Without the song and dance

I’m not going to lie. I’m sort of loving the fact that my kids are out of the whole “Holiday Spectacular” phase. When my kids were littles, I thought that I’d be heartbroken when the Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Leprechaun phase (okay, maybe not the Leprechaun thing–I still don’t quite get why that’s such a big deal here, it wasn’t anything I grew up with) was over. But I’m not heart broken at all. In fact, I have this overwhelming sense of relief. Not to say that holidays aren’t still stressful for me. They are. But reduced amounts of holiday fanfare are helpful.

I think it’s because I feel like I’m doing a song and dance daily to help our family–to help J– get through each day. Often, I feel like I’m coming up with elaborate strategies to help motivate J through a tough event (which can happen anywhere from 1-15 times daily), elaborate strategies to teach J something, or elaborate strategies to discipline and put the fear of God into J (because a lot of times autism just doesn’t care about what the rest of society feels the rules should be).

I can’t complain too much about this week. In fact, we’ve had a pretty successful one. J ran his second track meet of the year and went from last week’s mile time of 7:50 to a time of 7:33. It’s quite exciting to watch. And a lot less stressful too. I think we might even try him in the 800m, next meet!

J also had his first filling ever and it was a complete success! So much so that they were able to do an extra step (extra sealant maybe? I can’t remember, I was practically holding my breath through the whole thing), but the team was REALLY excited he was doing so well that they threw in that extra step on the fly. I LOVE LOVE LOVE our pediatric dentist. They are so good with J and always so prepared with him. They even remembered his favourite movie and had it playing in the “filling room” when we arrived. His dentist is really good with counting and breaks and I stood over J, rubbing his arm, repeating “listen to the numbers, you’re almost there, it’s like running a race, you finish the lap, you finish the mile” over and over again. And he did it all. I literally teared up while thanking the dentist. J’s previous dentist told me that J would probably never handle any dental work and have to be put all the way under to do any dental work at all. Well, here you go other dentist. He rocked it. And he’s going back next week to get the other side done. He did so well I even thought, “hey, this kid might be able to even handle braces in a few years.” Because that’s how my mama brain works. We conquer one hurdle and I’m always looking for the next one to meet head on.

And that’s why, over 14 years of parenting I’m so over the song and dance. On Friday, I was making a “to do” list for all of the Easter things: shopping for dinner and basket items (my kids don’t do an egg hunt now, but we do give them baskets) and I started feeling it. That stress out feeling of “I just can’t do one more thing.” I had grand plans of preparing salmon for the first time (fish is now my “meat” option for special occasions as a vegetarian). I was going to make paska bread like I’ve done for the past five years or so. I was going to make 2 desserts. But as I shopped and as Sunday got closer I started eliminating items on the list. Ready to bake salmon at Costco instead of my own preparation. Frozen dinner rolls instead of paska bread. One dessert.

Here’s some Easter pics of the kids– 9 years ago! Back when I had my act together 😉 (Ha!)

They were much cuter back then anyways 😉

Sunday came and I was SO glad I didn’t get into “holiday spectacular” mode. In the middle of church some baby pulled the fire alarm in the middle of the service and we had to evacuate the building. I was doing my autism dance for the rest of the time, rubbing J’s back letting him know it was okay. Trying to convince him that it wasn’t really a fire alarm, that it was just a really loud bell. Someone sang a hymn with a “tainted” number and I had to talk him off the cliff over that (he stayed the whole time! He just said really mean things under his breath and at one point turned to me and said, “Let’s do something to get kicked out.”). And then everyone at church had to keep talking about the fire alarm incident while I had to keep correcting in front of J that it was just a bell, it’s just a bell. It was just a bell, over and over again. I was doing the full fledged autism song and dance. Because who would expect a fire alarm evacuation at church–ever. And on Easter of all days?

We still had a good Sunday. We had a good Easter dinner. I enjoyed everyone’s Easter family pictures on Instagram and Facebook, pretty and handsome in their Easter attire. I scrolled through Pintrest Saturday and Sunday, pinning ideas and pictures I liked, not because I had intentions of doing any of them. I just like the prettiness of it all. I got my holiday spectacular vicariously and I’m just fine with that. I’ve got other projects I’m working on. Like putting up a gallery wall in our family room that’s needed to be done for years now.