words he's much less frustrated, generally, than the older kids were at the same age.

His early interventionist and I used to talk a lot as he was nearing graduation about how he isn't just verbal though, he's hilariously funny.  He intentionally tells jokes that have all the adults around him cracking up.

And they're particularly funny because James so often has his very serious "Grumpy Baby" expression until he delivers the punch line.

Last night before bed he and Patch were asking to look at baby pictures, and both boys were laughing hysterically over James' expression in so many of his pictures.

It started, more or less, from the day that he was born.  In every single picture he had, what would later become his trademark James' frown:

"I was angry at your phone."

As he got older the perfected the look:

"Because I wanted to go out!"

It could range from slightly concerned to aghast at the antics of his older siblings:

"I was angry at Maggie.  No.  I was not angry there.  I was happy at Maggie."

And one of the reasons it was so funny was that he was one of the happiest, most easy going children that I have ever met.  But when it was time for photos, he had no time for that nonsense:

"I was angry at you.  I was angry.  Because it was not fun. It was not.  I was not going.  I was not talking."

And so it became something of a joke around here.  James looking grumpy eating cake.  James looking grumpy in tummy time.  James looking grumpy snuggling with his sister.

"Because I hate the cake."

He was always up for glaring, usually before breaking into an elusive (on camera at least) smile.

No comment from James on the cause of this glare.

The other day we were walking down the stairs together and he pointed out this picture, which is hanging on the wall.

I asked him what he was thinking and why he was frowning.  We'd just gone through a corn maze, had walked through a pumpkin patch and had gone on a hay ride.

He was having a fun and running around.  And then he paused and I had snapped this picture on top of the hay fort.

Why the frown? I asked.

"I was worried that you were going to leave me.  In that barn.  You know you were always doing that. Leaving me in barns.  All the time."

I assured him that he had never in his life been left in a barn and he started to chuckle.  "Yup, always leaving me in barns.  All the time.  Every day."  followed by hysterical laughter at the silliness of his story.

I pointed out that he has never, in all his life, been left anywhere, but the story of the barn has quickly become a favorite that he likes to tell.

As he's gotten bigger his face is no longer quite so much a resting frown and he poses and shouts "take my picture!" whenever he suspects a phone might be in camera mode.  But once in a while the Grumpy Baby frown peeks out and I'm always interested to hear his narration of why he was frowning when I show him what I snapped.

And these days his smiles are nearly as dramatic as his frowns.

"Take my picture mom!  Take it!  Cheeeeeeeeese!"

I still can't believe that he's three.  Although he still refers to himself as "the baby."  And when I ask about Tessie he says that she is "tinier."

I can't wait to hear what he's going to come up with next!

Family Photo Struggles

Our family photos are something of a joke around here, because no matter how much I plan and wish and hope they are always spectacularly bad.  You would think that I would have learned by now that part of what I always end up loving about them, much, much later is how they sum up the personality of our family.

I will admit that pretty much the only time I struggle with envy is when I see photos of a bunch of kids and they're all lined up and looking at the camera and smiling.  And I can't help but think "guys, come on, can't you do that for 3 seconds.

But alas.  That is not us.  Even for .3 seconds.  Even if the lady at the Santa for kids with autism photo shoot takes twenty photos.

In the beginning, it was easy to get a family photo:

And even once Sadie came along, she usually cooperated.  In the beginning at least:

And then Maggie arrived.  And the photos still had a chance of turning out the way I'd hoped:

But by the time Patch arrived everyone looking the same direction was a distant memory:

And often time hilarity followed:

Can everyone look at the camera?

No.  No they cannot.

The photographer exclaimed that getting this photo was a challenge to the twenty years of tricks he had up his sleeve.

And when I tried to get photos of all the kids together?  This was pretty typical:

Then James added his Grumpy Baby frowns.

And so last year when I read that there was a time for kids with special needs to get their photo taken with Santa I was thrilled.  The kids had a blast and the picture was really, really good (for our family):

So perhaps I was overly optimistic when I saw the ad on Facebook to sign up to see Santa again.

The kids were extremely excited in the car.  They had a great time before and after.  Lots of giggles and laughter.  They had a blast.

But every time the camera snapped...  chaos.

This was the best of many, many photos:

The more I look at it, the more it makes me laugh.

Maybe next year... maybe...

And maybe not!

Finally an Update

I have been meaning to post an update all week, but I don't really have much of an update to give you.  I'm still sick.  And I'm really tired of being sick.  I'm also extremely thankful for school buses or I'm not sure how I would have survived the last few weeks.

At the doctor's appointment after I wrote my last post I didn't have a fever.  The next day I did, but it was low.  My doctor was cautiously hopeful that maybe it was just a bad virus.  I'm still hoping it was just a bad virus, but it's been hard to tell because first I was sick, then I was in a lot of pain from the spinal tap, and by the time that went away I was sick again, although now with something that feels more like the flu, that one of the kids brought home from school.

I keep hoping that this respiratory thing will go away and I'll be able to tell if I still have a fever without it.  I know I should make an appointment to see my primary care doctor again.  He is sending me for some genetic testing.  And I'm on a waitlist to see another doctor sometime in January.

I'm still sleeping a lot, but I've also been able to be up and about around the house way more than back in November so that has me cautiously optimistic.

I've also been knitting.  A lot.

Thank you for the prayers.  I wish I had more of an update.  It has been a rough couple of months (November 3rd was the last "normal" day) and I'm ready to feel like myself again!