Wild Monday!

Today we took our yard sale earnings, added a bit of cash to it, and went to a wonderful zoo that my kids adore. Actually I adore it too.  It is not in our state, so there is a bit of a drive, but it is just really nice.  Spacious habitats, beautiful paths, it is well laid out in so many different ways.  The kids had a blast.  K took a zillion pictures, most of which are really good.  I could post elephants, flamingos, a tortoise that seems to be looking right at the camera.  Or maybe a snow leopard or the moon bear that Lissa loved.  The harbor seal that entertained us so completely.  But instead:

this picture cracks me up. There was this station where you could see how far you could jump and compare it to other creatures.  (for the record, the aforementioned snow leopard can leap 50 ft!) KC and Lissa gave it a go and could jump nearly 4 feet, almost as much as a flea.  Rob and I were up next and I was proud to tie a rabbit at 6 ft, until Rob beat me out with a moon bear at 8 ft!

I am so lucky to have had this day, this entire weekend with the family I love.  This week is a horrid week at work and then the coming weekend is crazy busy--a trip to the big City and Fiona on Saturday which is fun but tiring and then a busy Sunday with some church responsibilities.   I have an inspection on Wednesday at work, and tomorrow K has to work some extra hours. . . I have been blessed with a tiny respite before the craziness continues.

Sunny Sunday

Well the weather started kind of weird.  Sun when we got up (say 6ish) but by 9 it was cloudy and looking like rain again.  I had originally planned to pack lunches to bring to church and figured we would hike after service.  However I knew that if I got the tribe pumped for that and the weather interfered, they would be cranky.  And I didn't feel like dealing with cranky, so I didn't pack lunches and we just set off for church.  And of course, in the way of things, the skies cleared.  LOL  Truly if I had packed lunches it would have poured, I have that kind of karma with weather. 

There was not programming for the kids at church  today as so many people go away this weekend.  But the kids hung out on the playground with 3 other kids (my kids comprising 50 percent of the population) and had a great time.  Also great was the fact that ALL 6 kids were brown. 

We came home and I got quick lunches together and had Chet mow the lawn. Despite the fact we use a push mower, I don't ever have him mow alone.  He sometimes gets an odd idea into his head and someone who is neurotypical should be around to make sure he doesn't lose a limb. Or a digit at the very least. Trust me, some of these creative ideas, well, they are just. not.safe.

Then we packed up and headed out to hike.  The littles decided they all wanted to wear back packs.  Lissa put her water bottle in hers.  KC put a magnifying glass, small binoculars, and a drawing pad and pen in his. Oh and his apple juice. The actual distance was only a bit over a mile but we took a long time because the kids--well primarily KC was so intent on everything.  He peered at butterflies with his magnifying glass. (we saw tiger swallowtails and Harris checkerspots I think) Then he would draw them in his notebook and write down something about them. Later, we saw a snake and some dragonflies, so everyone seemed to feel that our wildlife quota was filled!  But truthfully, his interest and desire to note it all down, amazed me.

After hiking we hit the grocery store, something I typically never do at 3:45 on any day.  But we got through pretty quickly, the kids are really good at helping with grocery shopping.  Then it was home to unload and start supper.  Thankfully I could throw together beans and rice quickly. Cheating with canned dominican beans, and adding some freshly sauteed zuchini and summer squash and some corn left from last years harvest.  Served over rice with a bit of sauce it was tasty and quick.

Now all are abed and I have to start on the evening piece work. But it was a glorious day and I am grateful to have been sharing it with my family.

Rob's birthday mural

This is the first part of the skateboard half pipe that we painted for Rob's birthday mural. 

The birthday banner of "X Games" and the birthday announcement flies across the center of the mural.

And on the far side of the half pipe, a bevy of spectators (all of us!) cheering on Rob as he gets ready to head down the half pipe into his birthday celebration.  Chet has a garden rake on his hand (the kind you scoop the leaves with) in his shot and is using the leaf claw to throw the cake at his brother.  Needless to say, Rob finds that hysterical because we all know Chet would be the guy who would actually try to do that!

I can't believe on Wednesday, my Rob is going to be 14!  How is that possible??

You don't look like us!

I thought I would share a funny story, that is also sort of thought provoking, at least for me.  When I took the kids on the whale watch there was a photographer that took everyone's pictures as they boarded.  It was a good shot of all of us and I bought a 5 x 7.  When my mom was down a couple of weeks ago, I showed her the picture.  Candidly, I take horrid pictures as a general rule. I am just not photogenic.  But this shot was the exception to the rule.  At any rate, my mom looked at it, commented on how cute the kids looked.  Then. . .

"But oh my god Lee, you don't look like any of us.  Where did YOU come from?"

Now to be clear, this did  not hurt my feelings.Yet for that small moment in time, the comment brought me up short. Did I really NOT look like my family? How was that possible?


  Truthfully I think there are some family resemblences, but likely the fact that I was wearing my ball cap and an oversized flannel shirt made me look less like the self that is usually presented to my family. I know my genetic gifts from my family.  I wear glasses like my mom and dad, I have thinning fine hair like my mom's side of the family, I am tall and slender like my fathers family. 
 
But my kids face that every day.  And I know they spend a lot of time thinking about it because they point out frequently the features they have that are like each other, those that are dissimilar. We even know and comment on shared interests.  KC loving dance just like Nana and I, Rob's bird ID skills would have made my grandmother smile, etc.  They know these stories -- but I know it is not the same.  I know that tiny blip of disconnect felt really weird to me when my mom said that.  And I know that weird feeling has to be part of the way they feel every day, and my heart hurts for them because of that.

My little gymnast

Today was Lissa's introductory gymnastic class. My friend Laura has a daughter who takes gymnastics at a local school and she said Lissa could try a lesson for free this month. So we arranged for the trial today.  It meant I had to work through lunch so that I could leave work early.  Not really a problem as most days I have to work through my lunch and leaving at 3 was sort of a treat! 

Lissa did great!  My biggest concern was if she would sit and listen to instructions. She is a wee dervish, my Lissa. But she did and the class size is small, 4 to 6 kids and there are stations that they all work at so there is not a lot of time that they are not moving. 

Truly the only thing she could not do was a cartwheel. She could do the assisted handstand which surprised the instructor. She said most of the 3 y/o's don't have that arm strength when they first come to class.  I said she has 3 brothers. LOL She loved the beam exercises, which had fun things like waving your arms with butterflies attached when you walked along it, or stepping over little rubber lizards etc.  She just was so in her element.  We have signed up for the remainder of this session.

When Mental Illness collides with the law

Fiona called tonight.  She said that she has to go to court tomorrow.  I felt like I was punched in the gut.  Clearly from the tenor of the conversation, Jane thought she had told me of this but nope.  This dates back several months to an assault of a peer.  Jane seems calm about this and a visit is still on for us in early June so I don't think incarceration is imminent.  Fiona told me about the steps that she and staff have worked on to try and make sure that future incidents don't happen.

In one sense, she has made huge huge progress.  She was able to articulate to me tonight how the rage overwhelms her and how then she knows she has lost control and feels badly and this feeds it and she winds up lashing out.  How she is trying to take space when she first feels really angry and not letting it get to that point.

And that is all good.  I suspect things will be okay because the Great School in the City is likely to be able to facilitate this with her first actual brush with the law.  But it scares me.  It is my worst nightmare come true.  I think that the worst thing for me as a parent is knowing that there are kids--and Chet and Fiona both fall into this category, who can so easily do things that are outside the norms of society.  That could land them with consequences that might teach a neurotypical person not to do the same thing again.  But which I strongly doubt can teach either one of them anything.  And which has a far greater liklihood of harming them even more.

I am not saying that it is right to hit.  Clearly it isn't.  But there are kids who are just ill.  Or damaged by the trauma they were subjected to before they were ours.There are kids who have learned in those first formative years that it is better to hit first then get hit later yourself.  Or who have cognitive delays that inhibit their ability to process.  Who become flooded with emotions, raging hormones, whatever.  The Great School in the City has made huge strides with Fiona.  But she has soooooo far to go.  I worry that she won't get to where she needs to be in order to stay safe in the world we live in. 

I worry for Chet whose social ineptness and physicality place him at risk should I not be there to run interference and de-escalate a situation.  Clearly he is better than when he was 15 and hormones raged in addition to his Aspergers.  But there are days when "better" is marginal and I think on the fact that I am 50 and will not be here forever.

Clearly I have no pearls of wisdom here to share.

Garden time!

Gardens gardens!  tis finally the season in our corner of New England to do serious planting.  To be sure, I have planted the brave things--pansies and violas to brighten our kitchen garden.  KC amazingly threw some sunflower seeds in the kitchen garden and they grew too.  But tomatos and such have been growing under growlights in our upstairs bathroom. This is partly because we have had unpredictable weather.  Warm, then hot, then amazingly cold with frost warnings.  Very strange.  But it is also because we grow our veggies at a community garden plot and one can not plant there till they give you the go ahead.

This morning when i opened my email we had our plot assignment at last and the go ahead to plant.  Tonight, hopefully after Fiona's call we will head up and start to prepare the plot.  As we never get the same plot each year, this is not the organic garden of my dreams.  It seems silly to do lots of soil amending when I know i'll have to go through it all in another plot the following year. (we have been doing this for 4 yrs now and have never gotten the same plot) 

So we cheat. We use black plastic landscape cloth to smother weeds.  We use some organic fertilizers but also some of the dreaded M*racle Gro.  And we typically have a great harvest.  We tend to grow lots of tomatos.  We put up sauce and we can salsa.  We don't grow the peppers as the growing season is too short for us to get enough yield to make it worthwhile.  We grow Indian corn for decorations. (cornshucks for our light pole in the fall and we bundle the corn into decorations for our shed and back door.)  We, or I should say, KC and Elisabeth, grow pumpkins.  We usually do a late lettuce crop right near the end of the season.  At home, we container grow herbs and also sunflowers for the sunflower science project and cucumbers that KC planted at church.

I love gardens.  I am not really good at gardening.  K has the garden gene.  Also KC.  Either of them look at a plant and it grows an inch just in happiness. I am more the grunt labor in this endeavor but I still love it.  I feel close to the earth, I know where my food is coming from and it is all good.