[HQ] Jim Croce - Time in a Bottle [HD]

Happy anniversary Baby 12/09/10

Is it funny Ha Ha or Funny oh no? Continued.. will it ever truly end?

Needless to say the funny ha ha or funny oh no, title is going to be used a bit.  Now, we are a very pet friendly house. We are all nature lovers, we have owned everything from snakes to birds but one pet we owned consistently from my childhood to today is fish. Currently we have three fish tanks running. One in my living room, one in my bedroom and one in the boys room. ( thankfully Lance grew out of the "lets help the fish stage")

Let us not confuse malice with a inability to express love and affection appropriately.  Lance Loves Fish. There was no malice, no mean intent in anything he has ever done to our pets. But Autism affects how a person expresses Themselves, love, fear, excitement all emotions get expressed differently than most people would expect. Autism hampers things like facial expression, touch, sensory and mental interpretation of those same things.   Lance thinks the fish are beautiful and interesting and amazing. He has told me so. Now at age 11 he is content to watch them swim and no longer tempted to touch, hold or hug them.  You may ask how do you hug a fish... Are you sure you really want to know?  Its still one of my more suqicky memories of Lances childhood.  Perhaps we will discuss the technique of hugging fish another day I am not sure I am up to recalling it today.

Now 4 was was a pivotal year for Lance it was the first year he was truly able to explore on his own. Unfortunately he wanted to be Jacques Cousteau and explore the depths of the fish tank!
As a mother there are few things that are treasured as a shower! At the time we were caring for my grandmother and between my g-mom and my son.. Well lets say showers were in short supply.  

This day I learned my lesson about showering when alone with Lance.  

 "DON'T DO IT!"

No matter how much you want a shower do not attempt it until your husband gets home its just not worth it!  I was tired, achy,  sweaty and I really, really wanted a shower. So I plotted and planned,  I took out Lances' Sit and Spin and put it in the open doorway of the bathroom.  I took out the Rolie Polie Olie tape popped it into the player and got Lance a bottle and a snack.  The Olie tape was the one where Olie gets to bring home the class fish and take care of it over the "Springy Time Fun Break." Yes to answer the question someone out there  must be asking Yes I remember that much about Olie.

All is in readiness so I tell Lance that I am going to take a shower, and tell him to stay put and watch Olie, Ill be out in a few minutes.  I am a master of the 10 minute shower. But I wanted to shave my legs and Olie is a 30 minute tape so I figured what the heck Ill shave my legs it only adds 7 minutes to my 10 minute shower and Ill be out long before its over and Lance has a chance to get in trouble.

HA HA HA the universe points and Laughs at my mortal mommy will and says "You will be wrong! "

Well, I am in the shower the hot water soothing my aching muscles and I start my ritual of the speed wash and shampoo... I hear Lance laughing and I am happy he is deep in Olie's world.  I wash my hair and put creme rinse in and start to slather my legs with shaving cream. and its quiet in my room. If you have has children you know quiet means one of 2 things... one they fell asleep and you can relax or .......

Oh hell they are into something they shouldn't be and they are gonna be in trouble!
Relaxing will be off your personal menu for quite some time.
I call Lance from the shower and  get no answer. No pitter pattter of little feet, nada.  I call again a little louder.
 "Lance baby, has fishy had her babies yet?"  
No answer Ok.. time to go check.. now please remeber that my whole entire shower takes only 17 minutes.. I have just hit the 10 minute mark. I grab a towel and get out of the shower with my legs covered in shaving cream and my head sticky with cream rinse.
I look in my bed ..   No Lance.  
I look in his room..  No Lance.
Oh hell... I know where he is, and I don't wanna know. .. he is in the only room left.. the kitchen...

I walk in and there is my pint size little angel on his steppy stool, looking at my fish tank..
There is an open can of coffee on the counter and once again I cant see my fish...
Why cant I see my fish? Because My son has poured a full can of coffee into the tank and the water looks like brown mud.

A phrase I would become VERY accustomed to yelling , sighing, crying and just repeating over and over was born that day.
" Oh Lance what did you do?!?" 

My poor Fish is Zipping around the tank at speeds never meant to be reached by a fish in a 10 gallon tank. The Pleco is climbing to the top of the water line.  My Goldfish is looking like a crack addict. I sigh and tell my son to go back and watch olie while I try to save my poor Fish.    

An Instant stew recipie

so I needed to make dinner and have it done in under an hour.  I had chopped meat out for making meatballs Open up the cabinet and find i am out of half of the ingredients. Then decided to make tacos only to find we had no corn meal for shells and no money to buy ready made ones.. OK now what .. its cold out I am not grilling burgers.  The lightning bolt of inspiration hits me..
Chopped chuck,   canned mixed veggies,  and canned potatoes and finally Heinz gravy and you have instant stew..
It came so good I decided to share my new recipe with you.

1 onion sliced thin
2 lb chopped chuck
4 cans diced mixed veggies
3 cans of potatoes
4 jars Heinz beef gravy
salt pepper and seasonings to taste

brown the onion,  brown the beef , ( takes a total of 15minutes )
drain all the cans of  veggies put them in the pot with the onions and beef cook together for 15 minutes
pour the jars of gravy over the meat and veggies mixture and let simmer for 20 minutes.. serve with biscuits or noodles if you want I prefer it as is in a bowl.. dinner in less than an hour .. Who knew!?

Is it funny ha ha or funny oh no?

The other night my family and I were reminiscing about Lance's early childhood.  Trying to explain to Robin how every child make mistakes and learns differently. Robin is smart enough to know that Lance is much different than he is but doesn’t understand why. So we were telling him about Lance.  

One night when lance was about 4 he was just starting waking and was still wearing the SAFO braces. My husband and I were talking and I told him I needed to clean the fish tank. Lance still was only speaking sporadically at that point very few words and most of them only intelligible by me.  I was teaching Lance ASL so he would be able to communicate because of more than a few reasons and made the sign for fish and for cleaning so Lance would understand the conversation.  Ok so off we went to bed and sleep Lance was sleeping in a toddler bed and he woke up early. I was asleep because at the time Lance only slept for, at the most 4 hours, and every so often I would get so tired that I wouldn’t wake up before he did or worse I would sleep through him making the first noises of the day.

Then suddenly I get this 4 year old body flopping onto my chest and tapping my head.

“Momma, Momma, Momma  up, up, up...”

“Lance what’s wrong baby?” Come in bed and snuggle with mommy, I’ll put Olie on. You can watch Olie.  ( Praying that I could get 30 minutes more sleep.)

Momma, Momma, see, see, fis, fis!

See the fish??  

“I know baby the Fish are in the kitchen. We will feed them later, not now.” 

No no.   See fis, fis ( makes the sign for clean).  He is very excited.

Now I am all squinty eyed and blind as a bat minus my glasses, but kind of awake. “I know I have to clean the fish tank but they are ok Lance, they will be fine till I clean them.”

“NO Momma See Fis, Momma ( makes the sign for clean again)” He slips off the bed and runs to the kitchen, and comes back with two hands full of soap bubbles. Now my mommy instincts are on full alert. 

Lance where did you get those bubbles??

Lance is smiling and as he flings the bubbles all around very happy. He makes the sign for Lance an L pressed up against his Heart and the sign for clean and calling me as he runs back to the kitchen.

I jump out of the bed and run to the kitchen .

I CANT SEE MY FISHTANK!!!

ALL I SEE IS BUBBLES!! Tons and tone of bubbles!

I look down and on the floor, in front of the counter are an empty bottle of dish soap a step stool and a sea of bubbles!

In a panicked and exasperated tone “Lance What Did you DO?!”

Lance is so happy and all smiles, he sighs and continues to smile. “Momma Fis the sign for  clean” and then he claps his hands so happy so proud.  He helped Momma.

My eyes are tearing and all that I can think of is my poor fish. I start scooping out bubbles and Piling them into the sink. I had five large angel fish and two somewhat large gold fish and a black and white Pleko.   As I am scooping out bubbles my hand brushed what I assumed was a dead fish. I scoop out the poor fish. It’s one of my 5 year old goldfish. When we got it,  it was only about one inch long now it was five inches and nice and plump. I love my fish.

Then the damn thing nearly scared me to death!

 It started flipping and flopping around in my hand it was still alive! I quickly put him in a pot of water and continued to search for the other fish .. Perhaps all the stuff  I read about fish and soap was wrong? Maybe I had super fish that could survive soap. Then I grabbed my angels one after the other .. All very, very dead..

Finally I pulled my last goldfish and the pleko out they were alive! Amazing! They survived the pits of hell and my little soap daemon!

It took two days of rinsing and a full change of gravel and equipment but my three little hero’s survived the super cleaning skills of a over enthusiastic 4 year old.

So how do you explain to a 4 year old that fish don’t use soap to get clean? You don’t, you make sure soap like everything else that may cause a hazard gets locked up and you tell him only Mommy can give the fishes a bath!

So Lances lesson was No washing the fish for mommy and Robins lesson was 1 Fish can die 2) brother doesn’t think of the consequences of his actions and 3) no matter what mommy says she still won’t kill you because brother is still here ! LOL

Till the next installment of,

 Is it funny ha ha or funny oh no?

Because I have more fish tails and pet stories to retell.

Love ya,

Later!

To Play or Not to Play That is the Question?

My sons have very active imaginations.
Robin tends to be my little warrior out to kill monsters and evil doers. A true hero in the best sense of the word. Robin loves to be a hero but for him its a bloody battle filled with taunts and battles. Robins propensity for violence is so opposite of me and to how we are raising them it baffles me.

Lance is my fantasy boy he loves to pretend that he is  the best of many things. Some days he is the best chef, other days he is Nigel Marvin, the greatest naturalist ever in his eyes. He tries to be the charecter he picks and he always wants to be the best.  He sufferes from a infiriority complex of galatic proportions.  To be Lance is not good enough.

Lance and Robin have a curious relationship, they  are so unlike myself and my siblings that they leave me frustrated and confused.  Growing up my sister and brother and I were well behaved, we didn't fight, No Hitting each other.  We went everywhere together, heck Pete went on my first date with me..LOL.  Flora and I were confidants from the start although I didn't give her much choice. When she came home from the hospital the first night I sat next to her bassinet and whispered my secrets to her. We still tell each other everything we depend on the other to be there, and we are there all the time.   We are very close, even now we all live together and we talk every day. We fight but its tempered with love and mutual respect.  I am the oldest and Flora is the middle and Peter the youngest ( I suppose at 26 calling him the baby is pushing it LOL)  There are 8 years between each of us. We played together, we watched out for one another, and we backed each other up. We may have yelled at each other but we never hurt each other.

I can't say that the same is true for Lance and Robin, Lance has hurt Robin.  Robin has hurt Lance.
Its lopsided more of Lance hurting Robin than the other way around. Robin will take more abuse before he has had enough and then retaliate. The idea  that he has to defend himself against his brother really bugs me.
I tell them no hitting, no hurting your brother. No No NO .

True if someone tries to Hurt either of them the other will come running to his defense. I have had proof of that as Robin has punched a boy much larger than he is, and older and gave him a bloody lip,  for picking on Lance. Lance has shoved a girl out of the yard and told her never to come back because she made fun of Robin.  Now Robins retaliation was more violent, but Lance was up against a girl. Yes before you ask we subscribe to the old fashion notion of you don't hit girls.

If you watched my sons argue and fight through a day you would think they watch people fight all day. That my husband and I argue constantly. In truth in the 20 + years we are together we have had loud arguments only about 10 times and I am adding a few as a cushion because I think its even less than that.  We disagree but we don't fight about it.  We go off think about the others POV came back and discuss things.  Its one thing to say Italians are loud and argumentative and Puerto Ricans are the same as a collective people but our mish mash of a family just doesn't argue like that.

We are loud yes.
We like loud music,  loud talk and loud TV.
But we don't fight.  SO WHY DO MY KIDS FIGHT?

Why can't I teach them to get along? Why is what came so naturally to me and my siblings, such a big leap for my boys?
They can't pick a game to play co-operatively,  they cant talk about the same things without fighting. They argue about everything from TV to sleep.  What the hell am I doing wrong?

rob skull crushermountain.wmv

LancesMassive Axe weilding skillz.wmv

Why me?

To all the parents out there who need to be the voice of their children.

At times I may write this blog in my son’s voice, because his voice should be heard. The public school system has no interest in hearing his voice, the mayor has no interest in hearing his voice, and even the public at large doesn’t try to hear him.  So at least here Perhaps someone will Hear him other than his family.

At other times I may write just to hear myself,   because the woman who I was before I started this adventure gets lost. Crowded out by the woman who is, the mom of  2 children on the spectrum, a Wife,  a Daughter, a Sister and  a friend.

My first blog is going to be Why me? Not me Donna the mom, or any of the other titles I hold.

But, why me?  Lance.  Lance is the older of my sons and more severely afflicted of the two.   Lance has been diagnosed with alphabet soup.. That is:
Dyslexia
Dysgraphia
Dyscalculia
ADD
Turrets
Autism/Asperger’s
Visual integration issues
Sensory integration issues
Speech delays
Motor delays
Emotional controll issues

Do you think this Kid is challenged enough?
Lance is 11 and very high functioning. He has been aware that he is different since he was 4. One of the first cognizant question he ever asked me was, " Why can't I be like everyone else?"  “Why am I different?"  "What is wrong with me?"

I never told my son he was different, I never pointed out that his issues were impacting the family as a whole. When he finally began to speak and he was so difficult to understand that even I had trouble. I would tell him it wasn’t his fault it was me. My ears were tired.  That I needed him to slow down,  so my ears could catch up.  We were told he would be deaf  ( Thankfully he wasn’t. But his muscles were so globally weak that even the inner ear reacted slowly and out of sync. Causing him to hear a garbled mess not clear individual words)   upon hearing that he was deaf I imidately bought a book on sign language and started teaching him so no matter what he would communicate.
We have Worked to make him feel normal, to be just like everyone else. And still He asks.
Why Me?
Why Me?
Why am I a freak?
Why can’t I read?
Why can’t I be smart like you? Or even like Robin? (Robin is my 6 year old who is fortunate and able to read but has other delays.)
I just want friends.  I don’t want to be stupid anymore. I want people to like me.  

Mom  Please make me normal.. Please I’ll be good. Please...
As if he ever did anything in his short little life to deserve punishment like this.

So how do you answer why me's like this?
How do you make a little boy like this feel comfortable in his own skin?

I don’t know, but I am trying every day. Any hints please tell me.