9 Days

I'm down to nine days until my trip. I'm really excited but at the same time I'm still nervous. I haven't been able to shake it. I know once we get moving I'll be fine--I'm always like this before we actually leave--but for now it's driving me crazy.

Today was a bad stomach day and that was bad enough, but then I was trying to talk to my brother and ended up arguing with him. Sooo not what I had in mind. So in addition to feeling like crap, I feel like emotional crap too.

So now I'm back to worrying about what I still need to get for my trip and when I'll have a chance to go shopping. I'll get my hair cut Friday and then we'll probably get the brakes changed on the car and do some shopping afterwards.


What's going on with you ladies?

Cookies for Two

Because sometimes, a girl just needs cookies.

And her hubby and kids don't. You know, because they're the reason we need cookies in the first place.

This recipe is called Chocolate Chip Cookies for Two but I prefer to think of them as cookies for one, mostly because I can make them at midnight and have the evidence completely cleaned up so no one ever knows. Mine turned out great. I used butter instead of shortening and a little extra cinnamon, which gave them a special little something. Because of the butter mine spread a little more than the ones in the pictures, but they're still soft in the middle and crisp on the edges and honestly, that's all that matters. I think these are my favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies so far. Perfect quantity, great flavor, and superior texture.

I won't repeat the recipe here. It's really not necessary. Go visit the sources and check out some of the other recipes too.

Enjoy.

Mommy's Grand Adventure

I mentioned over at Froggy Blog that I'll be going on a trip. I was wondering how other moms would approach the whole "being gone" thing. This generated a few questions.

So, here's the scoop: My best friend has been away since 2004. At first it was college. Then, it was boot camp and officer training. Then, she was stationed halfway across the country from us, and then she was deployed. You can see that the majority of our friendship has been long distance. I treasure those phone calls. They don't always come often (it's been months before) and sometimes I miss them since I can't plan for them, but talking to her is always the highlight of my day when she calls.

In some of our conversations early in the year she'd told me that she was thinking of going to London next time she was on leave. Imagine my surprise, then, when she calls me in August and says, "Hey, wanna go to Seattle?" I draw a blank because my first thought is, "Who has a month to drive to Seattle?" and my second thought is, "Wait, I don't have that kind of money!" Then, she tells me that noooooo, Vics, you don't drive to Seattle, and if I invited you don't you think I'm paying for you?

This resulted in a small argument I'm obligated to have with anyone who doesn't have children who tries spending money on me. Moms, you know what I'm talking about. "Noooo! You can't spend your money that way! You might actually need it one day! Do you have any idea what that's like?" We've actually revisited this little chat several times. Finally she just told me her mom has already given her the lecture and she's doing it anyway because she loves us and wants to spend the time with us. Oh well. I tried.

Anywho, she told me not to say much about it or get too excited yet because she still had to put in for her leave and actually get things moving. Then, I got the news about two weeks ago. Her plans are a go!

I'll be gone for five whole days, but almost two of those will be spent traveling. Do you have any idea how long it takes to fly from here to Seattle? Forever! She's got us all staying in a nice hotel and I'm as excited about that as I am any of the rest of it. I've never stayed anywhere fancy before!

This is all huge for me in so many ways. I've been north (as far as Canada, actually) but never any further west than the tippy-tip of the Florida panhandle. I've never flown. I've never been apart from my baby for more than a few days and she was always a few miles away with my mom. I've never been apart from Nice Guy for more than a night. I've never left NG and Sweet'ums alone together for longer than a couple hours because I've never had to. They've never spent a night alone together. My mom and I have never been that far apart, or for that long.

It's going to be great and I'll make sure I get some amazing pictures for you folks. We're supposed to go to the Pacific Ocean one day while we're there, just because I've seen the Gulf and the Atlantic and this might be the only chance I get in my life to dip my toes in the Pacific. She wants to see Pike Place Market so that'll be fun. She also wants to do a pub crawl and seems like she's planning to stay drunk for the entirety of our visit. This is her trip, though, and I'm along for the ride, so I'm going to do my best to lighten up and have as much fun as possible!

For me this is the trip of a lifetime. I'm blessed to have a friend who even wants me along on this sort of thing and who is willing to pay my way. I feel awful for letting her, but my mom keeps telling me that it's S's way of showing her love and reconnecting after being gone for so long. I'm under strict orders by my husband to do some shopping and to do something stupid while I'm gone.

So that's the scoop. What do you think? I'm so excited that it makes me nauseous. Any travel pointers you'd like to share?

We've come a long way

It was a year ago today that we got two pieces of hard news. One, my uncle lost his battle with cancer on this day a year ago. It was also this day that we were first approached by our daughter's pediatrician about the possibility of autism.

It's been a long, scary journey. She's making a lot of progress but a lot of it is in small things, things that only her teacher and her daddy and I can see. There's still those things that eat at me every day, but in the grand scheme of things those probably won't hurt her as much as they will me. For now I have to remind myself that we've got to help her master the things that will help her before we worry about the things that bother me.

I just wanted to write a quick update. I'll share more later.

Christmas time's a-coming!

Sweet'ums has fallen in love with the holidays. She embraced Halloween and now, Christmas. She's been after us for weeks to put up the tree, even though we already put up the little one in her room. Her room is encircled with lights. But she keeps wanting more.

So we finally broke down, cleaned up the corner, and pulled out the tree. It's a much bigger tree than I had wanted (her daddy pulled rank on me) and it takes up a lot of space. But, she loves it and her daddy loves it. What can I say?

Her daddy also got his way when it came to the lights. He wanted colors; I wanted white lights. He got his colors since Sweet'ums was our tie-breaker. At least in the end I got my way with our ornament theme. Gold ornaments, red bows, and our ornament collection we add to each year. When the lights are on it suits him; when the lights are off it suits me.

Tonight Nice Guy put up the tree and Sweet'ums put up ornaments. I took pictures. It was a nice little evening, all in all.

The other night we decorated gingerbread men. She did hers all by herself, except for the icing. For that she showed me where to put it.

We've had some fun and she's finally starting to settle down a bit. Of course that might change when she gets up tomorrow but at least, for the weekend, she was in a pleasant mood. She was huggy and sweet. She even had a sense of humor, except for when her daddy put the juice she didn't want into the fridge. Oh, how she screamed and cried about that--you'd have thought we were trying to cram her in the fridge instead of the juice cup. But really, she was just tired and as soon as one of us sat down to hold her she fell right asleep.

In case you need a laugh, though, here's a quick story. This afternoon I heard noise in the bathroom and asked NG to go check on Sweet'ums. When he went in there she was on the potty but she hadn't put her little seat down. Instead, she was sitting on the big seat, holding on for dear life. She slipped a little and managed to catch herself before her bottom hit the water, but she was in a precarious situation. She looked at NG, kicked her little feet and said in a panicky little voice, "I don't like to swim!"

I hope everyone's doing okay. I know I've been lazy about blogging lately; hopefully I can get motivated again soon!

Better, but not

 First of all, I want to apologize for the novel I'm about to write. If you have children, a spouse, or a life you'd like to get back to sometime before the end of the year, I'd advise skipping this post entirely.

And now, onwards...

In some ways I'm feeling better than I was the other night. I think a lot of it is just that I bottle up my emotions when Sweet'ums is home and when she's gone everything I feel comes bubbling out. So right now things are okay... Come Saturday night, when she's with my mom, things might be different.

I talked to Nice Guy about everything. Fortunately he cares and he seemed genuinely surprised that I was that bad off. I mean, he knew I was really struggling, but didn't seem to notice the whole quiet-desperation-thing going on. He wants to help me feel better, fix things, whatever. I appreciate that. He even says that he understands my feelings and the problem isn't all in my head.

What's frustrating me right now is that we are exactly back to where we were the last time I bared my heart to him about how things weren't where they should be. Basically, I do the foot work of trying to figure out how to fix things, he shoots down the ideas of whomever I've just read as being silly or nit-picky or something, then he makes some kind of pittance offer about something to do that he deems to be romantic (or something, who knows what's going through his head).

Example: I found this article while browsing AOL news today. I told him about it and said I thought she made some good points and maybe it was worth a shot. So, after doing our running around this evening we got back home and I read the points to him. He was all for numbers 1, 4, and 6. Now #4 is no biggie for us. I've mentioned before that one of our projects last year to help us with our relationship was to start a book of things we love about each other. We hit the one year mark back in August and we're averaging an entry a day (which translates to us alternating days), but I don't remember exactly how many we managed. To me, #4 was just a version of what we were already doing. #6 was pretty standard advice that you'd get from any number of relationship counselors, sex therapists, or elderly, still-head-over-heals couples. Again, no biggie, as long as you have a lock on your bedroom door to prevent mishaps involving an autistic four year old and one of you doesn't work ridiculous hours thanks to shift work. Oh, and if you're not both like 60lbs overweight. That too. #1 makes some good points and it's all about taking responsibility for yourself and how you react and how you feel and helping your partner know what to do.

Numbers 2, 3, and 5 he had a problem with. #2 is all about intimacy, communication, and ongoing relationship improvement. #3 is about admitting what gets you going and acknowledging that you and your partner aren't carbon copies of each other. #5 is about accountability, in my mind--no lying about who you're with or what you're doing, and if you're honest about what you're up to there's no need for the other party to get defensive or suspicious. These three he has a problem with. #3 I can kind of see his point--I'm not quite sure why she put that in there if she wasn't going to elaborate on what to do with the information. Are we supposed to indulge each other's desires even if we're not into it? Is it just about knowing each other's interests and not judging? Huh? His problem with #5 didn't make much sense to me--it's something we do anyway, something we've always done, but he interpreted her putting it in writing as being "up her husband's butt" and unnecessary. So if it's something we're already doing, and he's fine with it in that context, why have an issue with someone else saying it's important to be able to do in a relationship? The one that really annoyed me that he tried shooting down, though, was #2. He said that it was nonsense, basically, that it was too many questions and the vow revisiting thing was too much and nit-picky and pointless.

You know what I noticed, though? Numbers 1, 4, and 6 were driven by personal responsibility, knowing yourself, and pushing yourself. Numbers 2, 3, and 5 were about being honest and intimate with each other. Group A, the group he liked, was the group of things I can do for myself. Group B was the group of things that would require him to actually put some effort into things too, particularly #2, the one he disliked the most.

His consolation prize for not being all into this? "Hey, is there a movie or something you want to watch?" After I said no, not really, and we sat here for a while not really talking about much, he decided he was going to bed. He came back out a few minutes later and asked if I wanted to talk, but by that point I was pretty perturbed and, to be honest, a little hurt, and told him no, just to go on to bed.

Which leaves me exactly where I was last time we had that kind of talk. I pour my heart out, he pours out his, he seems honestly shocked that I'm THAT upset about something, he promises to try harder and pay more attention, and then when I start making suggestions they get shot down. Eventually he forgets all about trying harder and things slip a little further downhill so that next time I have a meltdown, we're even further from the solution. And me, I just get more and more despondent and give up, instead of trying to work on things on my end like I should.

So at the end of the night, I'm aggravated. I feel like things are never going to improve and maybe I should just tell him not to bother, that we should just give up and find a lawyer and go be miserable each in our own places. He's bored--he admits it freely--so maybe I should just turn him loose to go get his own apartment where he can play his video games all day and goof off with his cousin on their off days. And I can be lonely and unappreciated with or without him--I'm already getting good at it.

No, we're not splitting up... At least, I don't think so. This is probably just a rough patch that I'll have forgotten all about the moment Sweet'ums stops stressing me out and I have a way to get out of the house once in a while.

I'm going to go update the Froggy Blog really quick on something that I realized about Sweet'ums. I understand if you're not interested after such a long post... At any rate, if you're still here, I hope you have a good night and I appreciate you actually sticking with it. I'm going to try to find something positive to say soon.

More Sweet'ums

Sweet'ums is doing well at school. She has already met two of the five goals for the year listed in her IEP. Her teacher is confident that she'll meet the rest before the end of the school year. Most days she's good to the other kids in her class and tries to defend them. She's had a couple bad days at school but her teacher takes them in stride and says not to worry, they all have bad days now and then. I struggle, though. On one hand I don't believe in allowing children to get away with disrespecting their teachers and classmates. On the other, I think her teacher is right--I don't know if she even remembers what she did wrong by the time she gets home. Honestly, I'm not even sure she relates her bad behavior to being a problem for anyone else. I know she's young yet, but I remember understanding at her age that my actions could hurt or disappoint others. She doesn't seem to "get" that yet. So I have no idea whether to discipline her or not, and even if I were to try, I have no clue how to go about it. Punishment seems to completely roll off her back, beyond simply making her angry. She doesn't seem to internalize any of it or connect it to her behavior.

Other than that, things are more of the same. She has her meltdowns, refuses to eat, doesn't want to go to bed at night and is a pain to get up in the mornings. Sounds like a teenager, right? Heck, she even begs for my keys when we get back to the house in the afternoons. The only difference between her and a 16-year-old is that she wants to unlock the front door, not take the car. She's getting a little better with her sound sensitivity but she seems more afraid of random things than ever before. She's talkative most days now, which is a step in the right direction.

She's obsessed with holidays. She loved Halloween and now she's psyched about Christmas. We got her one of those Elf on the Shelf things. We named it Holly and it goes everywhere with her. We told her that every night Holly calls Santa to tell him whether Sweet'ums was good or not during the day. Sweet'ums seems to remember this, but it isn't a deterrent to the bad behavior. It's like maybe it's an afterthought, or maybe she knows Santa is paying attention but she can't help herself anyway. I don't know. There's so much I don't know because she doesn't tell me anything about how she thinks. Anyway, she's also obsessed with Christmas lights and Christmas trees and the whole thing. I think gifts are just a consequence of the holiday to her, not the driving force like it is for a lot of kids. She just likes the decorations and festivities. She's even got a string of lights up in her room and she insists on having them on at bedtime.


So, here's a few pictures before I go. Enjoy!

It's hard work being so darn cute, and there's no better place to take a nap than on Daddy's feet on the end of the recliner.

Not quite what the author had in mind, I'm sure, but at least she's enjoying her book!