teen years
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The heart wants what it wants
It’s been one week and we’re doing better than I thought. Of course, Monday afternoon was hard–heart-wrenching hard. After coming to terms with saying goodbye to Fred over those last few days, the kids were ready (or as ready as they could be). W had requested to keep his collar, while J requested to keep Fred’s leash and water/food dishes (for the next dog he insisted). Steve came home early Monday afternoon and the four of us went to the park to spend our last hour with Fred together and it really was a special time. I was as mindful as I could be–trying to be present with my kids, with…
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Saying goodbye
This post was supposed to be about saying goodbye to middle school and all of the mixed emotions that come from that. But it’s not. I’ll write that one next week. This post is about saying goodbye to Fred. It’s funny isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be nice if life would let you just deal with one emotional event at a time, so you could really process it without anything else going on and just really use your emotional reserves for that one event instead of blubbering over a bunch of different emotional events at the same time? The last day of school and Fred’s downturn happened on the same day.…
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A little track family
W wasn’t so sure if she wanted to join track this season. She had reasons. I think the biggest reason was the one she didn’t bring up when we all sat down at dinner and talked about it. J and I had gone to the first practice that afternoon, but W had decided to stay home. I told her that everyone had asked me where she was, and told everyone that she was still thinking about coming out. “I don’t know, I’m busy,” she said. “And I really liked XC. Track just isn’t the same.” (This is coming from the girl who has never tried track before). “You can do both,”…
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One year later
One year later and here we are again, the first track meet of the season! I was a hot, anxious mess at last year’s first meet. We had tried in every single way to prepare J for his first race. From the sound of the gun, to practicing a few times on the track, to schedule strategies we had thought of everything. And still, I wasn’t sure we were going to make it through that first track meet. J was a ball of anxiety himself that first meet. And not everything went exactly as planned (the gun didn’t go off TWICE!). But J made it. He ran the entire race,…
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Some are born great
This week has been W’s week. W was “crowned” student of the week at her middle school (not really crowned–just a free t-shirt and vouchers for Buffalo Wild Wings), performed in a select orchestra concert Thursday night, and received 1st place in the music composition category in the PTA Reflections contest (again). A trifecta of achievement. The line from Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night came to my mind this week as we bustled through all of W’s events: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” In some ways W falls under all three categories. I’ve always felt like she’s been my miracle baby since day…
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A little Christmas story
Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and are enjoying a lovely holiday season! I just thought I’d take a moment and post one of my favourite little stories of kindness we’ve experienced in the week or two leading up to the holiday. J has been a champ when it comes to his first season of winter running. Most of December has been pretty cold, and despite the wind, snow, and sometimes single digit temps (or below -15C), J’s done a good job sticking through it all. I’ve said this before–running is one of the greatest life lessons out there, and one of those lessons i that you keep running…
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Hanging up the cape
I was trying to figure out the best way to break the news to J that this would be his last year trick-or-treating. I know J would be crushed about it, because, as I mentioned last year, it’s only been about three years since the whole trick-or-treating thing has worked out in his brain for him. Where the anxiety and social struggles finally settled to a point where he could function enough to let some stranger’s dog jump up at the glass door and bark its head off at him, to get the words “trick-or-treat” out, wait 30-60 seconds for someone to fish around in a candy bowl to come up with a…
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The Lindenwood meet
When friends or family ask me who’s going to be J’s running partner for the next meet, my answer is, “I don’t know.” I don’t have an answer for them because I try not to drive the coaches too crazy with too many J centred-questions, and thankfully they take my “helicopter mom” persona in stride (I really try hard to keep out of their hair). Each workout and each meet they have been pushing J toward a little more independence and my gut feeling is they really don’t want to set up a runner for him every meet. They had a runner for J in the beginning, but they’ve expressed to me…
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Where we are now
A few weeks ago, J was getting his vitals measured by the nurse at Dr. R’s office and she announced: “He’s 5′ 4 1/2.” What? I thought. That can’t be right. I’m 5′ 4 1/2″. And then I realized that the nurse had let J keep his shoes on for his height measurement, because J was wearing his AFOs (ankle foot orthosis) and it’s always a hassle to take the AFOs and shoes off and then put them all back on again for a 60 second measurement. But still, J’s shoes plus AFOs probably add only an inch MAX to his height. For the rest of the day I couldn’t help but realize…
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Neverland
Up until now, I feel like we’ve been negotiating this puberty thing okay. J’s obsessed with hygiene and cleanliness. He would take showers three times a day if we let him. Flossing has to be followed up by mouthwash. We even introduced deodorant before the start of the school year. I let him choose out the scent, and we lucked out on the first try on the application type (it’s a click kind that dispenses a cool wet deodorant—something I thought he’d never go for sensory wise). We practice using it a couple of times a week because he really isn’t a smelly kid yet, but with autism, the more…
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