11/6/08

I'm feeling particularly negative today so I apologize if I seem overly critical or judgemental of other people in this blog, but I just have to get a few things off my chest so here goes.

The past 5 days or so have been particularly hard in our household for many reasons. One of them is because we focused on doing a lot of fun things for Ben last weekend so it was just kinda my job to help Tyler get through it all so my time wasn't necessarily spent enjoying the "family" side of it all but more helping Tyler in situations out of the norm which is really exhausting both physically and emotionally. Another part of the reason it's tough is that Ben is acting out a bit at home and at daycare, I'm convinced it's likely him vying for attention and we are doing things to help, ie. had a Ben morning today (will explain later in blog) but still it makes situations very difficult, almost comical sometimes if you look back at it all. Sometimes i wish our life was videotaped, so it could capture the insanity of it at all times.

I took the morning off to spend it with Ben. It was my morning to drop Tyler at school and then I figured Ben and I could go do fun things together so he could get some one on one mom time. I was really looking forward to it. We went to Starbucks where he had his first hot chocolate (and didn't like it) and a cookie. Then we went to the bookstore and he got a dinosaur book(his new favorite thing is dinosaurs) and a Thomas book. Then we went to a new indoor play center I had heard about. It was really really cool, in fact we are hoping to take Tyler there this weekend. Anyway, there were a group of mom's there talking while their kids played. I was kind of walking around watching Ben, he was having a ball. At one point, Ben wanted to go into the Toddler area where the other moms and kids were hanging out now. It was impossible not to overhear their conversation, but I found myself thinking "give me a break" to most of their discussions. At that moment, I had wished I had a 24 hour highlight video to show them of our life. Not that I want every one's life to be tough, i don't, I'm certain that some of my negative attitude was jealousy at the ease of normal problems vs. what we face. One of the conversations was about breastfeeding and how the baby was a big eater and it took 40 mins and she didn't have the time to do that so she stopped. I remembered back to breastfeeding the boys and how it was a full hour if not more by the time we got the breast/bottle/pump cycle completed and there were two babies. I was also significantly annoyed with the fact that their kids were walking around eating and leaving crumbs everywhere in the play area and was causing me to wonder whether or not bringing Tyler would be a great idea. I know this will happen all of Tyler's life but we work SO hard to keep him to his diet and I had already checked with the manager about their food supply and if there was anything Tyler could eat since you technically cannot bring your own food so to know that they can go to the counter, get their kids anything they want to eat and then leave a trail all over the floor, well, I found it to be highly irritating! I was also bothered by their lack of involvement with their children, I'm sure they meet there routinely and it's their mom time while the kids play, in fact, that's the punchline for the place, but I was just thinking how much they take for granted that their kids are normal and socialize and play when we have to teach Tyler every part of all of that and sometimes no matter how hard we try to engage him, we can still be unsuccessful at times. Of course I rarely have an opportunity to be with just Ben and give him my full attention so I was gonna get all I could :)

So I had wondered how their morning went with their kids compared to mine. Here's how mine went: Ben woke up at 3:30 cause he was cold so i covered him up and struggled to go back to sleep cause I had a massive headache so it was 5:00 before I finally fell asleep and then I got up at 5:30. Tyler woke up at 5:45 so I was fresh out of the shower and not nearly ready and trying to figure out what to do cause you can't leave him alone. We've started giving Tyler a snack before school so we can get some of the supplements into him that he doesn't necessarily get at school, i.e. just cause we send food (premixed with supplements) doesn't mean he eats it all or if any at school and so we try to get breakfast supplements in at home to minimize what he has to have at school in case he doesn't eat something that we needed him toe at. So he sits at his table and watches a video while we give him yogurt laced with multivitamins, calcium, b6, and... I can't even remember what the other one was I put in this morning. we've just added more and are working on a good system since we are coming and going so often so we know who does what, oh and he needs the digestive enzyme with each meal so we had that in his a.m. milk. So we give him that while he watches his video which he's been doing great at but not today, today he didn't want to sit, he didn't' want to eat, he was just not interested. Ben woke up in the middle of all this. He was cute, said he was "very shivers".. he gets cold when he sleeps. So I got Ben hooked up in the chair so I could go back to Tyler and Ben said his milk was too cold (teeth are sensitive since he hit them on teh floor a few weeks ago, oh and we went back to dentist today to have that checked). So I go warm Ben's milk and come back to Tyler and cycle between no bites, stopping video, screams/flailing/throwing self down/pinching me (all the while praising Ben for being calm and good since usually he'll scream when Tyler is cause he sees Tyler getting attention for it) and then obviously Ben was also watching the video that I've stopped to get Tyler to act the way I want so I can start the video again. That was just one out of about 5 of the issues we had getting out the door this morning. Anyway... I just wanted to say to those woman, you have no idea how good you have it, stop complaining and play with your damn kids!

Ok, on to other things. Tyler is still doing very well at school, he did cry a bit today when we went in but things were a bit abnormal since Ben was with us so he may not have realized that we were still going to school (even though I told him) but once we got in and I walked him into class he was great. They said he had a great day when Steve picked him up. We are going to start the anti fungal medicine soon now that we've finally got a plan in place to get all of the supplements into Tyler that we needed, I think we need one more prescription to be filled. We get to spend some good one on one time with Tyler this weekend since Ben is going to stay at his aunts for the weekend. We are going to see about getting Tyler a few new toys to help find new things to engage him with when playing downstairs. We are also going to work on more signing this weekend so Dad and Tyler can begin signing more together.

Also just wanted to send another reminder, as I feel sometimes people forget, that we barely have time to pay bills, let alone make phone calls or special trips to the store to pick up birthday cards, we struggled to find time to get Ben back to the dentist cause our schedule is so tight. We certainly never intend to forget anyone, however, it is taking all of the resources we have to get through each day and we just don't have a lot left to give at this time. Which brings me to the holidays, please remember that although most of you associate family togetherness/happiness with the holidays, to us, the holidays are pure hell, they have been ever since the boys were born. First year was screaming babies and waiting for test results for Tyler, second year, were colds and major meltdowns/messed up trips. At our house, we keep the lights and decorations to a minimum and will likely open presents throughout the week rather than have all the crazy on one day, we certainly don't expect anyone to make these changes for us at their own homes, but please be understanding that we will likely limit our travels this holiday season as it's an extremely difficult time for Tyler anyway and then add in his diet this year (wasn't on it last year) and that we'd have to bring all his food/dishes/cleaning supplies/etc. and then a million other support items to help him get throughout the day at a time when our family is already emotional drained... well... I just am not sure we are strong enough to deal with it all right now, so please don't have any expectations of us or I'm afraid we'll likely let you down.