I'm At The End Of My Rope

Mister Man is a good kid. I know all parents say that, but he really is. Or was.

He's a sweetie who loves to be a helper and really tries to please people. Most of the time. But his social skills and cues are low, and his impulse control sometimes causes issues, especially if he's overtired.

I fully acknowledge this. But he's a good kid. He has never gotten into trouble at school, and for that I'm grateful. Or at least, I was.

This year has been hard. The kindergarten teacher told all of us parents that the first month would be a hard transition because they were all getting used to a new environment and being in school all day. She told us not to worry.

Mister Man got in trouble for silly things like putting his hands down the back of another kid's shirt one day or pushing a kid who told him he wasn't going fast enough in the line to head to lunch. It wasn't anything major, but it was consistent enough that we set up a reward and punishment scheme at home.

If he was good all week, he earned a special prize like getting to see a movie with me. If he had a bad day, he lost that week's prize and also lost something he enjoyed like a library book or a stuffed animal. It seemed to make a big difference, and after a spate where he didn't think he could do it, we were sailing smoothly.

But... not so much anymore.

I don't know what's changed, and I can't get a good handle on it from him. He's getting in trouble again. He's having "no" days (each day is a different goal such as listening or keeping your hands to yourself, and you get a "yes" if you achieve the goal and a "no" if you don't) a couple times a week. Bigger than that, he's having yellow days, which is when you have multiple warnings for major infractions.

I know he isn't the only kid who acts out in school, as I hear from Mister Man some of the things other kids do, but they don't do it every day. And even when the first grader we carpool with was getting in trouble most days, it was for talking during class which is less of a concern (although still obviously an issue).

So far this week, he kicked a boy on Monday. He went into a corner and wouldn't come out later that day. Tuesday was a green day and no issues. Yesterday, he had a yellow day again for not keeping his hands to himself and not listening to the teacher in separate instances. Today, he had another yellow day where he hit two different boys on two different occasions.

The teacher wrote a note this time explaining that they've talked to him several times this week to no avail and that he's had to miss recess a few times as a consequence. It isn't helping.

At home, he long ago lost all his library books, and he'd already lost the privilege of going to the library to get new books. He has now lost his special sleeping buddies, and he knows that if he doesn't have a green day tomorrow, he isn't going to a birthday party on Saturday.

Today, he wrote apology notes to the three kids he physically bothered this week in addition to both his teachers. He's written apology notes before.

He's ashamed of the incidents, and he hates having yellow days. He doesn't want to misbehave and can't tell me why he is. And I'm trying to figure out how I can help him. I reinforce the rules before he heads off to school, and we go over what he should have done in provoking situations rather than react physically when he comes home.

But right now, I'm at the end of my rope. I don't want to have him kicked out of school, and I don't want him to feel badly about himself for his actions. He knows that he's disappointed us and that his behavior isn't acceptable. But I have got to find a solution.

PLEASE don't tell me to have him tested for ADHD. That isn't the problem or the solution, and I won't be medicating him.

I do wonder if it has something to do with the probiotic I started him on about three weeks ago... a few days before we really started having these issues. I had experimented with a homeopathic spray to help with focus and learning, and I stopped it a week and a half ago to see if that was it, but it's getting worse without the spray rather than better. I think I'm going to try stopping the probiotic as of tomorrow -- another friend of mine recently switched her probiotic and her younger son (who is an angel) has been acting out enough that the school psychologist called to talk to her.

I'm wondering if we don't need to get him to bed even earlier, as he's now waking up at 6am but telling me at 7:10 that he's super tired and wants to sleep. We know from experience that the more tired he is, the earlier he wakes up. Tonight, he went to bed at 6pm, and I haven't heard a peep from him.

Have any of you gone through behavior issues like this? Please give me some sort of hope... some suggestions (other than medicating him). What do you do in these situations? I'm debating asking the teacher if he should be held out of the kindergarten Christmas Program (he has a major part since he can read fluently and likes to perform), but I don't know that they can replace parts so close to the program.

I don't need any more grey hair. I just want my sweet little boy who does what he's asked. What can I do to help Mister Man find that little boy again?

Dear Santa

Dear Santa,

I've been a very good little girl this year. Or at least, I think I have. I've tried really hard to be a good mommy and make sure I stayed on the "good" list.

I haven't quite figured out what I want for Christmas this year, but I'm working on it, I promise. Last year, you were so nice to me, and I got everything I asked for -- even some things I didn't.

After I finished opening all my presents though, I realized that I didn't feel that I didn't have that happy bubble in my heart that I did when I was younger and got the gifts I coveted. I looked around at my family, and I realized that they and their happiness are what makes me happy. I don't need anything else, and I'm happy with what I have.

It was really kind of a revelation. I want nothing.

So why am I writing to you? I'm not asking for anything. In fact, I'm writing a letter that I'm sure you don't get nearly often enough.

Thank you.

Thank you, Santa for all the you do for all our children. Thank you for the joy and excitement that you bring them every Christmas morning. Thank you for the patience you teach them as they wait for you to come. Thank you for the lesson you teach them in how to deal with disappointment when you don't bring them everything they have.

And thank you for being constant. Thank you for not becoming new and cool and hip like so many treasured friends from Tinker Bell to Mickey Mouse. Thank you for staying child-friendly and for helping to maintain my wee ones' innocence for just a little longer.

This year, I'll leave you a couple extra cookies by the fireplace, and maybe a few more carrots for your reindeer.

Love,



PS If you want to leave a little high quality chocolate under the tree, I wouldn't object. Or some new kitchen gadgets.

Why We Don't Wear Shoes...

I grew up in a house where we always took off our shoes when we first entered the house. I never thought anything of it. It was just something we did, and most of my friends did the same, so it was never an issue. Oh, sure, there were always a few people we had to remind, and a few houses where people told me I didn't have to, but ... it was kinda normal.

Even now, most of my friends take off their shoes inside. (Then again, we have a next door neighbor who wears no shoes at all throughout the neighborhood whenever the thermometer hits 50 degrees, but that's extreme in the other direction!)

Then we have my in-laws. When they visit - and they rarely do - they don't take off their shoes in my house. We ask them to each time. We've bought them slippers to wear in our house. And they still have to be asked each and every time. And then they ignore us and wear their shoes inside anyway.

But that's not the point today.

In their house, they also wear their shoes inside. When we visited in October, they had that thick industrial plastic laid across their living room in a "t" pattern (if only I'd taken a picture of it). They told us their carpet was getting too dirty, and they wanted to protect it.

Be proud of me. I bit my tongue and didn't say a word. I think it's still bruised.

We were there for Thanksgiving, and I realized again what a difference it makes when you wear shoes inside. (Ok, granted, some of this may be due to my mother-in-law's imperfect housekeeping, which explains why my feet sorta stick to the floors when I walk sometimes.

These are my socks after I've worn them in my house all day long:



This photo doesn't do it justice unfortunately (it's worse than it looks), but these are my socks after spending three hours in my in-law's house.



Ewww.

Tasty Tuesday - Apple Crisp

I'm still having a hard time really thinking about food after this weekend. Not only was there the traditional Thanksgiving feast, but we were out of town staying with the in-laws (and yep, a post planned for that tomorrow!) which means that we ate out more times than not. I'm afraid to see what my sodium level is right now.

Fortunately, that doesn't stop me from enjoying a good recipe. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of this. I made this actually last weekend when I realized at 8pm on Saturday that I was supposed to provide the fellowship for church the next morning. I managed to come up with quite the spread from ingredients I had at home, and this was the one most raved about (much to my surprise).

This is one of those recipes without really being a recipe, and super easy and quick to put together to boot (which is why I chose it for my last minute oops). Feel free to adjust it as you will, but make a second one because it will disappear!

Apple Crisp

Ingredients:
~3 lb apples, cored and chopped (for me, this is ~8 decent sized ones)*
1 lemon, juiced
1 1/2 c flour
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c brown sugar
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 c butter

Directions:
Wash the apples well, then cut into quarters and each quarter into a half. Cut out the seeds (I do this after quartering). Chop each eighth into three chunks. Place all the apples into a 13x9 glass baking dish. Squeeze the lemon atop the apples.

Make the streusel topping by adding the flour, sugars, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg into a bowl. Mix the dry ingredients well. Use a pastry blender to mix the butter in until you have little pea sized lumps.

Sprinkle the topping on the apples, then bang the dish on the counter to ensure you have the streusel all yummy and down into the apples. Place it into the oven at 375 degrees for about an hour or so, until the apples are bubbling through the topping and it's nicely browned.

It tastes best when still slightly warm, so I tend to keep it in the oven (with the oven turned off) until I'm ready to serve it. The leftovers make for a great breakfast, just in case you're wondering.

*I use a variety of apples, which I find makes it taste even better. I always use about half granny smith but then vary the other apples from Fuji to MacIntosh to whatever crisp (not red) apple I happen to have in the pantry. I also sometimes add dried cherries or raisins for a special little treat!

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday!



PS Truly no pictures because I baked this while I was sleeping (I made a few other items for fellowship, too), then was too tired and rushed in the morning. I managed to sneak one little piece, but that crisp flat out disappeared!

If I Could Change Just One Thing...

As I type this right now, I look to my left, and my husband is snoring softly with his head leaned back in his chair. The wee ones are both asleep in their beds, happily (I assume) napping.

This isn't unusual. My husband can sleep anywhere, at any time. It takes him seconds to fall asleep when he chooses. This isn't to say that he falls asleep when he doesn't want to in a problematic manner, but if he wants to nap, he simply does.

I'm not blessed with that gift. No matter how tired I am, I cannot nap. Even when I was on the brink of exhaustion with newborns, I could never sleep during the day. Once I'm up, I'm up regardless of how much or how little sleep I got.

This is coming into stark relief today. Thursday night, Little Miss had a nightmare. At 4:20am, I was jerked awake by her screams of Moooooommmmmmyyyyy! that echoed pitifully down the hallway. My husband (who needs less sleep than me and can sleep anywhere -- as mentioned above) was out doing the Black Friday scouring for us, so it was up to me to comfort her. She babbled about a monster she had dreamt about and simply clung to me. This is exceedingly unusual for her, and it took a good ten minutes before I could convince her to lay down again.

Then I laid down again. No matter what tricks I tried or how hard I worked, I never did fall asleep again, and my night's sleep ended at 4:20am. The irony that I could have gotten up at 4:20 and done the shopping myself was not lost on me.

Fortunately, that meant that when she called for me at 6am to say that she'd thrown up in her bed, I was already awake and was able to get her to the toilet in time for round 2. And Momma don't do puke, so yes, she then climbed into bed with me in clean clothes while we waited for Daddy to get home.

This wouldn't be so bad, except that the night before, Mister Man had come screaming down the hallway yelling for Mommy. At 2:20am. (Mind you, I've trained the wee ones to call for Daddy in the middle of the night when they need something. They have learned to do so, but when it's something really big, inevitably, it's Mommy they need). I caught him before he reached our room, which at least kept him from waking up Little Miss with his screaming.

Apparently the furnace scared him (we were at my in-laws and he has to sleep in the basement there -- more on that in a day or so). Once I explained to him the various bangs and whooshes the furnace made and the causes behind them -- he now understands how metal expands when heated -- he was able to go back to bed.

At 2:50, I got up to get a drink. At 3:30, I gave up and turned on the light to try to do some reading. At 5:20, I had finished counting backwards from 500 after doing some deep breathing exercises. Somewhere around 6, I finally fell asleep. Of course, the wee ones woke me up just after 7. And you know... once I'm up, I'm up.

I'm still exhausted today, and this is after two nights of no wee ones disturbing my slumber. So really, if I could change just one thing about myself, forget the usual things people ask for -- supermodel-dom, wealth, more time in the day, etc -- I simply would really appreciate the ability to take a nap, even if only just every once in awhile.

How about you? What would you most like to change about yourself?

Where Does The Time Go?

Today is effectively the last day of my time off work. For those of you who didn't know, I've spent the last two and a half weeks off work. I've been -- shall we say -- a bit burned out at work lately. After bringing this up to my boss's boss, he suggested I take off three weeks in November. Ya know, since I have that much vacation time that I haven't taken. And I still have the time remaining to take off the last two weeks in December.

For me, this was a trial run to see how I do without a job. I'm seriously considering going the SAHM route, for a nubmer of reasons (Little Miss leaving me out of family pictures, the working through dinners while working at home, the challenge of finding the time to do everything I'm committed to doing, the absolute dread I feel every time I have to have anything to do with my boss).

I tried staying at home previously when the wee ones were truly wee. When Mister Man was two and a half and Little Miss eight months, I stayed home for six months. Going hundreds of miles an hour at work to zero with two mobile (she was walking shortly thereafter) children while living in a new area didn't work out for me so well. Now, it's a different story.

I can happily say that I was not in the least bored while off work. Interestingly, I've been more busy than normal. I'm way behind on my DVR. I'm so far behind on blog reading (sorry!) that I'll never catch up. I did fun homemade dinners more often, but not nearly as often as I thought I would. While I caught up on a lot of stuff at home, I'm still trying to figure out how I didn't get more done.

Things I did get done:
Made of list of everything I had to do while I was off
Wrote Mister Man's thank you notes for his birthday (that happened October 17)
Made it to the gym regularly
Had breakfast and lunch with friends I hadn't caught up with enough
Got a mani/pedi
Sorted my closet
Put together the annual gift card fundraiser for Little Miss's preschool
Put out the preschool newsletter
Got caught up on laundry
Played games with the wee ones
Took Little Miss to her gymnastics class
Got the old blinds over to my friend's house who will hang them someday (maybe this weekend, she says!)
Took the wee ones to open gym
Went to dinner with the wee ones at a friend's house
Read
Caught up completely on the Labels for Education sorting, cutting and gluing

Things I didn't get done:
Make that dentist appointment
Get to the dentist
File the growing pile of papers in the office
Get my flu shot
Volunteer in Mister Man's classroom
Get caught up on blogs
Put up the reviews awaiting my review blog (next week!)
Make an inventory of the freezer and do meal planning based on this
Take the wee ones' outgrown clothes to the shelter
Straighten up the office
Call for a charity to come take away the old entertainment center
Get Mister Man's swimming lessons moved to a new time

I'm still trying to figure out how I'm busier with more free time than I was when I was working 30 plus hours a week. However, the realization that I have three weeks before I'm off again was really depressing, as me who can't count thought it was only two.

I loved having time with the wee ones. Hearing about their days in school and being able to take my time hearing all the stories instead of having two minutes between conference calls was great. Being able to see Little Miss run around the gym was heartwarming. Having the time to do vision therapy exercises with Mister Man instead of nagging my husband and mother to try to do them was gratifying. I liked being home.

While I felt guilty the first week about a couple things that I wanted to do for work, I successfully resisted the urge to ever check my email or to even charge my Blackberry. I separated, and I didn't miss it.

And there are so many things that I want to do yet if I had more time. With more time, I could really improve the wee ones' largest fundraiser of the year coming in May. I've wanted to volunteer at a hippotherapy center near me for years, but I can't justify it while working. I'm running further now, but once I go back to work, I have only one or possibly two (including the weekend) days that I can get to the gym, which means my progress will stagnate or worse. And the playdates that the wee ones love to have and so rarely get when I'm working? Just the joy that Mister Man showed on his face when I took him and a friend to go see a play on Monday was priceless.

But I'm wondering if the office will still remain with its growing pile of papers. I think my magazine pile might continue to expand. Somehow, the days just disappear. What's the saying though? Time flies when you're having fun. And me? I've been having fun.

All About My Birthday

Today is my birthday (whoo), and before I go to bed -- apparently I'm officially old as I'm exhausted at 8pm -- I figured I'd share some highlights of the day.

1) My mom called to ask where I wanted to go for dinner. Since I'm the one who cooks for everyone else's birthday dinners, at least I'm not expected to cook for my own? She suggested Go Roma! While they have good food, and I do enjoy it there, essentially fast food Italian is not quite what I was looking for. I politely declined and suggested a more suitable establishment (that was great and I ate 1/3 of my dinner yet still came home stuffed).

2) My mom did make my birthday cake though. She tries really hard, but ... while her heart is in the right place, her baking sometimes comes up a little short. She decided to make it dairy free by simply omitting the butter and milk (no replacements). Then she thought the white cake was a little too yellow so dyed it pink. She made chocolate frosting, but not quite enough -- so only the top layer ended up frosted. And the edge of the (once) round cake was cut off prior to being frosted so Little Miss could have a dairy free bit. It really was an adorable cake.

Bless her heart, my mom tried. My husband complimented the ice cream I served with it saying that, This ice cream really complements the cake, and that was the nicest thing he could say. My husband, who eats anything. My dad didn't even really want a piece, and he'll really eat anything. My cooking and baking skills? Nope, they did not come from my mom. I think we're actually going to toss the remainder of the cake, and my family is allowed to buy a cake for me next year -- unless I can teach the wee ones to make a cake in the next 364 days.

3) Little Miss leaned over to me at lunchtime and blew me a hug and some kisses. There, Mom, I just gave you some of your presents. And truly? That's all the presents I needed. Something really clicked last year, and I decided that I could care less what gifts I receive or whether I receive any. Kisses from Little Miss? Good enough for me!

4) I received a birthday card that listed the then and now type things. Again, I don't care who shares my birthday or what happened in the world of sports that night, but there was an interesting price comparison.

Gallon of Milk: Then $1.50 Now $3.87 -- where are they buying their milk? And from whom? I have a few things I'd like to sell these people. The last gallon of milk I bought was $1.79, and I bought it on sale for $1.49 the week before.

Gallon of Gas: Then $0.57 Now $1.86 -- but apparently I need to move somewhere else. I haven't paid $1.86 for gas in years. In fact, I paid $2.55 earlier today and was happy because that was the cheapest I'd paid in awhile.

Loaf of Bread: Then $0.28 Now $1.40 -- it's interesting to me that this is the biggest percentage jump, but I also have to say that my bread costs more than that (though not by much), and I buy mine at Costco which I know is cheaper than most grocery stores. But hey, I'll pay that premium for the whole wheat bread.

Ok ok ok, and just because I suppose I can't leave all the pop culture out, popular songs I've heard of included Mandy and Please Mr. Postman.

Wow. Now I really feel old. In fact, me and my inflamed bursa sac are going to head off to bed now. Especially because this was much funnier in my head, but I'm too tired to fix it now.