Don't Hit the Potty!

I have had so many ideas for posts that I no longer know what to say. So I'll say a little bit of everything:
Ben, Happy Birthday! Enjoy your last year of the 20's...you are yet young. Although in many ways it doesn't seem like you are my "little" brother any more. At some point in the last couple of years I ceased to feel like your "big sister" and instead I simply feel like your sister, an equal and comrade in sibling-ship. Does this make you older or me younger? I hope you have had a wonderful year and enjoy many to come!

Dad visited with Sandra recently, and Mom came shortly after. I was afraid when we moved here that we wouldn't be near anyone so no one would come to visit us. Instead we are ON THE WAY for everyone and we get one-nighters with lots of traveling relatives. Way fun!

Inga loves school, and she's good at it. Her teacher told us last week that she and another girl are the top readers in the class. That's pretty amazing, since she only really learned to read around a year ago and boy, did we struggle to get there! But when she got it, she got it.

I was telling Lena that I would love her no matter what, trying to hint around the idea that no matter what she looked like or what parts she might be missing this in no way affected my devotion to her. She wanted to know if I would still love her if she got her legs chopped off. I assured her I would. Then she asked about her ear. Of course, I would still love her. I got enthusiastic and asked her what if her nose got chopped off? She gave me a horrified look and said, "Oh, no, Mommy, then all of my boogers would fall out!"

Big huge topic of the month: should we have a sixth kid? It's Fall, and as Ben K. can attest I seem to start adoption paperwork right before Thanksgiving (and call him with the onerous request of picking up my Ohio marriage license from a usually over-crowded Department of Public Health or some such important location), so out of habit I am starting to think toward that direction. No answers yet. Just lots of questions. And yes, there is a specific child in mind.

Annie, thank you for the awesome letters! I haven't had time to write back, but the kids loved them and I loved my birthday letter. You have an amazing way with words. I can't wait to see you at Thanksgiving!!

Mandy asked if I got my quote at the top of the blog from a forum. Umm...what's a forum? Since I don't know, I don't think so. But I did steal it off someone else's quote on their website. It was authored by anonymous, according to this person. I like the quote...I want to have that attitude, and most days I achieve it (at least usually I have to take a shower the next morning).

There is a port-a-potty at the end of my driveway. They are re-paving our whole area (called Hernwood Heights) where we live and the workers chose our little neck of the woods for their loo placement. The problem is that they put it right opposite our driveway, so when we back out I almost hit it, every time. I have trained the kids to remind me by saying, "Don't hit the potty, Mommy!" every time I start to back out of the driveway. So far, I have avoided spilling the contents of the port-a-potty all over our little dead-end street. When the tractors finally made it to our part of Hernwood this morning I was all happy. Surely they would be finished with their project soon and not only would we have a newly paved street with a more level sewer connection but I would also no longer have to be worried about inadvertently destroying state contractor temporary toileting facilities. They did move the port-a-potty this afternoon before they finished for the day...and left a large bull-dozer sort of thing with a caterpillar attached to it...right across from my driveway. This is much bigger than the Tardis-sized toilet box. I must now put our van through several contortions to get out of my driveway--that is, if I remember to do so instead of simply plowing into the thing before checking in my rear-view mirror.

Alex is a hot dog

Alex goes to sensory integration therapy, and for the first time our insurance is actually covering it. This comes at a perfect point in our lives because he has been having a hard time recently. I think it is because he is putting all of his energy into learning the things we are doing in school, and his focus gets tapped out, and then he starts acting "sensory", as we call it. I am learning a whole new level of parenting.
At his sensory therapy lessons he spends an hour getting all of the sensory input he craves. It is amazing how much pressure he asks for...way more than I as an adult would ever be comfortable with, and sometimes more than the therapist feels she can safely give him. They come up with all sorts of ways to work with him, but the cutest is the hot dog. He dresses up as a hot dog, and they squish him in a huge bun-pillow, and put long yellow and red sandbags on top of him (mustard and ketchup) while he listens to a song about being a hot dog. The amazing thing is how still he becomes when he feels all enclosed and weighty. He gets a certain look in his eye, as if he is going far away. Usually he is fine for the next several days after therapy, and then he steadily falls apart until his next session. The therapist says it is fantastic that he is able to benefit from it for that long...most kids are falling apart again after less than a day. Her comment reminds me that there are so many reasons that Alex is a great kid--and I enjoy finding them out, one by one.
Inga's teacher has cancer. (Stay with me--this is actually related to my "Alex" topic, but you have to read on to the end.) For a while her doctors were uncertain how far it had spread, but now they are saying it is contained and if they perform a total hysterectomy she should be fine. Her surgery is scheduled for the end of October, so my little girl will have substitutes for a month. I am so glad this teacher's prognosis looks so good...she is a wonderful teacher, a fantastic person, and a friend of mine from church.
Another friend of mine also has cancer...melanoma. Of course I cringe when I hear that, especially around this time of year. She had a mole removed that turned out to be cancerous, and not benign. But it had not yet had time to spread, and so the doctors think they got it all and she should be fine. She sent out an e-mail to all of her friends letting us know the good news, and encouraged everyone to get any suspicious moles biopsied earlier rather than later. She was very insistent about it, since an early biopsy had probably saved her life. But I did not mind the authoritarian tone she took because she had every reason to warn me, and guess what...I'm going to go get a suspicious mole biopsied.
This is how the cancer digression relates: My son has FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). I love him fiercely, but I also have to stand by and watch every aspect of his life, especially his schooling, be affected by the choices his mother made while he was in utero. I have every reason to warn those I love to totally abstain from alcohol during their pregnancy, and if you compare my situation with that of my friend who has cancer, I should be able to take an authoritarian tone with my warning. But I hesitate. Social drinking is just so...fun. Who am I to spoil someone else's good time? And people can quote outdated medical articles stating that a little alcohol will not hurt the fetus. There are plenty of them out there, and doctors who still believe this is true. Who am I to argue with that? Except that I have lots of more recent articles I can refer to that prove that just one drink a week can affect the brain of a developing child. But no one wants to hear it. It's unpopular. It's hard. And people have been drinking during pregnancy since alcohol was invented. So they tell me that my sources are not professional. The Surgeon General, however, agrees with me, and the Center for Disease Control website states:

When a pregnant woman drinks alcohol, so does her unborn baby. There is no known safe amount of alcohol to drink while pregnant and there also does not appear to be a safe time to drink during pregnancy either. Therefore, it is recommended that women abstain from drinking alcohol at any time during pregnancy. Women who are sexually active and do not use effective birth control should also refrain from drinking because they could become pregnant and not know for several weeks or more.

Please listen, and spread the news.