Christina, Author at A Mommy Story

Aug 20, 2010

If I’m Wrong, I Don’t Want To Be Right

August 20, 2010 By Christina

Cordy begins kindergarten next week. I know many moms tear up at the thought of the start of “formal” school, and I’m holding in the water works, too, although for different reasons. After all, Cordy’s nearly six years old – she could have started kindergarten last year, but Aaron and I made the choice to give her one more year to prepare, holding firm in our belief that she would be ready for a mainstream classroom this year.

My tears come at the reality that she will be in a special-needs kindergarten class this year. I didn’t want this. I’ve spent the last three years convincing myself that everything will be just peachy for Cordy when she gets to kindergarten, that all of this intensive therapy and special-needs preschool will produce a child who will glide into a kindergarten classroom of typical children, place her safety scissors and crayons in her desk just like everyone else and blend right in with the crowd.

Message from reality, ma’am. It says: stop being a twit and take a hard look at yourself, ya weirdo. Blend in? Ha.

Stupid thinking, I know, but we were told so often over the last three years that the goal was for Cordy to mainstream at kindergarten. Goals aren’t promises, though, autism isn’t something that just disappears when she reaches kindergarten and I need to stop treating it like it is.

I didn’t fully accept it when we were told last spring that Cordy needed to stay in a special-needs classroom, and I still struggle with accepting it today. Every “but…” springs to my mind. But she’s smart. (Dumb excuse – there are plenty of smart special-needs kids!) But we’re told all the teachers in the school love her and think she’s so sweet. But she spent a summer in a class with typical kids and had no issues at all. But we didn’t have a single meltdown ALL summer. But she doesn’t qualify for speech therapy any longer, and occupational therapy has been reduced to only as-needed. How can they say she belongs in a class of special-needs-only kids?

Still they insist she isn’t ready, and they also explain that she is on an “inclusion track” where they will try to slowly introduce her to mainstream kindergarten. I’m sure this is brilliantly successful for some kids (and know it works very well for introducing animals to new situations), but I don’t know how well this will work for Cordy. After all, part of her autism is her desire for routine. She can handle transitions with some warning, and is even getting better at adjusting to small sudden change, but constant major changes seem like a big deal to me.

So we’re going to get her used to one classroom for several weeks, then expect her to go behave in another class, with a wildly different routine, for 15-30 minutes every day or two, and yank her out if she doesn’t cooperate? Um, I know I’m not an expert at this, but I think she’s going to not cooperate. Just a hunch here.

My idea was to put her in a mainstream class, accept that the first few weeks will be an adjustment (just like any kid starting kindergarten, I’d guess), providing aide support if needed, and then watch as she adapts and rises to the challenge. After all, it worked this summer – she is a smart kid, and she can figure out how to act if given the chance to learn how the class works. Coddling or baby steps generally doesn’t work for her – she’s more a “sink or swim” kind of girl. (Even if she does get mighty upset about being – figuratively – shoved in the water sometimes.)

But I’m only her mother, and it’s been made clear that I don’t understand how the system works. So I will (grudgingly, and with a lot of hovering) let them do it their way for now and evaluate the results in a couple of months. If it isn’t working to our satisfaction, or if I feel Cordy is falling behind academically in any way (and she’s already well ahead of the standard kindergarten curriculum), we’ll be calling her support team together and finding another option.

And if it turns out that this was the perfect way to do it, you’ll all be reading my admission of being wrong. In this case, I want to be wrong. I want to write an embarrassed apology on this blog for my incorrect assumptions and how silly it was to not trust the experts.

I really, really, really hope I’m completely off-base and Cordy rocks the inclusion track all the way to full inclusion faster than any other student they’ve ever had. I hope she’s such the perfect model for the inclusion track that academic papers are written about her experience.

Nothing would make me happier than being wrong. And knowing Cordy, she’ll find some way to do it, because she’s just that damn awesome, and she loves to prove me wrong.

(photo credit: Heather Durdil)

Filed Under: Autism, Cordy, school

Aug 19, 2010

Karma Has A Sense of Humor. A Dark, Twisted Sense of Humor.

August 19, 2010 By Christina

After BlogHer, I was a sloth. This isn’t a new thing, though – I usually come home from BlogHer so mentally, emotionally, physically and any other -ally exhausted that even falling into bed takes effort.

A week and a half later, I’m starting to emerge from the fog, only this time I have the reminder of hey you, you’re supposed to be getting healthier, remember? You’ve done your best imitation of a rock all week – it’s time to get moving again.

So after three nights of telling myself I will run tonight – no excuses! – only to then find excuses, I tugged on my sports bra, laced up my shoes and went outside for a run. I wasn’t ambitious, choosing to go back a week on the Couch to 5K program and do the Week 6 Day 1 intervals.

Starting my first run, my body seemed to click back into sync, and soon I was gliding along at a steady jog. But my brain then got cocky and decided oh yeah, this is a breeze! and my pace immediately sped up as I ran past neighbors, smiling and waving as if I was the freakin’ queen of running.

It took about a minute and a half for my body to realize it couldn’t keep this pace up, and the last three minutes of the first interval were agony as I slowed down, gasped for breath to get oxygen to my pissed off muscles, and tried to remember I like running, right? RIGHT?

I used the first walk interval to catch my breath and reevaluate my strategy. When it was time to run again, I forced myself into a slower pace with far better results. Finishing the entire run, I felt good. Still tired, still dripping sweat, but I didn’t feel like I used my last ounce of energy.

I’m going to try jumping back into week 7 next time and see if I can get back to a 25 minute run again. And I know that I need a goal to keep myself motivated, so I’m scouting out new 5K races in my area to sign up for. If any locals want to join in, let me know!

—

But wait – here’s the really insane part of the story this week. For a week and a half, I didn’t exercise, I slept a lot and watched a lot of TV, and despite efforts to eat well, still ate a lot of junk during that time, including a steak from Outback (yum), a bowl of ice cream, a slice of Bob Evans’ Strawberry Supreme Pie (yummmm….) and at least two fast food trips.

Normally, this behavior would result in a 3-4 pound weight gain, as my body usually sees any slip as a chance to jack up the number on the scale. But after a week and a half of slip ups, I somehow LOST TWO POUNDS. I’ll gladly accept the loss, but after working so hard to force that number down for months, a week of no exercise and delicious treats takes it down effortlessly? How is that possible?

So here’s to being two pounds lighter and running again. Let’s keep it going.

Filed Under: c25k Tagged With: defeating the sloth

Aug 16, 2010

Heaven Help Us When She’s Sixteen. Or Four.

August 16, 2010 By Christina

You’d think that with a second child I’d feel like less of a novice mother. I’ve been through it all once, so the second time through is just a refresher, only this time I know what mistakes not to make, right?

Right?

Ha.

Miranda is a child so different from Cordelia that I often find myself wondering if Cordy is really mine and I imagined the whole idea of raising her from a baby. Because Mira makes me doubt all of my parenting knowledge on a daily – hourly – basis.

When Cordy was three years old my primary concern was keeping her from completely losing it and slipping into a violent meltdown. Oh sure, I also had to deal with feeding her because she wouldn’t use a spoon, and changing diapers because she had no interest in potty training, but the goal of each day was to get to the end of it without having to restrain her so she didn’t crack her head open from banging it into the floor. The biggest fight we had was keeping the TV on Noggin versus some non-kiddie-crack TV.

Sounds tough, right? I had no idea how easy I had it.

Because with Mira, three years old is totally different. Now I have to deal with refusing to get dressed because she wanted to wear the PINK shirt, not the blue one. And attitude because I dared help her take off her pull-up when she could clearly do it all herself. And refusing to eat her yogurt because I had the nerve to try to help her with her spoon. And dinnertime cries of, “No! I wan appasace not yogut! I change mah miiiiiind!”

And making me go back into the house to find her damn sunglasses, because the sun is in her darling eyes and we wouldn’t want her to go blind, right? And insisting on buying only PINK clothing when we go clothes shopping, a task that she insists on joining me for and during which I endure the semi-incoherent Mira babble of how those leggings match that dress and how she LOOOOVES those PINK shoes.

It’s exhausting.

But now we’re truly heading into uncharted waters, as she’s decided to go exploring her surroundings in ways that Cordy never attempted, either because she wasn’t interested or because she didn’t notice.

Two weeks ago I noticed Mira’s Thomas the Tank Engine pajama top had a couple of holes in it. When I asked her what happened to her shirt, she said, “Da kitdie did it.” It seemed odd that a claw hooked in a shirt would cause so much damage, but I shrugged and chalked it up to cheap manufacturing.

Then a few days later I found Aaron’s beard trimming scissors on the floor of the bathroom. And new holes in her shirt. It would seem the cats had somehow developed opposable thumbs and exacted their revenge on Mira – who never lets them into her room – by sneaking in at night and cutting holes in her shirt with the scissors.

Or Mira just didn’t want to tell us she experimented with scissors. I’m just thankful she didn’t cut her hair.

And then today, Aaron came downstairs with a puzzled look on his face and asked, “OK, which little girl has been using my toothpaste?”

Cordy immediately answered, “Not me!” and Mira copied her with the same response, trying her best to look like she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Well, one of you has been into it, because you forgot to put the cap back on. Now who did it?”

Cordy again proclaimed her innocence, and Mira then looked at the ground, hands behind her back as she kicked at nothing in front of her and quietly replied, “I di-it.”

“Why were you playing with the toothpaste?”

“I bwush my teeh,” she replied, as if to say duh, what did you think I’d do with it? Only she had no toothbrush in that bathroom. It soon came out that she was sneaking into the bathroom in the early morning and putting toothpaste on her finger and pretending to brush her teeth. You know, since we locked up the scissors already.

Then this afternoon, I walked into the living room and sat down, and Mira quickly climbed into my lap. I immediately smelled something odd, but couldn’t quite place it. I knew it was coming from Mira, but couldn’t figure out what the strong, chemical-like smell was.

And then I saw the travel size bottle of Downy Wrinkle Releaser on the floor. The scent suddenly had a name.

“What did you do?” I demanded to know.

Mira immediately started her – now routine – answer of, “I sowwy, I sowwy, I sowwy!” She’s learned to begin with a flurry of sad-voiced apologies and hope her cuteness will keep her out of time out. I then discovered through interrogation that she thought the small spray bottle was just like my “soap” (aka the spray hand sanitizer I often use) and had decided to spray herself with it during the 5 minutes no one was looking. At least her dress no longer had any wrinkles in it.

The worst part of all of this is that we had no idea Mira could reach or would even be interested in this stuff, and how she gets into it without us seeing her. She’s like a ninja. The bathroom items were far back on the counter, beyond her reach and likely beyond her site without a step stool. The wrinkle releaser was in a drawer. Now I’m forced to look at everything and wonder how long until she figures out the childproof lock on the cabinets under the sink? Would she want the pack of matches next to the candle on the fireplace mantle? Could two step stools stacked on each other be enough to reach that high? What if she got a stick to knock them down while balancing on two step stools?

Maybe I baby-proofed the house better with Cordy? I don’t remember it being any different than now. Or maybe I just had no idea what to expect when raising a typical child? When your first child has autism, you come to accept her quirks and different path of development as your own personal norm. So then a neurotypical second child comes along and suddenly you’re not feeling so smug when your friend complains about her child giving her dolls a haircut and coloring on the walls with crayons, because your second child is now decorating her skin with permanent marker and trying to shave the cat with your razor.

I don’t remember this chapter in the parenting handbooks.

“I gonna gwow up biiig wike mommy an daddy an go to work as a supahewo and dwive a biiiig PINK car!”

– actual life/career planning quote from Mira

Filed Under: being a mom, daily life, family time, growing up, kid logic, Mira Tagged With: ninja toddler

Aug 16, 2010

My Lunch With Healthy Choice & Tara Gidus

August 16, 2010 By Christina

As part of the Healthy Choice Better for BlogHer Challenge, I had the opportunity to have lunch with representatives of Healthy Choice and the Diet Diva, Tara Gidus, while at BlogHer.

During lunch, we got a sneak peak at all of the new Healthy Choice meals that will be hitting the grocery very soon. Just like their Cafe Steamers, these new entrees are designed to be steam cooked, locking in the flavor and nutrition of each ingredient. They pulled a few of the entrees out of their boxes, and you could see how brightly colored the vegetables were. It screamed FRESH!

While we ate our Hilton-provided box lunches, they passed around boxes of the new entrees, and suddenly my turkey sandwich and chips didn’t look so appetizing. I mean, which would you rather have – turkey on wheat and some generic salty chips, or Garlic Herb Shrimp, with big pieces of dark green asparagus and whole grain pasta. I started to wonder if the microwave in the corner of the room was functional, because I wanted to ditch the boxed lunch and warm up a Healthy Choice meal.

After lunch we each were given a private consultation with Tara. We had filled out health surveys ahead of time so she could customize her advice for each of us, and I wondered what advice she would have for me. I mean, she’s a dietitian and I’m a registered nurse – we’re essentially professional colleagues who both understand the challenges of staying healthy and the consequences of ignoring our health.

But my talk with Tara still provided me with useful information and insight. (After all, I spend all night worrying about the health of others – it’s too easy to overlook my own health.) She started by applauding my efforts so far, both in diet and in fitness. Losing nearly 30 pounds in a year and a half IS a big accomplishment, and a trend I want to continue. We then got down to the business of studying where I could make improvements.

Tara focused on my insane third shift schedule. Because I work while most people sleep, my scheduled meal times need a little adjusting. Tara pointed out that it’s best to eat something – even something small – within one hour of waking up, and then schedule my eating so that I’m never going longer than 2-4 hours without food. That way my hunger is kept at bay, preventing me from binging in a hungry frenzy or letting my blood sugar fall too low so that my energy levels drop and I get shaky.

Here’s my schedule: I wake around 4:30pm. I then usually eat dinner with my family between 5:30-6:30pm. Around 10 or 11pm, I usually have a small snack. Then I eat “lunch” at 1:30am. My other break is scheduled at 4am, when I usually have another small snack, and then I eat a little more when I get home at 8am, right before I go to bed for the day.

The emphasis here is on feeling satisfied. She pointed out that each meal should be just enough food to get you through until you eat again, not enough to create a “full” feeling. I believe her exact words were “Eat until satisfied, not until full.” Eating small, frequent meals and snacks keeps your body from reaching those extreme peaks and troughs with blood sugar and instead creates a more stable system, giving you more energy and helping your metabolism work better.

My goal, of course, is to continue losing weight. I’m no longer in the “obese” BMI range, but I still have a long way to go before exiting the “overweight” BMI range. Still, thanks to the Healthy Choice Better for BlogHer challenge as well as my own determination, I’ve finally broken through my plateau, and I plan to continue eating Healthy Choice meals to help me reach that goal. They’re simple to make for someone like me with no time to spare and each meal is so full of flavor – I’m loving how easy this is!

And the results so far? I’m going to brag a little and say I looked pretty good at BlogHer:

Size 10, baby!

(Although none of my other clothing is size 10 yet. Still.)

Full disclosure: I’m participating in Healthy Choice’s Better for BlogHer challenge, and as a participant I have been provided compensation as well as coupons for many Healthy Choice meals. All opinions I express about Healthy Choice are my own and are genuine. Also, the scale doesn’t lie, even when I wish it would.

Filed Under: success Tagged With: better for blogher, what works

Aug 14, 2010