Timothy was away last week on the 8th grade trip to Washington DC. He left early in the morning on the 15th and got home around 10pm on the 18th. I was apprehensive about letting him go on a trip far away with a pretty high teenager to chaperone ratio! However, we have so much commotion in our house that once he left, I barely noticed he was gone.
Saturday morning the other kids were all very excited to see Timothy. Jesse hung on him all day, following him around, imitating him, playing video games, and being very jealous of the switch-blade comb that Timothy had bought for himself while away. Adorable.
But even cuter than that was Morgan's reaction. He was so excited to see Timothy that he literally jumped up and down and across the room to hug him, repeatedly. Big bear hugs and big smiles, for hours.
I have read that autism can be tough on a marriage and on siblings and generally on a family. Certainly this is true, but it focuses on the negative and not on the balance. With great challenge comes great reward, that's just how life works.
Yes, I have an 11-year that outweighs me and we had to put a new doorknob on the laundry room that requires a key to get out instead of in just so we can keep all the food safe from Morgan's early morning binges. He cried and fought getting shots at the doctor and even Josh struggled to counteract Morgan's extreme strength. I wipe peanut butter off the iPad every day. Outings as a family are carefully planned to be Morgan-friendly or else are only with one parent.
The daughter of one of Morgan's paras from last year came over on Tuesday afternoon to interview Timothy for a piece she's writing for NPR on the impact of autism on siblings. Among other things, she asked him if other kids at school teased him because of Morgan. "Sometimes," he said, "but I don't really care what they think. I know he's a good kid." Then all the kids showed her how they can bowl together on the Xbox Kinect.
I have an 11-year old that loves his siblings and jumps across the room with excitement to hug them. I have 3 other kids that love him back. They play games he can play, read books with him, and snuggle with him on the couch. He invites them to jump on the bed, they invite him to play iPad with collectively sticky fingers.
I cannot be thankful for autism, no one can. It would be like being thankful for cancer. But I can be thankful for how my family has reacted to it, how it has brought us together as a unit, and how my children have learned certain lessons early - lessons that others may not learn in their lifetime.
Who cares what anyone else thinks, I know we're awesome.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Rhonda
WE ARE SPECIAL, WE ARE WEIRD, BUT WE ARE NOT ALONE
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
November 13, 2011
Theme of the week: chain saws.
The sound of chain saws has been near constant all week. It's really surreal to drive around - there is barely a piece of sidewalk not covered with branches and trees. Josh took the chainsaw out for 3or 4 hours today and managed to clear just over half of our backyard. Jesse helped, of course. Timothy was called upon to help, but mostly just stood there. We have a pretty good pile of wood started under the deck for future burning in the fireplace.
I thought about helping Josh with the chainsaw activity, but decided to stay inside and sew holiday gift bags out of fabric all weekend. They actually look really cute! It's not exactly the same as the satisfaction of ripping through paper, but it creates far less trash! I already wrapped most of the kids' presents in paper already, so it will be a mixed medium holiday. And I also got Reese's name cross-stitched and sewed to his stocking - woo hoo! That's the last one - we're out of stockings. Actually, we were out one kid ago and with Reese, Grandma and Grandpa gave up their (joint) stocking. But we stopped doing adult stockings years ago, so it all works.
Jocelyn went to her first sleepover party last night. A friend of hers had a sleepover at a hotel where they got to go swimming and have buffet breakfast and painted their nails and watched movies and everything. She had a super good time, and that was after she had already gone to a daytime birthday party at Nomad's (essentially a giant Chuck E. Cheese type place).
We rescheduled Jesse's birthday party for this next Friday and so far most people can still make it. A bit belated, but BounceTown is always fun no matter the timing!
Timothy leaves on Tuesday morning for the 8th grade trip to Washington DC. Josh had the pleasure of taking him to the mandatory informational meeting this week and came home adamant that he would never do that again. I'm not really sure why we are forced to have read to us things we have to read and sign anyway, and apparently the principal went on a long rant about things that weren't allowed, like drugs, which means that kids who had never even thought of getting to do drugs this week are now reaching out to their DC connections.
Seriously, though, when you have the opportunity to speak to your child right before they go on stage to make a big speech, you have 2 choices. You can either say "knock 'em dead, you can do it," or you can say "don't blow it." The principal was clearly of the "don't blow it" camp,
All the kids went back to school (finally) on Wednesday this week, in case any of you were like me and worried they would never go back.
Well I guess that's the news from here. Hope everyone has a great week!
Rhonda
The sound of chain saws has been near constant all week. It's really surreal to drive around - there is barely a piece of sidewalk not covered with branches and trees. Josh took the chainsaw out for 3or 4 hours today and managed to clear just over half of our backyard. Jesse helped, of course. Timothy was called upon to help, but mostly just stood there. We have a pretty good pile of wood started under the deck for future burning in the fireplace.
I thought about helping Josh with the chainsaw activity, but decided to stay inside and sew holiday gift bags out of fabric all weekend. They actually look really cute! It's not exactly the same as the satisfaction of ripping through paper, but it creates far less trash! I already wrapped most of the kids' presents in paper already, so it will be a mixed medium holiday. And I also got Reese's name cross-stitched and sewed to his stocking - woo hoo! That's the last one - we're out of stockings. Actually, we were out one kid ago and with Reese, Grandma and Grandpa gave up their (joint) stocking. But we stopped doing adult stockings years ago, so it all works.
Jocelyn went to her first sleepover party last night. A friend of hers had a sleepover at a hotel where they got to go swimming and have buffet breakfast and painted their nails and watched movies and everything. She had a super good time, and that was after she had already gone to a daytime birthday party at Nomad's (essentially a giant Chuck E. Cheese type place).
We rescheduled Jesse's birthday party for this next Friday and so far most people can still make it. A bit belated, but BounceTown is always fun no matter the timing!
Timothy leaves on Tuesday morning for the 8th grade trip to Washington DC. Josh had the pleasure of taking him to the mandatory informational meeting this week and came home adamant that he would never do that again. I'm not really sure why we are forced to have read to us things we have to read and sign anyway, and apparently the principal went on a long rant about things that weren't allowed, like drugs, which means that kids who had never even thought of getting to do drugs this week are now reaching out to their DC connections.
Seriously, though, when you have the opportunity to speak to your child right before they go on stage to make a big speech, you have 2 choices. You can either say "knock 'em dead, you can do it," or you can say "don't blow it." The principal was clearly of the "don't blow it" camp,
All the kids went back to school (finally) on Wednesday this week, in case any of you were like me and worried they would never go back.
Well I guess that's the news from here. Hope everyone has a great week!
Rhonda
Monday, November 7, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
November 6, 2011
Towards the beginning of the movie Armageddon, a civilian spots the meteor with his telescope and calls it in. After giving the coordinates, it goes a little something like this:
Is it true that whoever finds it gets to name it?
Yes
Well then I want to name it Dottie, after my wife. She's a vicious life-sucking bitch from which there is no escape.
The storm that hit us last weekend was Storm Alfred, and no, I wasn't the one who named it.
When the snow started, it was beautiful. The first snow always is. Big wet flakes.
We lost power Saturday just as we were warming up dinner. We spent the evening playing charades and rhyming games and whatever we could think of that would keep everyone entertained for a few hours. We watched parts of trees falling in the yard through various windows. We attempted to put each kid to bed in their own room, but that resulted in a lot of tears. So I kept Jesse and Jocelyn in my bed and Josh went and bunked with Timothy.
It was so strange falling asleep in extreme quiet, listening to trees crack and break and fall.
When I woke up on Sunday, Jocelyn and Jesse were at the bedroom window looking out. "That's a BIG TREE!"
And they were right - there was a great big tree lying across our driveway. We were trapped. There was about 6-8 inches of snow on the ground and parts of trees everywhere, but one full tree up by the roots that had quite fortunately not hit the garage.
Luckily Joey was able to get out of his place and he went to Lowe's and got us a hand saw and a gas chain saw. When he stopped to get gas, he discovered that since many many gas stations had no power, the ones that were left required a several hour wait. So he brought us the saw and we managed to use it to saw off enough branches so that we could drive under the tree and get the cars in and out. Yay!
We walked around the neighborhood to see how bad it was. Pretty bad - trees down everywhere. Our street has underground wires, so our power outage wasn't from us, and we could only assume that the rest of the town looked at bad. One of our neighbor's trees had split in 3 and peeled like a banana. Another neighbor was shoveling his driveway in his motorcycle helmet because parts of trees were continuing to fall.
By Sunday evening it was getting chilly in the house. We have a fireplace in our bedroom that we've never used, along with birch logs that came with the house, and more birch logs in the fireplace in my office. So 3 short hours later and we had a fire going. That's a bit of a skill isn't it! So we all sat in the dark in front of the fire and I told the kids stories of when they were little and they told us stories of things they remembered when they were little and then started just making up random stories about farts and stuff. The little ones said it was the best night of their lives. We repeated the same sleeping arrangements as the night before. We got a blast email from the school that school was canceled for Monday and Tuesday and Halloween was also canceled.
Monday morning I got up in the dark and braced myself for a cold shower. Thankfully, the water was still fairly warm, and while my shower was not real pleasant, it wasn't painful, and that was fine. I mistakenly drove over some downed wires on the way to work while I was trying not to drive into trees jetting out from the side of the road. The lines that were up had branches hanging from them. The main light onto the highway was out and no one was directing traffic, but everyone was generally being polite.
It was weird to go to work. I felt like I should be home doing... something. With no power in 70% of the state and schools and day cares out everywhere, a lot of people brought their kids into Aetna for a shower and some hot food.
In the garage, Josh hooked up the propane burner that he uses to make beer, and we used it for hot water and food, so we ate pretty well all week, though he still lost nearly 10 pounds. I haven't wanted to take my clothes off long enough to weigh myself.
It was even colder Tuesday, and the fairly warm water in the shower was only somewhat warm. Tuesday night Jocelyn wasn't feeling well and we loaded her up on medicines that Josh went out to fetch, but she woke up crying every 2 hours, saying that her ear hurt. In between one of her awakenings, I woke up smelling smoke and turned out the flue had slammed shut and Josh was trying to air out the room before we all choked to death (Josh waited up with the fire each night while we got a few hours of warmER sleep). We got a blast email that school was canceled the rest of the week.
So Wednesday morning was not fun. The shower was down to tepid, and I was very worried about Jocelyn. Rumor at work was that the wait time at the local MinuteClinics was about 2 hours. Everyone at work was about as punchy as I was, seeing as there had been virtually no improvement in the proportion of people without power, and anyone with power had relatives staying with them. No one was sleeping. The stop lights were still out all over the place and even my typically quite tolerable commute was nearly doubled. I considered having Josh bring Jocelyn into work to see if the Wellness Center at work had someone who would see her, but finally Josh emailed that Jocelyn had had a 3 hour nap and woke up saying her ear didn't hurt, it only felt like "a microphone".
So Wednesday night, while down to the mid to upper-40s in the house, was better. We sat around the fire yet again (getting pretty skilled at it by now!), minus Timothy (whose girlfriend still had power) and told more stories and then Josh and I tucked the little ones into our bed and we broke out the portable DVD player (that I'd been dragging to work each day to charge, along with alternating the laptops) and watched a couple episodes of Roseanne, and almost felt normal for a few minutes.
Thursday morning was the last of the nearly tepid water, and when I stepped into the garage, I realized it was warmer outside than in.
South Windsor had been only 73% out of power until Thursday, when it jumped to 91% out of power. Places that had been lit up on the way to work were now out, as were the highway lights until I got to East Hartford. But the traffic lights were on, so go figure. Each day I spent the day thinking I should be at home, but of course the entire company would likely come crashing down without me. LOL, ok, maybe that's an overstatement, but I had stuff to do.
Thursday we got our first actual information about potential power restoration via a facebook update from our state senator that there were crews in the town and that the substation was out and that the transistors that had not been out were now out, I assume from stress. Thursday evening I saw the first utility trucks I had seen all week.
Until then really the only updates I had were from NPR as I listened each night on my commute home to journalists fire questions at our governor and the head of the utility company, but none of this seemed to result in much progress as even on Thursday 60% of the state was still out of power.
I was off on Friday as it was supposed to be Jesse's birthday. We took a drove over to the substation but didn't see much action happening there. We drove by BounceTown and that was dark, so I sent an email to Jesse's class saying his party was canceled. We picked up more wood for the fireplace, then went home, packed some dirty laundry and pajamas up, and headed to mom and dad's for the night, where we all got clean and washed our clothes and watched some TV.
And then I remembered why we don't share a room with Morgan - he got up at 1:30am! So I didn't get a whole lot of sleep, though everyone else managed to sleep through Morgan being up. I was bunking with Jocelyn on the futon and Josh was with Jesse on the air mattress, so I had to get out of bed to walk over and shake Josh to get him to stop snoring.
Other than sleeping we had a great visit and the kids had a wonderful time playing video games and watching TV. I obsessively hit refresh on the website that tracked what % of each town was still out of power. South Windsor kept moving back and forth but finally started getting lower instead of higher so we headed home around 2pm.
As we were driving up to the house, we were examining the rest of the houses in the neighborhood and started seeing some porch lights on. When we came up to our own house - the lights were on! The garage door opened! We went inside - it was warming up!
We wandered around, not really sure what to do. It smelled funny. Like something burning. Where was that coming from? We started sniffing and walking. OMG - we were warming up chili when this all started and the burner was still on! And last night's spaghetti was on it! Luckily it wasn't even burned yet - good thing we came home when we did!
Then we continued wandering around not knowing what to do. I stood in the toy room and just looked out the window and cried. This was a loooong week, but we made it!
This morning we broke out the chain saw and tried to get the tree off our driveway, but it's just too big. So we put our name on the list at a tree service and they say they can be here in 8-10 days. Not too bad. Meanwhile we'll put the chain saw to work on the back yard, which is covered in very large branches and tree tops.
8% of the state is still out of power, and 32% of South Windsor. The outage is concentrated to the NE and NW of Hartford, but not in Hartford itself. The utility company said it would be only 1% by midnight tonight. They better hurry up! Yesterday on our way home we finally saw trucks working - from Denver. There are apparently crews from all over the country here helping out, though it took many days for the utility company to get them here, perhaps because they still haven't paid all their bills from Irene, which also left parts of the state without power for over a week.
And it's not even snow season yet!
So that was our week - hope everyone else had a better week than we did! But we're alright now :)
Rhonda
Is it true that whoever finds it gets to name it?
Yes
Well then I want to name it Dottie, after my wife. She's a vicious life-sucking bitch from which there is no escape.
The storm that hit us last weekend was Storm Alfred, and no, I wasn't the one who named it.
When the snow started, it was beautiful. The first snow always is. Big wet flakes.
We lost power Saturday just as we were warming up dinner. We spent the evening playing charades and rhyming games and whatever we could think of that would keep everyone entertained for a few hours. We watched parts of trees falling in the yard through various windows. We attempted to put each kid to bed in their own room, but that resulted in a lot of tears. So I kept Jesse and Jocelyn in my bed and Josh went and bunked with Timothy.
It was so strange falling asleep in extreme quiet, listening to trees crack and break and fall.
When I woke up on Sunday, Jocelyn and Jesse were at the bedroom window looking out. "That's a BIG TREE!"
And they were right - there was a great big tree lying across our driveway. We were trapped. There was about 6-8 inches of snow on the ground and parts of trees everywhere, but one full tree up by the roots that had quite fortunately not hit the garage.
Luckily Joey was able to get out of his place and he went to Lowe's and got us a hand saw and a gas chain saw. When he stopped to get gas, he discovered that since many many gas stations had no power, the ones that were left required a several hour wait. So he brought us the saw and we managed to use it to saw off enough branches so that we could drive under the tree and get the cars in and out. Yay!
We walked around the neighborhood to see how bad it was. Pretty bad - trees down everywhere. Our street has underground wires, so our power outage wasn't from us, and we could only assume that the rest of the town looked at bad. One of our neighbor's trees had split in 3 and peeled like a banana. Another neighbor was shoveling his driveway in his motorcycle helmet because parts of trees were continuing to fall.
By Sunday evening it was getting chilly in the house. We have a fireplace in our bedroom that we've never used, along with birch logs that came with the house, and more birch logs in the fireplace in my office. So 3 short hours later and we had a fire going. That's a bit of a skill isn't it! So we all sat in the dark in front of the fire and I told the kids stories of when they were little and they told us stories of things they remembered when they were little and then started just making up random stories about farts and stuff. The little ones said it was the best night of their lives. We repeated the same sleeping arrangements as the night before. We got a blast email from the school that school was canceled for Monday and Tuesday and Halloween was also canceled.
Monday morning I got up in the dark and braced myself for a cold shower. Thankfully, the water was still fairly warm, and while my shower was not real pleasant, it wasn't painful, and that was fine. I mistakenly drove over some downed wires on the way to work while I was trying not to drive into trees jetting out from the side of the road. The lines that were up had branches hanging from them. The main light onto the highway was out and no one was directing traffic, but everyone was generally being polite.
It was weird to go to work. I felt like I should be home doing... something. With no power in 70% of the state and schools and day cares out everywhere, a lot of people brought their kids into Aetna for a shower and some hot food.
In the garage, Josh hooked up the propane burner that he uses to make beer, and we used it for hot water and food, so we ate pretty well all week, though he still lost nearly 10 pounds. I haven't wanted to take my clothes off long enough to weigh myself.
It was even colder Tuesday, and the fairly warm water in the shower was only somewhat warm. Tuesday night Jocelyn wasn't feeling well and we loaded her up on medicines that Josh went out to fetch, but she woke up crying every 2 hours, saying that her ear hurt. In between one of her awakenings, I woke up smelling smoke and turned out the flue had slammed shut and Josh was trying to air out the room before we all choked to death (Josh waited up with the fire each night while we got a few hours of warmER sleep). We got a blast email that school was canceled the rest of the week.
So Wednesday morning was not fun. The shower was down to tepid, and I was very worried about Jocelyn. Rumor at work was that the wait time at the local MinuteClinics was about 2 hours. Everyone at work was about as punchy as I was, seeing as there had been virtually no improvement in the proportion of people without power, and anyone with power had relatives staying with them. No one was sleeping. The stop lights were still out all over the place and even my typically quite tolerable commute was nearly doubled. I considered having Josh bring Jocelyn into work to see if the Wellness Center at work had someone who would see her, but finally Josh emailed that Jocelyn had had a 3 hour nap and woke up saying her ear didn't hurt, it only felt like "a microphone".
So Wednesday night, while down to the mid to upper-40s in the house, was better. We sat around the fire yet again (getting pretty skilled at it by now!), minus Timothy (whose girlfriend still had power) and told more stories and then Josh and I tucked the little ones into our bed and we broke out the portable DVD player (that I'd been dragging to work each day to charge, along with alternating the laptops) and watched a couple episodes of Roseanne, and almost felt normal for a few minutes.
Thursday morning was the last of the nearly tepid water, and when I stepped into the garage, I realized it was warmer outside than in.
South Windsor had been only 73% out of power until Thursday, when it jumped to 91% out of power. Places that had been lit up on the way to work were now out, as were the highway lights until I got to East Hartford. But the traffic lights were on, so go figure. Each day I spent the day thinking I should be at home, but of course the entire company would likely come crashing down without me. LOL, ok, maybe that's an overstatement, but I had stuff to do.
Thursday we got our first actual information about potential power restoration via a facebook update from our state senator that there were crews in the town and that the substation was out and that the transistors that had not been out were now out, I assume from stress. Thursday evening I saw the first utility trucks I had seen all week.
Until then really the only updates I had were from NPR as I listened each night on my commute home to journalists fire questions at our governor and the head of the utility company, but none of this seemed to result in much progress as even on Thursday 60% of the state was still out of power.
I was off on Friday as it was supposed to be Jesse's birthday. We took a drove over to the substation but didn't see much action happening there. We drove by BounceTown and that was dark, so I sent an email to Jesse's class saying his party was canceled. We picked up more wood for the fireplace, then went home, packed some dirty laundry and pajamas up, and headed to mom and dad's for the night, where we all got clean and washed our clothes and watched some TV.
And then I remembered why we don't share a room with Morgan - he got up at 1:30am! So I didn't get a whole lot of sleep, though everyone else managed to sleep through Morgan being up. I was bunking with Jocelyn on the futon and Josh was with Jesse on the air mattress, so I had to get out of bed to walk over and shake Josh to get him to stop snoring.
Other than sleeping we had a great visit and the kids had a wonderful time playing video games and watching TV. I obsessively hit refresh on the website that tracked what % of each town was still out of power. South Windsor kept moving back and forth but finally started getting lower instead of higher so we headed home around 2pm.
As we were driving up to the house, we were examining the rest of the houses in the neighborhood and started seeing some porch lights on. When we came up to our own house - the lights were on! The garage door opened! We went inside - it was warming up!
We wandered around, not really sure what to do. It smelled funny. Like something burning. Where was that coming from? We started sniffing and walking. OMG - we were warming up chili when this all started and the burner was still on! And last night's spaghetti was on it! Luckily it wasn't even burned yet - good thing we came home when we did!
Then we continued wandering around not knowing what to do. I stood in the toy room and just looked out the window and cried. This was a loooong week, but we made it!
This morning we broke out the chain saw and tried to get the tree off our driveway, but it's just too big. So we put our name on the list at a tree service and they say they can be here in 8-10 days. Not too bad. Meanwhile we'll put the chain saw to work on the back yard, which is covered in very large branches and tree tops.
8% of the state is still out of power, and 32% of South Windsor. The outage is concentrated to the NE and NW of Hartford, but not in Hartford itself. The utility company said it would be only 1% by midnight tonight. They better hurry up! Yesterday on our way home we finally saw trucks working - from Denver. There are apparently crews from all over the country here helping out, though it took many days for the utility company to get them here, perhaps because they still haven't paid all their bills from Irene, which also left parts of the state without power for over a week.
And it's not even snow season yet!
So that was our week - hope everyone else had a better week than we did! But we're alright now :)
Rhonda
October 23, 2011
One day, I was riding in the car with my Grammy, on our way to the hair salon. Every Wednesday she had her hair done in an old lady poof. Every Wednesday. In the car, I asked her why she went to see Sandy every week. "Well Rhonda, I worked for over 40 years, and I deserve to have my hair done." And that was that.
One day, I asked my Grammy why Grampa wasn't in any of Mom & Dad's wedding pictures. "We don't talk about that," she said. And that was that.
One day, we were all at Grammy's and I was braiding Elisabeth's hair. Grammy said she didn't know how to braid. I asked her if it was because she didn't have any daughters. "Well, I did have a daughter, but she died. Her name was Joyce." And that was that. Only that's the reason we gave Jocelyn her name, so maybe that wasn't that.
I miss her still. I think of her all the time. I think of her with her old lady poof sitting in a chair knitting baby sets and mittens.
One day, I asked my Grammy why Grampa wasn't in any of Mom & Dad's wedding pictures. "We don't talk about that," she said. And that was that.
One day, we were all at Grammy's and I was braiding Elisabeth's hair. Grammy said she didn't know how to braid. I asked her if it was because she didn't have any daughters. "Well, I did have a daughter, but she died. Her name was Joyce." And that was that. Only that's the reason we gave Jocelyn her name, so maybe that wasn't that.
I miss her still. I think of her all the time. I think of her with her old lady poof sitting in a chair knitting baby sets and mittens.
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