You are here: Home / Archives for amusing

A phone call from the school nurse

June 17, 2012 By 2 Comments

I got a call from the school nurse on Friday.  The kids were on a walking field trip to a park near their school, and Ash tripped on some uneven sidewalk and skinned both knees and part of his forehead.  (He stayed at school, she just wanted us to know why he was going to be sent home covered in band-aids and with a flier about watching for concussions that she includes by rote.)

I find it strangely hilarious that the nurse says things like, “You don’t sound happy to hear from me,” after I acknowledge that I’m me and that I know that she is her (she is programmed into my phone separately).

Who is happy to hear from the school nurse?!  This isn’t even like the reflexive anxiety that comes with ANY call from the school.  I’m pretty sure calls from the nurse are NEVER good.  Does anyone get calls going, “Hello! I just wanted to tell you that your child bounced by my office today in a blur of healthy energy!” or, “Good afternoon! I thought I’d call and tell you that I saw your child walking by my office with his class, and he was the one child NOT trailing snot. His color was EXCELLENT,” or, “I just want you to know, with the school year ending, that your child has fallen remarkably below using his quota of band-aids”…?!  I don’t get random calls because the nurse just had to share with me the ADORABLE story of how when Ash was at the school breakfast they made the mistake of sitting him near someone eating cereal, and he immediately gagged and threw up on himself.  I don’t get little notes written about how FUNNY it is, how many ways a sensory kid can manage to hurt themselves semi-intentionally.  You don’t walk down the hallway and school and get that hand on your shoulder to get your attention, so the school nurse can just say hi, and let you know it was really SWEET how your kid caught the nasty stomach virus going around.

I can’t really feel sorry for her, either, because in the grand tradition of nearly all school nurses that have been in my life, her rough gig is coupled with a bad attitude.  My kid doesn’t have a crap immune system on purpose, or even because of bad habits….he has a crap immune system because he was born before he bloody well had developed one at all, and “catching up” after the fact only works just so well.  If his teacher has to rummage through your stash of spare changes, it’s because he’s already used up the personal ones we always provide, and that’s because he’s had to void between the times he’s given pre-scheduled toileting breaks, and the school system has not yet grasped the fact that an aid can allow him whatever independence is possible and vital to his development and optimal function in school, and yet still do things like watch him for signs that he’s about to have a potty accident because his ability to recognize the sensation of a full bladder or upset bowels is not functioning that day, and he needs a cue to know that he needs to use the bathroom.  If I am called to pick up a sick Ash from school and can’t get there within 5 minutes, it’s not because I don’t care, it’s because my efforts have not yet procured a safe way to retrieve him….which, by the by, would take more than 5 minutes even if I could drive on the spot and pick him up myself, because he attends a school program that we are not zoned for.  Oh?  And the fact that the one time I saw her that wasn’t directly related to Ash being sick or injured, was when she was at an IEP meeting, doing her best to make it harder for him to get the therapy lighting he needs?  NOT HELPING.  I mean, I try not to bury potential school nurse relations under my baggage from, say, when one of my school nurses almost killed me (not exaggerating) through idiocy and negligence.  But, seriously….this relationship has been established, and I am never going to be happy to hear from this woman.

For the record, Ash is fine.  Nothing was interfering with his movement, and his nociception is tending towards the, “Huh?  I got hurt?” right now, so he was more annoyed on the tactile front by the need for band-aids, than he was bothered by the cuts, scrapes and bruises themselves.

Little boy knees...

...after a few days of healing.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Adding to my resume as a professional amateur

May 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

I know you’re waiting for a post about Ash’s birthday party, but since I’m still collecting and editing the photos from you, you’re going to get another tangent in the meantime.  You won’t mind tooooooooooooooo too much, hopefully, since I am kind of proud of it.  Well, the content of it.  You’ll see.

Ok, so remember when I posted a photo of the ‘special interest’ cake that I made for Ash’s 7th (yet first, in a way) birthday party?  It was kind of a birthday post teaser with the excuse of being for my last, actually-got-it-up-amidst-the-chaos Wordless Wednesday.  I was pretty damn proud of that dragon cake.  I AM pretty damn proud of that dragon cake.  He had requested, “A chocolate dragon cake shaped like the real thing, that looks like a purple dragon with blue and green polka-dot scales all over.”  He was also rather intent on the fact that Mommy was going to be the one to make it, so what was a Mommy to do?!

Short Answer: Overachieve!  ;-D

Longer Answer: Spend about 7 hours total, making the cake and its components….which, since I’d never made the like before, and considering the number of scales applied, really isn’t too bad. The body was made from two round cakes (Devil’s Food chocolate), cut, arranged and trimmed to give the dragon its shape. Layers were glued together with strawberry preserves. Then the outside got painted with chocolate frosting, so that the “skin” could stick on — that was homemade marshmallow fondant, colored with Wilton icing pigments. The fondant was used for the skin, scales, the white parts of the eyes, and the nose. The pupils were chocolate chips pushed in point-first, and the nostrils were jelly beans. The claws, tail-tip, spikes, wings, horns and funky dragon eyebrows were made from chocolate. I just got one package of white melting chocolates, used the pigments to color different portions of it, roughly painted the desired shapes, via chopstick, onto some wax/parchment paper, let it re-harden, and there you had it. Unfortunately, I had to patch a horn with fondant and move the wings back so they were partially supported by the hind legs, after things got a little roughed up in transit. The dragon lies on its hoard of “gold” chocolate coins, curled around its clutch of foil-wrapped candy eggs. It’s on a saran-wrapped cutting/draining board, because that’s what I had that was big enough, and already clean, and I was in a hurry to get a ridiculous number of scales stuck on.

Credit goes to Steffan for helping me get the fondant kneaded in the first place, and to Ash’s “AuntieTora” for helping me knead the pigments in later on, sparing my wrists some strain.  Tora also sat there with me for a few hours and made tiny balls of scale-colored fondant, to speed up my process of making the scales.  Still, the cake was all-me enough that I don’t feel like I cheated on Ash’s request, and yes, I am damn proud enough of that thing, to say so again. Sure, I can pick out things that could look better, that I would’ve done differently or more effectively or more elaborately.  Sure, it pales in comparison to some of the professional dragon cakes you can find if you brace yourself and then do a google image search for “awesome dragon cake” — although to be fair to myself, I think it looks cooler than a lot of the cakes that also appear as results of that search, that were done off the same base model that I spring-boarded off of.  In any event, for an amateur with no special training or tools or practice or anything, I think I made a pretty spiffy dragon.

It certainly made an impression at the party!

Thus far, I’ve at least looked through 3 out of the 4 sets of photos I know were taken at the big event, and am stuck reeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaally hoping that somewhere in that last set is a good photo captured when Ash first saw his completed cake.  ::sigh::  At least I have the memory.  ::laughs::  He was actually stunned enough that what I suppose I’m really hoping for is a photo of the moment AFTER he first saw the cake, because it took him a bit of processing what he was seeing, before he reacted.  Heehee.  And oh, almost all of the boys at the party were oh-so-disappointed that knight-dressed Ash would neither make a big show of slaying the dragon, nor let them be the one to decapitate it!  In fact, Ash, who has no concept of torture, insisted that the cake be eaten tail-first, because it seemed both kinder, and to preserve this new dragon of his longer.  (And yes, I was relieved that he did not backpedal on his acceptance of the fact that a dragon CAKE is meant to be EATEN, not preserved as a keepsake toy or decorative item.)

That actually leads me one step closer to the tangent that prompted this post.  See, Ash’s Auntie L-, my sister-in-law, does fancy baking professionally.  When she’s not indulging nieces or nephews with birthday cupcakes, she’s making things like wedding cakes.  It’s a recent business but it’s been picking up speed, and with good reason.  She’s taken the classes, she’s gotten the books and tools, she’s practiced and improvised and gotten really GOOD.  Good enough that I felt a little bit bad about taking her up on the offer of birthday cupcakes again this year, even if, yeah, she always does do it for her sister’s kids, and for her and my BIL S-’s friends, etc.  There’s a part of me that still felt like it had to lead to commissions from parents of party-attending kids, for it to be worth her while.  Regardless of how it got there, it’s still my baggage, and I’ll own that.  Eniways, I did take her up on her offer, figuring that it might be a good idea to have something in an alternative flavor, for kids (or sticking-around-ing parents) who don’t like chocolate.  It happens.  So, pending her agreement, I requested vanilla-with-strawberry-filling cupcakes (since Ash likes that flavor combination too), decorated with either green dragons or blue castles resting on cupcake-mounds-turned-hills-of-grass.  Lucky me, one of her books had gum paste castles and dragons in it — proving yet again that although Ash’s special interest isn’t the most mainstream obsession for little boys right now, it’s not impossible to find if you look!  Yay!  Well, L- made them (along with a few that had crowns on them, instead), and they were SO CUTE.  I mean, seriously, look at these fabulous cupcakes!  There’s a lot of detail there!

I told her that if she could make them from gum paste she could make them from clay, and should consider doing so!

Here’s where it gets a bit weird for me, though…

Her cupcakes weren’t exactly dismissed, but by all accounts from kids, parents, and other present adults, they were overshadowed by my dragon cake.  I mean, even by people who had no idea that I’d made one and not the other, or either of them, and had any reason to want to make the exhausted Mommy feel that little extra bit better.  I’d be all, “Ash’s Auntie made these cupcakes, aren’t they awesome?!”  The response would inevitably be something like, “Wow, yeah, those are really cute….but OH MY GOD WHO MADE THAT CAKE?!?!!”  Cell phones were snapping pictures.  One mom posted a blurry picture of my cake on FaceBook, and about 60 strangers had left “likes” and comments going ga-ga over it, by the time I was even home from the party and glanced at the computer.  I quite possibly managed to stay awake only because all of the blood was rushing to my head while I blushed through all this.  Most people ate their way through the cake first, and then a number of the boys asked if they could also have a cupcake….it turned out that they wanted the chance to decapitate a dragon!  (::shakes head, laughing::  And hey, while we’re laughing at gender clichés, I should point out that most of the little girls were asking if they could take a piece of the dragon’s gold.)

Let me reiterate: I am grateful for the cupcakes, which I thought were yummy and looked awesome.  Ash, and everyone else, agreed.  Major props to my SIL.  What gets me is that you’d EXPECT her to earn props, as it were.  She’s the professional.  You would not….or at least I would not….expect me, the amateur on my first try here, to earn MORE props from people for my work than she did for hers, let alone without even earning them because my work WAS coming from an amateur.  Yes, I am capable of baking yummy things.  Yes, I’m crafty in general.  That doesn’t mean I know what the hell I’m doing when it comes to specialty, decorative, sculptural, baked goods.  Except….apparently I can fake it really well.

Here’s where it gets even stranger for me…

There was a supportive push for me to think about NOT being an amateur.  Several friends suggested submitting a photo of my work to certain shows (seriously….it’s not THAT good by a long shot!), or at least certain websites, before someone else did it.  Several friends said that if I lived close enough to them, they’d totally have me make special birthday cakes for their kids.  One of the moms at the party kept telling me what kind of price tag she’d expect and accept, on a cake like the one I’d made.  And, of course, I attempted to take this in graciously, but brushed it all off in favor of being relieved that I wouldn’t have to bake anything elaborate again for a good, long while.  I mean, the majority of the time, I can’t even get my body through preparing a simple meal, and if Steffan also happens to be too tired and/or ouchy and/or sick to cook or even assemble some basic edible, we simply don’t eat.  So, in the wake of a 7 hour cake project, I declared a number of times that I was not going to be making any more cakes, any time soon.  I meant it when I said it.  It was not meant to be a challenge.  With a professional fancy-baker in the family, the only family members who would want me to make a cake for them are my immediate family members, and lo and behold, we’d just gotten through the run of OUR birthdays.  I had a year’s reprieve from trying to do (let alone try to out-do!) that again, and I was glad and grateful for it, despite my pride over what I’d managed.

And then, I got a call from the aforementioned mom.  She’d been gushing about my dragon cake to her sister, who was now interested in hiring me to make the cake for the upcoming birthday party of A-‘s cousin.  Would I be willing to talk with her?

I was nearly speechless, though not so much so that I couldn’t laugh at myself.

A-’s cousin is having a 9th birthday party today.  It’s luau-themed.  And yes, I made the cake.  It took me about 10 hours (including some experimentation time, which was part of the deal since she wanted me to make something I’d never made before) and I’m still paying a hefty price, physically, but after needing to buy 3 tires and patch another the same week earlier this month that we paid rent, I was not in a position to turn down the commission.  Oh, if she’d wanted something covered with gum paste hibiscus flowers or something like that, well, I’d have had to pass it on….ideally, to my SIL.  She liked the idea of a “birthday island” type deal, though, when I started giving her ideas about the kinds of cake I thought I’d be able to make.  She liked the idea of sticking a shining, red, number-shaped candle at the top of an exploding volcano — which is why there’s as much lava as there is — and of having palm trees and sand and assorted other things that one might not necessarily expect to be edible decorations.  That, I thought I could pull off.

Since she came a little too close to running off the road a few times because she couldn’t stop staring at the cake I’d made for her, I guess I DID pull it off.

Welcome to Birthday Island!

The palm trees growing on Birthday Island have pretzel rod trunks, chocolate coconuts, and fondant leaves.

The sand on Birthday Island is a mixture of grushed cinnamon grahm crackers and edible, gold-colored sugar, stuck with a thin frosting wash to colored fondant. It sparkles just a bit, like real sand does.

A thin coating of blue glitter gel icing over irregularly pigmented fondant, gives the river/waterfall flowing down Birthday Island a liquid gloss.

Yes, I’m pretty proud of myself again.  I improvised the concept and the creation, and I think it came out rather well….as well as fairly close to some professional models, apparently.  (In fact, the woman who commissioned the cake reports that similar cakes from a professional bakery, “Start at $500,” so with this one costing her a little less than half that, including the grocery bill, I think we both made out pretty well.)  The island is constructed from three layers of homemade funfetti cake (vanilla cake, with flower-shaped sprinkles of assorted pasted colors, scattered throughout the batter).  Vanilla frosting infused with hazelnut extract and turned pink with Wilton no-taste red icing pigment, glues things together.  The fence is made from wafer cookies filled with chocolate-hazelnut cream, and stuck in place by the aforementioned frosting, sans-pigment.  Ice cream sugar cones give the volcano / mountain peaks their base form — they are covered with fondant and have a chocolate lava flow, although the peak of the volcano is plugged with fondant so that it’s easy to stick in a candle.  Homemade marshmallow fondant also makes the grass, the base for the sand and for the water, the leaves on the palm trees, and the writing.  The palm tree trunks are made from mini pretzel rods, and they have chocolate coconuts.  The sand is made from crushed cinnamon-grahms, and edible, gold-colored sugar.  The water has an overlay of blue glitter gel icing.  The rocks are a combination of chocolate-covered malt balls and just chocolate, partially melted, molded, and then given some extra pigment.  It all aught to satisfy her daughter’s sweet tooth!

This time, though, I’m serious.  Really, really, in a stick-to-it-no-matter-how-enticing-the-payment, sort of way.  No more cakes.  Not for at least a few months, anyway.  We have to move in a few months, Ash has a CSE meeting coming up later this month….I’ve got other things I need to do, right now.  This wasn’t something I was planning on doing, anyway!  I was giving out my SIL’s business info, not expecting to get business for doing the same kind of thing, myself!  In fact, I’ve resisted posting my triumph on FaceBook, because I don’t want to risk it getting weird with my SIL.

…But yeah, I’m kind of proud of myself.

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Autism, literacy, Halloween and hilarity

May 8, 2012 By 1 Comment

This is the Scarecrow costume design sketch that Ash did on the Magnadoodle. By the way, those aren't extra arms, that's straw sticking out.

There’s a tradition within the delightful (especially for anyone who grew up on Calvin & Hobbes and/or was a sometimes “challengingly” bright child and/or has ever worked in a school) comic strip Frazz, by Jeff Mallett.   The tradition of which I speak is that one of the main and recurring characters of the strip — a young boy named Caulfield (yes, CAULFIELD) — plans his Halloween costume each year around a literary figure, which the staff of his school are challenged to be literate enough, themselves, to guess.

Well, Ash isn’t quite there yet, but he is planning on ending his two-year Halloween run as a dragon — it’s shocking, I know! — and dressing up next Halloween as The Scarecrow, from The Wizard of Oz….which was a book we got him last Christmas and which he read shortly thereafter.  (We got the classic version of the movie from the library for him, on the heels of that.)  Perhaps I should provide a little more context for this phenomenon-of-sorts that leads to the bit with the hilarity.  See, we got the book because a like-new copy found at a thrift store for the price of spare change, was too good to pass up, and we thought, well, if Ash wasn’t ready for it then, he would be soon.  Not only was he ready, but he ate it up.  I got to prove to his teachers that he had reading comprehension skills they never would otherwise have had reason to believe he had, by having him do his reading log on the book, and having him answer questions like what The Cowardly Lion did that was brave.  He loved the story, he loved the characters, and he was engaged by their personalities and their plight….we had to “pretend” our way through him interacting with all of them, multiple times, after he was done with the book.  The Scarecrow, in particular, attracted his interest.  In fact, that character completely changed Ash’s perspective on face paint, which previously distressed him to even look at, let alone consider having ON any part of him.  I’m not sure what it was about the way that character’s makeup was done, but after seeing the movie (after seeing the illustration on the cover of his copy of the book), he was very enthusiastic about wanting to try having face-paint on him.  He even followed through with the professed intention, when Easter came, as a way of starting to get used to the sensation.

Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow.  He insisted (and has yet to change his mind, despite things like a more recent love affair with the How To Train Your Dragon series of books) that he wanted to be Scarecrow for next Halloween.  I, “Need to make sure that he has the floppy hat with the point,” and that I, “Paint [his] face yellow-that-turns-into-[his]-neck with the brown mouth and brown triangle nose and black eyebrows” — (actually, he wants to try putting on some of this face paint himself) — and, “Make him the blue shirt with the rope belt, and the brown pants, and [he] needs boots for all that walking on the road,” and oh yes, “A crow so that [he] can pretend to try to scare it, and be silly.”  I must also be sure to not forget to make him some fake straw out of yarn, so that it can, “Stick out of [his] feet and hands and shirt and brains.”  Just in case he wasn’t clear enough, he drew me a costume design sketch on his Magnadoodle.  Early on when he was first going on with me about this idea, I asked him why Scarecrow was his favorite character.  He told me, “Scarecrow is my favorite because he keeps wanting more brains so he can get smarter and help his friends.”  Allrighty then.  I’ll take this as another one of those times when he shows remarkable empathy for a character, shows self-awareness through what he casually relates to and admires.

It doesn’t end there, though.  Oh no, he’s got it allllllll worked out.  Although I keep trying to damage-control the fact that it’s hard enough for his Daddy to get off work on Halloween, and the chances are next-to-nill-would-be-generous that the entire, semi-extended family will not only go trick-or-treating with us, but also dress in costumes of his choosing….that’s just what he thinks should and hopes will happen.

Already once before, Ash told me about what character from the story, he has assigned to what family member.  Today, he brought it all up again, and I got him to provide explanations for why he chose each match.

  • He should be The Scarecrow, “Because he likes him best because he wants brains to be smarter.”  (Yes, of course we talked again about how Scarecrow, just like him, was very smart….he just had to find the right ways to show people that.)
  • I should be the Wicked Witch of the West, “Because then [I] could pretend [I was] riding on a broom, which would be fun and wouldn’t hurt [my] leg so much.”  Also, he thinks, “It would be funny for [me] to pretend to be evil and chase [him].”
  • Daddy should be the Tin Woodman, “Because he is kind.”  (That should get extra, delighted attention from those readers of mine who know the long- and much-used nickname I gave Steffan 15 years ago, and the derivative linguistic meaning thereof.  But if you do….shush, it doesn’t belong here, as it has been used in too many other places.)
  • Uncle S- should be the Cowardly Lion, “Because of the mane.”  It would seem — no surprise here — that Ash does not agree with his uncle about the notion that all men should have hair as short as possible.  For reasons I won’t get into here, I went from finding it very amusing that Ash picked that character for this uncle (who is probably the most concerned with issues tinging on machismo, of anyone in the family), to finding it rather satisfying that Ash would just love to see him with a big ol’ mane of hair.
  • Auntie L- should be Glinda, “Because then she can have kids being her Munchkins.”  Oooh, that’s another loaded one, even if he’s just vying for a cousin again.
  • Uncle A- should be The Great And Terrible Oz, “Because he would dress us as a giant, green head on a throne.”  Well….yup.  If anyone in the family was going to think it sounded like a perfectly enjoyable idea to dress up as a giant green head on a throne, it would be A-.  Ash nailed that one.
  • Last but not least, “Grandma should be Dorothy and Grandpa should be Toto because they live together and are companions just like Dorothy and Toto are.”

Oh boy.  When I’m not fretting over how to even get all three of us dressed to Ash’s satisfaction, I’m still cracking up over all that.  To be honest, this was also one of the only things I had to post that didn’t involve editing and uploading a ton of photos. ;-P

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Today in Out-Of-Context Quotables

March 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Today in Out-Of-Context Quotables…

“Mommmyyyyyy, you have to help me find the pot!  I don’t see enough rainbows!”

I swear to God, my 6 year old is not a stoner, despite photos like this.  He’s actually referring back to the ideas he was caught up in, here.

That doesn’t mean I can resist giggling at him, though.

Source-linked image was found via Google Advanced Image Search as free for commercial use.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: ,

Distinguishing between dragons

February 29, 2012 By 4 Comments

One of the many crazy-awesome pieces by M. Peña -- the image is linked to source.

Ash decided that for his birthday, he wants me to make him a chocolate cake shaped like a purple dragon with green and blue polka-dot scales all over.  He’s not talking about a flat cake with a dragon design drawn on it either, but a 3D cake similar to the coiled, green dragon one I made Steffan a few years ago.  Very well.  I have a plan.  With luck, I’ll ALSO have more than the 1½ hours from start to finish, and incomplete planned-ingredient list that I unexpectedly had to work with (gotta love when certain people show up 3 hours earlier than you told them the party would begin), when I made that first 3D dragon cake.  Ash doesn’t know yet that I haven’t given up on making his personal party possible, so he thinks there will just be the usual family party.  In line with that thought, if the with-his-friends party can happen, and his auntie wants to make some of her snazzy cupcakes for it to get the attention of his classmates’ parents, I can plot and scheme those with her as a surprise for him, since the dragon cake I would quite possibly have made some version of anyway, has now gone from surprise to request.  The cupcakes can involve different flavors and/or possibly take some egg-free form, if one of Ash’s two classmates with egg allergies, end up coming.  They could be decorated….well, in whatever thematic way we brainstorm that his auntie feels up to, if it comes to that.  I still haven’t asked her about it, because it seems silly to do so before any plan — even the family-based one — is even vaguely in place.

In the meantime, at one point today during a tickle-fight, Ash started to Raaar at me.  I went into silly antics, going on about how the dragon was going to breathe fire at me and turn me into tickle monster toast to eat.  “But of course I’m a dragon!” he said, “But I don’t think I need toast, because my tummy isn’t sick.”  Oh, that was very good to hear, I told him.  By the way, was he a purple dragon with green and blue polka-dot scales all over, like the one he wanted me to make his birthday cake into?  “You’re so silly, Mommy!  Nooooo, of COURSE not.  I’m not a purple dragon with blue and green polka-dot scales.  I’m a REAL dragon that’s green.”

Mommy is indeed pretty darn silly.  That must be why she giggles so much.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , ,

Flashback Friday: It’s medicinal….I mean, it’s therapeutic, man!

February 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Finger painting can make for some pretty heavy sensory therapy, you know?! ;-)

(This photo was taken about two years ago.  It will be a long time yet, before Ash lives it down.)

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , ,

Special Needs Ryan Gosling, Part IV

February 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Sunday Stilwell of Adventures In Extreme Parenthood has created a monster.  Or, at least, a Mommy who is having a little too much fun.  She did Part I and Part II.  I did Part III yesterday.  Now I’m back with more, because apparently I can’t wait until she does her own next set, next week.

Filed Under: Miscellany Tagged With:

Special Needs Ryan Gosling, Part III

February 9, 2012 By 4 Comments

Credit where due: Part I and Part II of this meme-gone-oh-so-right are the genius of Sunday Stilwell of Adventures In Extreme Parenthood.  Occasionally, though, being a sheep is worthwhile and quite entertaining….when the whole flock is made up of black sheep!  So, with Sunday’s blessing (yes, and Steffan’s blessing too), I present to you my own answer to her challenge.  I mean, sure, I could’ve just fed her more lines to choose from, inspired by special needs parenting life at large — but that’s not nearly as much fun as browsing photos of the actor, for anything that made me THINK of a good line.

Apparently this is Ryan Reynolds, not Ryan Gosling. I just worked from a Google Image search. I have the feeling that most people looking closely enough to realize I grabbed the wrong Ryan will also be looking closely enough to not mind all THAT much.

There’s already a Part 4!
There is also a Special Needs Angelina Jolie “Hey Boy”, for the guys….because fair is fair.

Filed Under: Miscellany Tagged With:

Looking back on 2011′s Christmas season (Part 5)

January 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

Ok, THIS really aught to be the last part.  Part 4 brought us to the edge of Christmas Eve, so there’s only so much left to cover, relative to the month of lead-in we had.  This was IT….the big days….

The funny thing is, it feels like there’s less to say about Christmas Eve, than the preceding days.  I mean, a lot went on, but more of it was all the same kind of thing, if that makes any sense.  That, and it went pretty much as Ash had anticipated the night before — and the things done in the morning and afternoon when it was just us, were mostly done together (and fairly lazily, because the day before had left him majorly depleted spoon-wise, and he’d need all the recuperation he could get before the next day), with no one to point a camera at us, and some of the things done later involved family that I only get into just so much, and don’t show photos of, on the blog.  There was one period, though, which I was distanced enough from to capture…

Yep, Ash has his own little wooden nativity set.  Some women volunteering at a charity Christmas-craft sale set up in the foyer of Steffan’s church had noticed Ash’s desire to play with it as we headed in past the table, last year, and surprised us by having chipped in together to gift it to him when we headed back out.  It was one of the little blessings last year, when, by the by, he pretty much just knew that the figures in the set included three wise men, three animals, an angel, Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus.  This year he knows a little bit more of the context, in a vague kind of way.  This lead to the following amusing quotes:

“Baby Jesus was born in a barn instead of a hospital….which is more fun.*”

“And then he lay down in the hay and the animals looked at him and two white men and one brown man** who were very wise came to give him birthday presents, and then someone pushed a button to make the sky light up around him and sing “Silent Night”***….I think maybe it was his Mommy Mary or his Daddy who was named Joseph except or sometimes God.”

* Ash went into a barn during the Pumpkin Farm field trip his class took in October.  He got to pet a calf, twin goats, a lamb, and a bunny.  This was quite distinctly more fun than his times spent in a hospital.  He assumes that baby Jesus and the others share his preference for furry animals over needles and such.

** He is basing this on the paint-job of the figures in his set.

*** He is basing this on a book his Grandma gave him a year or two ago.

I also snagged a few shots while Ash helped with Santa’s cookies.  This year his help was a bit more effective than last, after having had the practice with the gingerbread men, along with just more developmental time, in-between.

Ash has placed and pressed in the letter-shaped cutters. Other cookies will be made....snowmen and Christmas trees and stars and the like....but these are the important ones for him to do himself.

Ash double-checks the cut-outs before trying to peel them out and hand them to me for placement on the cookie sheet.

I think my favorite part of the period when my in-laws were over, was that Ash, fueled by his pride and excitement over having helped make Santa’s cookies, because vaguely obsessed with the idea of being helpful in general.  This wasn’t just the usual interest in being helpful via wanting to break in and “help” someone do whatever he realized they were about to do for themselves (often in a counter-productive way, of course), or the also-usual leaping at the chance to do what someone has asked him if he could do for them.  This was stuff like him distributing cookies to everyone in the room, along with cups of things to drink, in case the cookies made them thirsty.  Granted, the cups he distributed were not always the cups left around by the family members he was handing them to, but hey, he was trying, and it was all his idea.

This is how things were left when Ash went to bed on Christmas Eve. I hope the reindeer aren't as hungry as Santa is expected to be!

We added the Christmas characters, but Santa did the rest. From the looks of it, I caught him when he was returning with the mostly empty carrot plate, to place one last special thing under the tree. He also snuck some candy canes onto it. Perhaps they no longer fit in his pockets (every child has noticed that Santa always carries candy canes in his pockets) after this latest stack of cookies and quintuple-scooped-cocoa was downed.

Honestly, I was surprised to find that any crumbs or drips had made it through the night, when I checked things Christmas morning! At least it seems like Santa was smart, and ate the special cookies spelling out his name, first.

Christmas morning.  Ahhhhhh, Christmas morning.  For once, Ash waking up at 7am when he didn’t especially have to, was him waking up LATER than other children.  In any event, with a whole two hours or so of sleep painting festive circles under the eyes of us parents, and perhaps the world’s best fuel source twinkling in the eyes of our child, we began our day.  The plan was to, like last year, begin with some us-time under our own tree….then get dressed and go over to Uncle S- and Auntie L-’s place — where we’d also do the family gift exchange — for brunch with them, Uncle A-, and Grandma and Grandpa….then come back to our place to let Ash unwind (and possibly open something else)….then go over to Uncle A-’s for dinner with just him and Grandma and Grandpa, since Uncle S- and Auntie L- would be having dinner with her family….and then finish the day with some more us-time at our place.  It was a rather full day, but at least it involved a number of flexible escapes, and we’d have the next day to share a more relaxed, just-us-three, Christmas-Day-2.  Typically, Steffan works a late night on Christmas Eve, and a very early morning the day after Christmas.  For once, he was opening on Christmas Eve, and off the day after Christmas as well.  HALLELUYAH!  Yeah, we were grateful.

Someone asked, for Ask Ash!, what his favorite thing about Christmas was.  I kind of lost track of who, so I hope whoever it was, is looking.  In any event, he answered that, “My favorite thing about Christmas is that family is there to have time smiling together….and also, things are sparkly and Santa comes if you’re nice.”

Ash starts on the outer rim and works his way in. The Christmas characters were an obvious place to start! This Rudolph started off as a moose from DollarTree. I clipped the felt antlers into a more reindeer-ish shape, sewed on a sparkly, red craft poof I'd had floating around for years to be his nose, and used a $1 jingle-ring like Ash had played with while caroling at school, as a special collar. BAM! Almost-instant, semi-DIY Rudolph.

Another DollarTree find from Mommy and Daddy was this piggy bank. Ash has learned to identify different coins and bills, in school, and has done some simple math related to them....now it's time to try AGAIN at working on some of the context and concepts related to money.

The stockings were no longer limp. Propped against the small pile of gifts from Mommy, Daddy, Great-AuntiePat, Emily Elf and a couple of family friends, were a few packages in Santa wrapping paper -- as gifts from Santa tend to be wrapped in, around here. Only one gift under the tree wasn't marked like the others, as if it had been prepared at the last minute, only upon arrival. It was a little, red, velvet box with a green ribbon. Inside that was a red satin pouch. Inside that...

...was the silver sleigh-bell that Ash had asked Santa for!!

“Santa gave me the bell I asked for when I wroted him my note!  And it was like the HeroBoy, because I believe!  And it rings for me, and it sounds beautiful, do you hear, Mommy?!  And you know, I think I won’t put it in a hole in my bathrobe.”

Ash gives the bell a good jingling. Actually, based on the scratches on his cheek and nose, this photo must have been taken later in the day. Every time we came home, the first thing he did was go to the tree, locate his bell, and ring it. It has also been the first thing he's done upon coming downstairs in the morning, every day since.

So….the scratches.  See, Uncle S- and Auntie L-’s house has a very, very enticing feature…

This is Cole kitty. He thought his placement under the tree suggested that he was trying to hide, NOT that the chance to pet him was going to be his gift to Ash.

"The PURPLE kitty doesn't scratch and make me wear a band-aid."

Really, it wasn’t so bad.  If the scratches hadn’t been bleeding at first, we wouldn’t have bothered torturing Ash with a band-aid on his face.  He didn’t care in the slightest that Cole had scratched him.  To Ash, no matter what he’s been told, the inevitable occasional scratches from one cat or another, guard as we do, are a sign that the offending kitty was being silly, not a sign that he should probably feel less of a desire to try to pet it….or the next cat that doesn’t seem as interested in him as he is in it.  Perhaps if his nociception wasn’t often off-kilter, his eiditic memory would counter-balance his complete lack of danger sense, in these matters.  Whoops?

Some conveniently-timed snuggle-squishes were put into effect, immediately after Cole's less than merry mood was made known to....the rest of us. At this moment, Ash and his Daddy were listening to someone or other else in the family.

Another thing of note from that part of the day was that Ash ate about half of a Belgian waffle (¼ from Daddy’s plate that Mommy didn’t know about, and then later, ¼ from Mommy’s plate that Mommy was, therefore, extra impressed by)….which was something new for him.  He ate plain parts, but still.

One of Ash's presents from his aunt and uncle, that he broke into once we got home again, was this toy-and-book set. "Jingle" the Husky puppy, if you have pressed his ear first, responds to certain phrases read from his storybook, by barking, howling a tune, etc. The book is quite simple, relative to Ash's reading level, but the "interactive" aspect delights him.

"You're a GOOD dog, Jingle!"

An interesting thing about Jingle is that he was first set off by Ash’s uncle, while at their house, before Ash knew what to expect….and Ash was barely startled, and only for a moment, and was not scared.  Apparently, Jingle was exempt from the stuffed-toys-or-otherwise-made-decoratives-that-look-like-creatures-and-make-noise-and/or-move-especially-if-it-was-unexpected-the-first-time-are-going-to-terrify-me rule.  Possibly this is because the first sound that Jingle makes is a bell-jingling sound, which rather blends into the overall audio backdrop of Christmas anyway.  I was intrigued, but mostly glad.  I had, after all, told my SIL that yes, I thought he’d enjoy that gift, and I had a feeling they’d pay attention to the abnormality of his reaction, and not any overlooked disclaimers about the manner and timing of introduction, if he reacted horribly a few seconds after they gave it to him.

One highlight of the part of the evening spent at Uncle A-’s for Christmas dinner, was Ash’s continued desire to be helpful, being taken advantage of by me to get him to practice utensil use.  Ash is not so good with eating utensils.  He has only recently improved when it comes to spooning anything that doesn’t stick to the spoon (like pudding), thanks to cocoa.  You’d think that spearing things with a fork would be easier than balancing things on a spoon, but he’s never gotten the hang of forks at all, with anything.  Don’t even ask about knives, ok?  Some day, we might just see how he takes to the old chopsticks-rubber-banded-around-their-rolled-up-wrapper thing, for the heck of it (I never needed that, but I know a lot of kids….and some adults….that required that trick for early chopstick learning stages, and Ash has far from the average kid’s motor coordination)….but in the meantime, he sticks largely to finger food when he’s feeding himself, whether or not anyone else thinks it is finger food.  Well anyway, Ash really wanted to “help” me eat the Christmas ham, so I told him I’d love it if he helped me, but I wanted to eat it with a fork, so he would only be helping if he tried to feed it to me with the fork.  Gee, did he think he could try to do that for me?  Pretty please with dragons on top?  It would be sooooooo nice and helpful for my tired hands…  I think everyone else in the room popped their jaws grimacing and wincing, waiting for me to be speared in the throat or stabbed through the cheek.  With cues to move the fork very slowly and gently towards my mouth and wait for my teeth to close on the ham before he moved the fork away, though, Ash did a fine job of feeding me without injuring me, and was so pleased with himself that he decided I was hungry for seconds, and would I please cut them up so he could stick them with the fork again?  Heheh.  Mommy wins.

Indeed, by the time we neared the last part of our Christmas day, Ash was still having a pretty darn good one.

By the time Ash went to bed that night, the living room looked like this…

Ash sits amidst the rubble.

The impressive part is that the room looked like that, but not all that much was opened.  It’s rather nice to have a child that gets so much out of each gift, and takes such time with each gift, that even without GETTING that many gifts, he still takes an average of one to two weeks to open everything and go through his stocking.

Speaking of which, here are a few post-Christmas highlights, mostly for friends that I know look here…

Ash and I play "The Magic Labyrinth" game, a gift from his "Big Cousin C-", for the first time. It has been played since, too. It turned out to be a GREAT game for Ash, in many ways.

Ash looks at the "Big Cats" book, also from "Big Cousin C-"....and tries to see if he can stick out his tongue as far as the yawning lioness can.

By the way, he says that lions are his favorite big cat, because the boys have manes which look so soft and fluffy, like his Daddy’s hair used to be.  Is anyone surprised?

These ladybug slippers come from Grandma.  They match his PillowPet.  Ash faces two challenges when it comes to making good use of them.  First, he must reconcile himself with the concept of “inside shoes”….secondly, he must master actually walking in them.

Ash and the Amazing Aurora, who is taking a turn balancing on the large weighted ball.

Aurora, a velvety-soft, blue and purple dragon with shiny parts, was one of Ash’s belated birthday presents from his “Auntie A-” that I set aside and saved for Christmas so she would lose one excuse to send him MORE for Christmas.  Aurora is Ash’s most playful stuffed dragon thus far, a character trait determined when she was so impatient to get unwrapped and pounce Ash that she somehow….magically, I suppose….managed to roar while still in her box, despite it normally taking precision effort to squeeze her neck in just the right way, to produce that effect.  As you might have guessed based on Abominable Snowmen, et al, this unlikely feat of impatient enthusiasm on the dragon’s part, was rather counterproductive.  Aurora’s box took another day after being unwrapped, to be opened, and it took the rest of that day to get Ash comfortable with playing with her, first indirectly, and then, handling her himself.  Had she not been such an endearing dragon, I suspect it would’ve taken much longer.

This no-bake gingerbread house book was another gift from "Emily Elf" -- there was too much sickness in our household to make one over Ash's winter break, but the book contains ideas for all seasons, so I expect another good excuse will come up soon.

“This is a mushroom gnome home, do you see, Mommy?  It looks like a mushroom, you know, and gnomes are kind of like faeries I think.  And do you know, Mommy….Mommy….when you say gnome, the ‘g’ is silent.”

This animal calender was from Ash's great-grandma. Ash thinks it's great, especially because the snow leopard cubs are on the cover AND inside, and that's his Daddy's favorite big cat. Naturally, Ash and I have taken turns pretending to be all the depicted animals inside....generally, a Mommy-baby set of them, whether or not that's in the photo.

A new, blue hoodie lined with super-soft plush fabric puts Ash in a good enough mood that I get him to try Ramen for the first time -- after he asked me to make him some and then immediately decided he wanted something else -- by getting him to imagine that it was squiggly-wiggly dinosaur seaweed, and he was a baby brontosaurus with a big belly to fill. This is the first time a trick like that has ever worked.

With it already being mid-January, I don’t know if I’m going to get as far as writing a separate holiday-gratitudes post, like I did last year.  So here, before I go, I want to add a few thank-you’s:

  • Thank you to E, my Fairy Blogmother, and Ash’s “Big sister”….all these years after you needed me to be a Mommy to you, you still always think about how to help take care of us, in turn.
  • Thank you to Mo, who sees no reason why saving our asses….sorry, arses….should be enough if she hasn’t filled Ash’s tummy with his favorite pizza yet.
  • Thank you to “Santa” for being sneaky again this year, so I have to let you get away with it.  You got our medication.
  • Thank you to Wolf, for giving us the ability to give Ash the animals that inspire him to aspire.
  • Thank you to Mike, for choosing us to be the adoptive geeks for your books.
  • Thank you to Moobs, for the sassy fashion show I just put on for my husband, and the chocolate we’re pretending isn’t bulging out from under it
  • Thank you to C-, for honoring Ash as one of the only little people you care for at all, let alone adore.
  • Thank you to E-, otherwise known as “Emily Elf”, for being insufferable.
  • Thank you to Kat for the….uh….reminder to snag a photo of Santa in the act.
  • Thank you to the friends and family — some who know about this blog, and some who don’t — who sent cards, sent gifts, have been thinking of us enough to be planning to send things, came to visit, are hoping to visit, etc. etc. etc.  Thank you to all who cry with us, scream with us, sigh with us, cheer with us.  Thank you for the wishes, hopes, and prayers.  Thank you for being you.

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Looking back on 2011′s Christmas season (Part 3)

January 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

Part 2 took us through early December, and left us with Ash pretending to be Santa, in the hopes that Santa would be inspired to do things BY HIMSELF a little faster. ;-)   Obviously, it didn’t work, but also obviously, Ash — who in one recent, iconic moment, quite literally drank some orange juice and then raised up his cup and said, “Mommy, look!  My glass is half full!” — was not especially discouraged.

It didn’t hurt that some gifting went on, Santa quite aside.

For starters, my friend E-, mommy of A-1 (aka “The little girl with lots of curls,” not to be confused with A-) who was Ash’s first peer-aged buddy, had sent Ash a number of homemade pajamas to keep him cozy.  The top part of the scull-and-crossbones set (aka his “Pirate pajamas”) can be seen in this post.  Most, though, I’d saved for December, with the excuse that an “Emily Elf” was leaving extra presents for him with me, every time she came to check on his Naughty/Nice List status.  She had told me that the pajamas didn’t need to be saved for Christmas, because she knew we were all dealing with being sick, and didn’t want us to be cold.  Feeling like he was getting fragments of Christmas itself, early, helped Ash deal with waiting for the real deal.

Ash calls these the “Clifford pajamas” — they are big, red, fuzzy, and covered with puppy footprints.

The “Clifford pajamas” are still a bit long for Ash, so usually he only wears them at bedtime, even if there is no reason to wear anything but comfy PJs during the day. Depending on the timing of baths and such, though, sometimes Ash ends up changed for bed a little earlier in the evening. If he requests these pajamas, that would be a set-up for many faceplants as he trips over the pantlegs while running amuk, so I try to redirect his energy into some more controlled PT.  Look, we’re wheelbarrow-walking!

Did you notice in the last picture that there appeared to be “Clifford pajama”-clad legs not his own, holding Ash up?  Yeah, “Emily Elf” made us matching family pajamas.  It is Christmas Eve, here and we should ALL (haha) be getting to bed soon, so we are all wearing them — and having a picture taken, for the elf’s benefit.  I think this is the, “Help!  We’re all melting into a puddle of fleece, and at least two of us are too tired to save ourselves!” photo.

We were all laughing at someone or something.  It was probably Uncle A-

He almost looked sleepy in those other pictures, huh?  Almost.  But guess what?  Up he sproinged!  “Mommy!  Daddy!  Wait!” he declared, “I think you are tired, and it’s time to go to bed.  Please!  Mommy, Daddy, you need to get ready for bedtime now, so Santa can come and bring presents because we’re NICE.”

All three of us were also invited to the annual Christmas party (for which I made these) of some friends from Steffan’s church.  Now, this was a grown-up party (albeit a fairly well-behaved one), and Ash was actually the only child even invited.  He was wanted there, though, and he knew it, and we would’ve had a hard time NOT bringing him there.  In the end, he spent most of the time we stayed, curled up on a comfy chair, in mild sensory overload from the new environment and the new people, sleepily watching everyone.  Steffan and I took turns sitting with him, and providing support for whatever conversations other people came to have with him.  Now, Ash was somewhere in between the last cold and the next strep throat, and everything combined to make the overall experience appear less stimulating to him than it normally would’ve been.  Did he think it was time to go home?  Of course not.  The church friends had invited him to a party.

By the way, he now owns a cross.  I can’t get into the details, but it’s a cross with a lot of significance to the person who felt he should have it, and it’s also a cross that has been blessed.

He only wears it if we go to church, on Christian holidays, or other special occasions when he either wants to or we think he could use an extra blessing....and we'll be around. The thing is, we REALLY don't want it to get lost, if he feels the need to have the chain off of him.

The next seasonal adventure on the agenda couldn’t fail to be stimulating.  Ash was going to meet Santa!  We knew it would have to be quite the experience, too  Last year’s meeting of Santa (for the first time) occurred, in combination with a “Christmas Train” ride, in a new, local, indoor venue.  This year, said venue was not even open.  That meant that not only would the experience — and the Santa — be particularly different, but part of it would be missing.  Boy oh boy.  One option, discovered this year, would guarantee Ash 15 one-on-one minutes with a Santa used to dealing with autistic kids, in a sensory-friendly “workshop”.  Consideration of whether 15 minutes with Santa would be spent doing better than recovering from having anticipation literally restrained during the 45 minute drive there, was moot, since they didn’t have any free slots available at a time compatible with Steffan’s work schedule that week.  We decided to go with the (also free) Santa experience being offered by a local Parks & Rec department.

So it was that one Saturday evening, we shuffled into the “warming room” in a community center, where we got our tickets for the horse-drawn-wagon ride past a Christmas lights display along some water, which would take us to meet Santa.  The “warming room” had tables with face painters, tables with coloring/activity booklets, and….ahhhhhhhh, there we go….several chests and tables full of books….oh, wait….guarded by a story-teller who was remarkably touchy about children touching her books, and reading, even silently, to themselves.  That was a problem.  Thankfully, we’d dressed all of us warmly with the wagon ride in mind, and there was also a playground right outside, and away from the tempting books.  Steffan decided to spare my joints and stay out there with Ash while I listened for our turn approaching, inside, and picked from a tree which had been decorated with donated ornaments which each family was supposed to take a few from to bring home with them.  (It occurs to me that when I went out to tell them it was our turn, I saw Ash climbing all over some of the playground equipment, while his Daddy stood below.  I wonder if Steffan would remember whether the steps and platforms were solid, or whether it was the darkness which allowed holes to not matter.)  Soon enough, it was time for HORSIES! and the special ride past PRETTY LIGHTS!, and then we were at the place set up for meeting SANTA!  As luck would have it, by the time Ash was done looking at the decorations, all of the other children that came in on our wagon had come and gone again, the next wagon full of kids had only just set out, and Ash got about 15 minutes of one-on-one time with Santa anyway.  Santa was quite good with him, although I have to say, Santas who require fake facial hair really aught to do some grooming of it so that their traditional flowing white mustache and beard don’t completely hide their smile.  Ash was quite pleased, however, to see that Santa was wearing a candy-cane-striped watch, which gave him hope that Santa would not be late for Christmas.

Big Santa and Little Santa :-) "Santa! I am pretending to be you, but I am not really you. It's just pretending. So you can still come over on Christmas Eve and bring presents, please, ok?"

The other good photo was part of our Christmas Card.  Eniways, after his bonding time with Santa, Ash got to have some cookies and cocoa provided by some elves, and then an extra goodbye minute or two with Santa before we caught the next wagon back.  On the ride there, we’d gotten the uncovered wagon and the black horses, and on the way back we’d gotten the covered wagon and the brown horses, so all bases ended up being covered….bonus!  All in all, quite a successful adventure.

Christmas was still taking too long to get here — and for some reason, Mommy claimed that opening extra Advent calender windows and feeding her extra chocolates all at once, would not make the month go by faster — but at least we had a fresh source of inspiration to help pass the time.

Ash puts on his snow boots, to stress the fact that he is impatient for it to snow.  There is supposed to be snow on Christmas, and a head start that he can play in, wouldn’t hurt!

Ash drew a Christmas tree on his Magnadoodle.

 Stay tuned for Part 4, which might even be the last part!  Oooh…

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
« Older Posts