Oh brother, times 10

In choosing to blog about life with a child with special needs, I think it would be irresponsible not to include some of the bad days . . . otherwise, readers who are in similar situations may feel like I'm idealizing life, or minimizing and skipping over the obnoxious, challenging parts.  Today was one of the lousier days.  If you're thinking "Lousy days be damned---make me smile!", then just skip ahead to the end :)

Today a lot of annoying things added up and became totally overwhelming.  Here were a few:

1. We have a huge stack of bills and insurance stuff to deal with. I have to call them, but I've been putting it off because although I hear of people "fighting with their insurance" to get things paid for, I have no idea what that actually means. I feel like I'm going to call and talk to some pencil pusher who says "we don't pay for that" and I'm going to say "you need to, the geneticist said she needed this test" and then he'll say "well, we don't" and then what do I do?  (I'm going to start making calls tomorrow, though.  I know I'll feel better once I address it.)

2. Parker's therapy dog class last night sucked, and I have a ton of work to do with him.

3. I can't get anywhere with the agencies that are supposed to sign off so that Maya can get splints for her legs. The process has been going on for literally months. I spent time basically bitching at several different people over the past 2 weeks, but all of them are powerless . . . the people who actually have the power to move it along either: are never in the office, don't answer their phones, or have permanently full voicemail boxes. I am waiting on a new phone number that I can start calling to bother people, and soon I'm going to request an address and just camp out there.  With Maya.  And Parker.  And we're going to sing "Wheels on the bus".  Over and over.  And then I'll change the lyrics to "The people in the office need to sign that form, sign that form, sign that form . . . the people in the office need to sign that form or we'll never, ever leave."

4. I worry that our lack of ability to get spints, and to get our speech agency changed, might indicate that this agency will mess up our transition to the preschool system, which starts in the winter/spring.

5. As I try to do all of this, I still am surrounded by way too much stuff at home. Why is there a pile of change, a tube of sunblock, and business cards on the counter?  Why can't we stay on top of putting things away, instead of emptying our pockets or stroller contents or whatever when we walk in the door?  (This is why the purging & reorganization project will continue, even if it's only at a snail's pace, until everything has a home that is easily accessible.)

I've just had it today.

And I tried sitting on the floor and crying, but it didn't help.  And Maya didn't understand what I was doing, and sat next to me with a furrowed brow.  Then I sniffled "Mommy's sad, Maya.  Can you give me a hug?"  And she climbed right into my lap and did just that.  Then she squeezed a handful of my face and I had to kick her off.
 
So, there's that.  It's not all sunshine and roses here . . . but we do have some good times :)  New pictures are up in the Facebook album "What clean(ing) looks like", so you can see progress in the media center bookshelves.  And here's a video of our dynamic duo . . . playing together in the hallway. 
 
Highlight: You may not have ever heard Maya talk before, because she gets pretty quiet when other folks are around.  But here, you can hear her version of "Pa-pa"----her nickname for Parker.  It's the only thing she'll reliably say almost every time we ask her to.  The silly part is that she says "Ma ma!" instead of "Pa-pa".   You'll hear it at 1:03.
 



Remember, if you just see a blank spot with a "play" arrow underneath, click the arrow and the video will start!

Beauty is in the details . . .

My cleaning out has sputtered a bit this week . . . the apples that took over the kitchen clamored to be cooking into applesauce and apple bread (recipes to follow), the fridge is nearly overflowing with CSA veggies to be processed and enjoyed.  I only have a few free hours when Maya is napping, and they've gotten eaten up by more routine chores. 

But as we clean out, we are taking the time to make small upgrades, too.  Why wait?  There's no point in putting off fun little adjustments that make such a nice difference. (Speaking of upgrades---did you see my fun new clogs on the Facebook page?  When you get rid of old, broken shoes, you get new fun ones!)

I hung a bulletin board (that I've been intending to hang since we moved here . . . 2.5 yrs ago), but it looked too school-bulletin-boardish, so I gave it a quick sloppy coat of plum/wine colored paint . . . much nicer.  A free, tiny adjustment that makes me smile when I walk by it:

I've been trying to find a home for my glass vases (previously they were in a kitchen cabinet, but I want to free that space for more pantry stuff).   Finally, I decided to home some of them on the bookcases in our living room (we have three, with glass doors----two in a media center, one as part of a hutch).  At the craft store this afternoon I scored some pumpkins, gourds & pincones, which fill the cases are create a nice autumn touch---the hutch is done, now I'll have to figure out how to arrange the others. 


Doors open:                                                                      Doors closed:

I'm excited to swap these out with other seasonal stuff----my mom always has nice seasonal decorations . . . it just makes every time of year feel special  :)  And since these displays will all be behind glass doors, they will stay simple and out of the way.  No clutter!

In other news, Parker's therapy dog classes start tomorrow night (and I'm nervous!).  He's definitely been practicing here at home . . . his patience and obedience are tested daily by little Maya, who now like to give him hugs and kisses:

Maya: I love you, Pa-pa!  Mwahhh!

Parker: Oh brother.                         

Seriously, though, their relationship is so cute.  I need to get some videos and pictures to show off here----he runs to her with his little tail stump wagging and licks her ears and head and she giggle, giggle, giggles.  She yells "Ma ma!" (which is how she says Pa-pa, her best attempt at Parker) and he's learning to come running when he hears it (again, more giggles).  We don't know if we'll ever fully use him in a service dog capacity (who knows what Maya will need in the long run), but he's certainly her therapy dog, 100% of the time.  He's been everything that we were hoping for :)

What clean looks like

No, wait---I'm thinking about what cleanING looks like.  It looks like a gigantic mess.  Things are pulled out, spread out, shuffled around, divided into piles, etc.  We are slowly but surely plodding through the apartment, one section at a time, leaving empty drawers and closet shelves in our wake.

We've broken our clean-out-the-clutter project into phases.  Phase 1 is simply "Do we want this in our apartment or not?"  If not, the item gets moved to the guest bed*.  And that's that---no "should we move it into storage? should we sell it?  should we give it to so-and-so?" etc---that's too complicated and a barrier to getting rid of things.  So the bed has rapidly filled up, and 6 bags (!!!) of stuff has already been donated (clothes are easy to donate). (In all fairness, a lot of baby toys/clothes/etc are all just moving down into storage, but at least they won't be right in our space.)

On Monday, a box of eletronics is getting shipped to Gazelle---they'll pay you (not a lot, but we're not in this for the money right now---we just want to see junk go) for your old electronics, or recycle them for you even if they're not worth anything.  (We're cleaning out responsibly---no filling up landfills with old crap.)

I'm starting an album on the Facebook fan page with pictures-in-progress of the cleaning project.    I don't want to clutter up the blog (ha ha) with the junky pictures, and waste my storage space on them---but if you're nosy interested (like me) it's fun to watch other people move through their junk.

*By the way, I say "guest bed" because it is the bed in the room that is theoretically our guest room. One of the giant goals of this project is to have a usable guest room. Right now, as you will see in the pictures, the guest room is really just our stroller parking/miscellaneous room for things-that-don't-have-a-home.

Clean, Play, Cook

1.  Operation Clean House is still in full effect here.  We just cleaned out the top shelves in the closet, which consisted of: unwearable old clothes, clothes with tags still on them, framed pictures that hung on the wall of our old apartment (yes, about 3.5 years ago).   Oh, and three bottles of colognes---different ones.  So we sprayed all of them to see if any smelled good (FYI, not the best idea to spray 3 bottles of men's cologne in an unventilated closet). 

2.  Here's a taste of our morning:  Maya, Parker & I hit the playground for a bit.  It's getting easier to manage both of them on my own at the playground, now that Parker is older and more obedient.  We have to adjust ( or avoid) depending on how crowded it is, but today he just hung out on the side while Maya climbed around.  He'll watch birds, and kids running by, without moving at all---but when people approach him or talk directly to him he'll get up to say hi---we're working on that.

3.  We finally got some ground beef---for the first time in months.  This ground beef is fresh (well, frozen, but whatever) from Lewis Waite Farm, a local farm that raises grass fed, grass finished beef.  It's certainly pricier than regular ground beef, but it looks better and smells better (like a LOT better) and is better for us.  And supports local (and responsible) agriculture, cuts down on fuel for transporting food cross country, etc. etc.  (If you're into food stuff/local stuff, some good reads are Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, or anything by Michael Pollan.  Or you could take the easier route and watch Food, Inc.  Everyone who buys or eats food should really check out that movie.)

Anyway, the ground beef pictured above was turned into meatloaves, which were cooked & frozen in slices.  (And although I find the name "meatloaf" kind of digusting, I swear it's really good.)  That's a whole bunch of easy lunches/dinners.  And I have a great meatloaf recipe----I think it came from Gourmet magazine . . . but I cheated with a few things (we don't need ground veal, so I just do ground beef for the full meat amount), so it's "Almost Gourmet" Meatloaf:

Ingredients:
2 lbs ground beef (or whatever meat or blend of meats you want)
1/4 cup minced green pepper
3/4 cup minced onion
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
2 tbl horseradish
1 tsp dijon mustard (or whatever mustard you have)
ketchup
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 cups fresh breadcrumbs (or whatever breadcrumbs you have in a can)
2.5 tsp salt
pepper
4 slices bacon (uncooked.  I like to chop up a few more slices of bacon and add them into the mixture, too)

Instructions: Combine everything except for the bacon slices.  Knead it all together.  Put it into a greased loaf pan and lay the bacon slices on top.  Then coat the top with a thin layer of ketchup (on top of the bacon and the whole thing).  Bake at 400 for 50 minutes, let cool 10 minutes before serving.

Freezing: After it's totally cooled off (like in the refrigerator for a few hours), slice into, well, slices.  I freeze the slices flat, then load them into a gallon sized ziploc bag after they're frozen. 

Eating: A dinner would be 1 slice of meatloaf, plus potatoes and 2 types of vegetables---so one meatloaf can really last for a lot of meals.  It makes an easy lunch too.

Project-o-rama

Seriously, why do I have 5 bottle openers? 

Do you want to hear why?  Well, imagine that they're numbered 1-5 (l-r).  Here's why we have them:

• 
  
  #1 is awesome, the best wine corkscrew around. 
• 
  
  #2 is small, it would be perfect if you were going on a picnic, or camping, (or needed an easy-to-conceal weapon) and you wanted to pack lightly---and it can open wine bottle, beer bottles, or even a can.
• 
  
  #3 is what I would use to open a bottle of wine if I couldn't find #1.  No, that's never happened.  But it could. 
• 
  
  #4 doesn't really need justification, because it's awesome. 
• 
  
  Finally, although not as awesome as #4, #5 can open bottles and cans (#4 is bottles only).

See?  Getting rid of stuff is difficult!  There are reasons for everything.  Suffice to say, we no longer have 5 bottle openers.  (You're dying to know which ones made the cut, right?)

And as drawers are being emptied, other projects are (finally) getting finished:

She loves it :)  But after some quality drawing time, she tried to eat the chalk.  And then to feed it to Parker.  She really loves to share with him (which is, of course, adorable) ----often she'll be sitting and playing with something and then she'll spot him out of the corner of her eye, giggle, and crawl over to "give" him the toy.  (Giving him the toy sometimes consists of trying to shove it up his nose, and sometimes consists of laying it across his front paws.)

Parker also likes the chalkboard walls, because chalkboard walls mean that there's chalk around.  And chalk, apparently, makes a tasty snack.  He ate about 1/4 of a piece this morning while we were feeding Maya a snack.  Oops.

But then he made up for it by showing off his artistic side.  Well done, Parker.

PS.  We kept 3 bottle openers: #1 because it's the best for wine, #5 because it's great for opening cans with the pointy thing, and #4 because we're whimsical, and we have space for it :)

Get out of my house! (Subtitle: Where I've been)

So I haven't had much time to chat and blog because I have been heavy into Project Clean-Out-My-House.  I feel the need to purge things . . . I feel like the household clutter around me is somehow turning into mental clutter that is fogging up my brain.  And I've realized that we do have a lot of hidden, under-utilized storage space (in cabinets, drawers, closets, etc.).  If only I could get rid of stuff we don't need & reorganize the stuff we need, we would have space to find permanent homes for the random things that are always floating around.

Today during naptime I tackled the toy area.

Before: (1: 30 pm)

(to be fair, I was already in the middle of spreading things out and cleaning them in this pic)

After: (3:30 pm)

The changes:  The toy bin rack moved into the guest room.  We really wanted to move to a more open-access type of play space, but the rack is too flimsy and Maya could pull it over if she tried to pull up on it.  So it went into the spare room and I'll have to teach her a sign for it, and then we can walk in and pull out a bin to play with.  The toys left in the living room are in containers that we already had :)

A SMART IDEA FOR KIDS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS (or any kids, really):  You might be able to see that next to the wicker basket with toys (and next to the pink tub) there is a clear, lidded tupperware container (like this sweater box from the Container Store).  Maya's teacher had a great suggestion:  Take a few highly motivating toys (that bin has a few books in it that Maya loves, and another bin across the room has her kitchen toys in it).  Keep them in containers with clear lids----either she will learn how to open them independently (which is good fine motor practice for kids with OT delays) or she will learn to ask for help, or bring them to me for help, etc (which is good for kids with speech delays--like Maya, or kids who need motivation to interact with others).

I've got about 35 projects going on at once :)