It is Wednesday, right?  Ugh, I’m still recovering from the overindulgence of Mardi Gras and thank god fake Lent is here because now I’m on a strict healthy diet of raw broccoli and carrot sticks and celery and, oh my god, non-processed foods never tasted so damn good!  I’m coming out of a carb-induced brain fog and yes, I think it is Wednesday, so I’m stealing the Commentless Wednesday idea of my blogging idol, Marinka from Motherhood in NYC. Because she can’t stop me.

My close friend, Jennifer from Playgroups are No Place for Children, wrote a recent post about some struggles she is having with her 3-year-old son starting preschool.

Oh boy.  Three. What a un-fucking-believably hard age.

I remember that stage, the longest and most aging years of my life to date, when Payton was 3-5 and Parker was 1-3. I swear those two years felt like 20, only I wasn’t blessed like Rip Van Winkle and slept through it all.  I had to live that shit, day in and day out.

I frequently wondered who in the hell thought it was be a good idea to have children just two years apart.  Whoever convinced me of it (my sister) was obviously criminally insane because I was in THE WORST KIND OF HELL I’D EVER EXPERIENCED!

I love my children beyond all existence and wouldn’t trade them for anything. Of course. OF COURSE I WOULDN’T.  But let me tell you, I wouldn’t have two kids two years apart again.  Payton was an extremely difficult toddler, and I didn’t even get through his toddler years before the next kid started on them.   Granted, Parker was a much easier toddler, but in comparison to Payton, raising Hell Boy would have been easier.

But in our society nowadays, I dunno, it seems the idea that toddlerhood may sometimes be harder for some kids than others; that some kids are vastly more stubborn, tenacious, and strong-willed, is falling by the wayside.

Suddenly, the toddler years, or childhood for that matter, are no longer allowed variance.  If your child is not a model, typical, malleable 3-year-old who sits contentedly and quietly during K-3 circle time, then by god, that must be a sign of an array of development disorders.

If your toddler has a difficult time transitioning to preschool, there must be a problem. In this modern day of two-income families, are we forgetting stay-at-home children may adjust differently and not quite so smoothly?

If your child doesn’t like crowds or loud places, or, god-forbid, the HOLY COMMUNION OF CIRCLE TIME, there must be a problem. I don’t like crowd noises or the idea of sitting in close proximity to strangers, knee-to-knee, elbow-to-elbow, until I’ve been around them for a few months and feel more comfortable with them. I’m an adult, so that’s ok, but children are somehow given less respect as individuals.

If your child is more stubborn than you and can outlast you in a battle of wills, there must be a problem.  It can’t be he/she has simply learned how to outsmart adults at such a young age.  (because we are the grown-ups and how dare they!)

Dare to mention any sensory issues on top of these other “symptoms”, well, just sit back and watch the rabid pack go wild with the scent of fresh meat.

What the fuck? Have we totally lost our perspective?

There are times, even now, when I’m afraid to tell the transparent truth of what it was (and still is) like raising an out-of-the-box child.  I’m afraid I’ll come face-to-face with that rabid pack of naysayers who tell me I’m in denial, that I can’t be objective, and blah, blah, blah.  (It’s hard to remember what else the rabid naysayers actually say when you’re distracted by all the foam in their mouths.)

Their mind has apparently been infected with the disease of two-way thinking — it’s either this way or that.  It’s either normal or abnormal. There is no in between, there are no other paths.

Ok, so fine. Parents aren’t always objective. I’ll give the rabid pack that, though I think it’s pretty damn objective when a parent can admit their child can be a raging asshole at times.   I admit while I can totally see how my kids act like assholes sometimes, perhaps I myself am not always objective when it comes to judging Payton’s behavior.

But exactly who is objective?

A doctor?  An outside SLP?  An OT? A psychologist? A neurologist?

Do you honestly believe they are objective?  I hate to tell you, but they are just as far from objectivity as the informed parent.

Do you think they paid good money for their educational training, that they spent years of hard work so they can be objective about their profession and question the belief system they are taught? For cripes sake, physicians can’t even get breastfeeding information straight because they receive their “education” from formula companies.

Do you think they are not influenced by the research they read, their contemporaries, by the APA, by the media? By the very fact they are in the business of tending sick people.  Come on, they are kinda trained to look for something wrong.

Is this what we are calling “objective”?

Quite frankly, objectivity doesn’t exist, just like control over your children doesn’t exist either.  It’s all an illusion, we’re making this shit up as we go.

When did three-year-olds become required to act like six-year olds?

Do I dare admit my eight-year-old still acts like a six-year-old?

Oops, I just did.

Thank god I’ve had a rabies vaccine.

disclaimer: the opinions in this blog post are in no way associated with anyone whose blog is not Queen of Shake Shake

We can all relax! The world is not ending by the second coming of the messiah. At least not from my womb. Turns out Wally’s vasectomy is still fully functional because Aunt Flo finally arrived yesterday afternoon.

Funny thing though? While I thought *I* would feel more than a bit disappointed if I did start my period (I wasn’t. I was very eh, don’t I look the idiot now), it was actually Wally who was disappointed. This is funny because Wally practically railroaded the vasectomy five and a half years ago.

Have I told you that the vasectomy was the one and only Great Marital Debate I ever lost? (at least the only one I’ll admit to losing) It’s true. I didn’t want to go through with it and I voiced the fact I wasn’t 100% certain more than once. Hell, I wasn’t even 80% certain. Even during the drive over to the clinic, I vocalized my reservations. But I didn’t stop there.

At the doctor’s office, I had my hand poised over the spousal consent signature line, pen shaking, and I stopped. I looked up at Wally and said, “I don’t think I want to do this.”

But Wally, oh, he had me at my weakest. He was sure he wanted this. We were broke a lot back then so how would we afford more kids? Also, I was severely sleep deprived with a six month old baby who was on an utterly complete sleeping strike and a toddler who had morphed into a Tasmanian devil with rabies. I hadn’t slept longer than one hour straight in weeks and I was weak, so very weak to the idea of NEVER GOING THROUGH THIS HELL AGAIN.

All Wally had to do was mention the words “pay for college” and then “sleep” and I was down on my knees in tears at the glorious vision of sweet, sweet sleep.

And so I signed.

I was able to stay with Wally during the procedure and when the doctor pulled up that little bit of vas deferens to cut, I had to bite my tongue to keep from shouting NO! My gut was telling me it was all kinds of wrong, but I was sleepy, so very sleepy and it’s very hard to pay attention to your gut when you’re chronically exhausted.

So my objections went up in smoke. Literally. The doctor cauterized Wally’s vas deferens and after seeing my husband’s balls smoke like they were on fire, that was pretty much that.

About 3 years ago, I got a severe case of baby fever, and I mean SEVERE. I wanted another baby so bad that I went as far as researching urologists in the area who performed reversals and giving the list to Wally to call about costs.

He never made the call.

This past summer, the same thing happened again, but maybe that had more to do with my baby starting school and wanting to postpone the glaring reality that it was time for me to get on with a life of my own again than truly wanting another child.

Then again, maybe that is just another justification to drown out the gut feeling? Or perhaps I’m a bigger person than I think and pushed through the fear of a new life chapter which posed as wanting another child and have come to the other side?

Who knows!

The pull of a baby is still strong. There is something so intoxicating (and I do enjoy me some intoxication) about falling in love with a baby that it’s hard to accept there will be no more falling in love with another child ever again. It’s a door of possibility that I’ve struggled to firmly shut for years now, though in reality, it was firmly closed over five years ago.

Maybe that’s just the way it is for many woman; no matter if you stopped at one, two or eight, there is always that ache for one more.

Meanwhile, I remind myself how much I enjoy yelling the words “Let’s go!” and all I have to do is grab my purse, put only myself in the car and buckle only myself. No car seats, no diaper bags, no sippy cups. We just up and go. And sleep. And bathroom moments to myself. And there are no nap times or nursing schedules I have to hurry scurry for either. If I want to spend six hours alone, I can do so without my breasts leaking so bad I could put out forest fires with them.

But there is still this glaring reality that I should be getting on with my own life already, and yet I still don’t know exactly how I should go about doing that?

Oh well. Somewhere there’s a $10 bottle of wine waiting for me. And would you look at that, I just happen to have an unspent $10 in my pocket I saved by not buying a pregnancy test!

And dear reader? If I ever start to freak out over being a few days late, would you give me the following reminders, in this order:

#1 Heather, you aren’t as regular as you think you are
#2 so shut the hell up
#3 and go spend that $10 on a bottle of wine instead of a pregnancy test.

I thank you in advance.

P.S. I really should stop talking about my period so much on the internet. The 70+ year-old guy from my church who reads my blog has probably gouged his eyes out with a shoehorn by now and is afraid to get within six feet of my butt lest I fart. You would think I’d learn from Elmo’s blog-induced blindness to stop talking about periods, wouldn’t you? But I haven’t, because later this week I plan to talk about periods again, only this time in a general how-to-explain-to-kids kind of way. You can draft your letters of appreciation to Kohls for yet another post from me on periods.

P.P.S. Elmo, you might want to skip my blog this entire week.

My post yesterday probably seemed as if I were taking little faults in my husband and being bitchy about it. I must be nit-picking during a rage of PMS hormones, right?

In a way, yes. In a way, no.

Yes, those were little things and I was nit-picking, maybe a little bitchy too, but I’m not a mess of PMS hormones. I wasn’t mad, just exasperated and perplexed in the ‘huh? men.’ kind of way.

But….

I am overall frustrated and almost completely disenchanted with marriage.

Wait? Did you read that right? Let me say it again because I almost never write anything negative about my husband and our marriage. It’s usually just the opposite.

I am overall frustrated and almost completely disenchanted with marriage.

For almost three years now, whenever I hear of someone I know getting engaged, the first thought that comes to my mind is to offer condolences, not congratulations. I have to stop myself and remember the appropriate response that is expected of me in the situation, otherwise I would be compelled to hug the girl in a compassionate way and whisper “I’m so sorry” in her ear.

This admission of mine may surprise anyone who has followed my blog because I usually sing the praises of King Wally. Truth be told, he isn’t a bad guy. As a dad, he’s great and in many ways, he is better than the average husband.

Which makes me wonder if we women have been bamboozled to think if we have a husband who will watch his own kids, wash a few dishes, and attempt to do laundry (even if he screws it up, which I still suspect is on purpose) that we have it good.

Hey, that’s a step up from days gone by when if your husband didn’t beat you, you had it good, right?

The times I’ve dared to whisper my unhappy feelings with people I know, I’m usually met with tales of how their husbands won’t even do X Y or Z, all of which Wally does do.

It’s always on the tip of my tongue to ask them why in the world they stay in their marriage if the husband won’t do even X Y or Z, because damn if I would. But I don’t ask. I feel crazy instead, as if I’m way out of line to question our collective definition of a good marriage.

Though it may not seem so from this post, I do appreciate the X Y & Z things Wally does. Outside of the children, X Y & Z are probably the only things that have kept us together for the past 3 or so years. I give him the brownie points for washing some dishes, all the diapers he changed, watching the boys so I can have lunch with a girlfriend, taking care of the lawn, washing the cars.

Then I wonder where my brownie points are?

As the wife, I’m just expected to do those things, minus the grass. But he doesn’t gets all gushy and sentimental over the meals I cook, you know. Why does he get brownie points for doing the same thing I do almost every day? About the only thing I get brownie points for are blow jobs.

It’s almost as if grooms are given a card on their wedding day that reads something like this…

Man, you just get a job and leave the rest up to your wife. She takes care of everything else in life, even if she works too. Bills, checkbook, laundry, groceries, meals, holidays, gifts for everyone, including herself. Dude, you don’t even have to think because she takes care of that too!

Should your wife ever try to get you to do something more, then play dumb, fuck it up and you’re off the hook!

When you have kids, this pass really kicks in. On top of the other stuff listed above, she’ll take care of the kids, kids school, PTA, conferences, birthdays, dentist, doctors, room parent, ball practice, homework, Halloween costumes, new clothes, etc. If you want to see this action in high gear, then spawn upon her a high needs child and watch her do even more.

It’s also her responsibility to keep the sex life alive. Should she go too long without doing something real kinky-like, then go into her pajama drawer and rearrange her stuff, strategically placing her naughty lingerie on the very top to give her a hint next time she gets ready for bed. You’ve now done your part to spice things up, the rest is on her.

Oh, and she’ll also plan fun stuff for everyone to break up the dull existence of every day life. You just sit back and enjoy the ride.

I’m not kidding when I say it got to the point where Wally told me he needed new underwear, as if I’m suppose to go buy it. Like I would ever expect him to buy my fucking underwear for me?! My god, we’re adults! I’m his wife, not his mother! That little event, which is really little from outside perspective, was another nit-picky thing that opened my floodgates of resentment.

I don’t resent the work I put into our children. Wally and I have arranged our life so I can be the mom who volunteers at the school and bakes homemade cookies. I want that because I know in just a few short years, that stage of motherhood will be disappear as the boys grow.

I don’t even mind baking the occasional cookies and brownies for his office parties, but that’s possibly more about me showing off my exceptional baking skills when it comes to sweets (because I am that good) than doing something from the kindness of my heart. Possibly.

It doesn’t bother me that I do all of the grocery, clothes, and gift shopping. (Except for my own gifts. That does bother me.)

I also don’t resent doing the majority of housework or cooking. I’m home more, only working part-time & from home, and he helps out enough to keep me from going insane with it too. Plus, I’d rather get most of it done while he’s at work so that when we’re all home together, we have the free time to do other things.

But then it’s left on me to do those other things too. Not only am I responsible for the drudgery of every day life, but all the things in life that turn mere existence into Life somehow became my responsibility too. And from what I see with my friends, family and acquaintances, that’s how it is for most women. The wives create the Life together and the men simply show up.

I finally understand why my mom left my dad after 35 years of marriage. I didn’t get it five years ago when she said she couldn’t do it all anymore.

Shit mom, you’ve been doing it for over three decades! Daddy isn’t a bad person! Why now??!!??

I get it now and I don’t know how she stayed as long as she did.

I’m beginning to realize that marriage is a institution of imbalance in which I feel screwed and not in an orgasmic way. It’s not that I don’t get some benefit from marriage, but damn if the scales aren’t out of whack.

Wally knows exactly how I feel about marriage and I can safely say he doesn’t want it to be this way either. But there have only been small changes in how things work in our marriage. Were the roles reversed, I can’t say I’d be the icon for progressive change either. I’d have a pretty sweet deal, why mess that up?

Yet even though we both know things can’t stay so imbalanced and the two of us remain happy together until death do us part, we find it hard to break this common pattern. We don’t even know how we reached this relationship pattern except the possibility that it’s so ingrained in our culture that we do it without realizing.

Perhaps a new attempt would be to erase the fairy tale mindset of living happily ever after and replace it with living fully ever after.

Aunt Flo, I really do not understand why you are such a hateful person.

What have I ever done to you?

From the age of 11, I’ve not only accepted your visits, but taken care of all of your needs too. I’ve supplied you with pads, tampons, and Diva cups. Heating pads, Pamprin, Advil, and even a glass of wine to make the crampiness of your visit better. I’ve taken sick days for you and tolerated pain so bad that it made me nauseated…all for you.

And now that we’ve been around each other for 23 years, I would think we would settle into a routine, be comfortable with each other.

But no, my dear Aunt Flo, you apparently have issues. You have deep issues with women over 30, don’t you?

When you started showing up earlier and earlier every month so that I end up having 13 visits from you a year, well, I accepted it and moved on. When your visits are only 3 days long, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

But then you had the bring back the cramps from my teenage years that leave me writhing in pain if I don’t time the Advil and heating pad just right.

And you don’t stop there.

You decide to change things up a bit, don’t you? Instead of bloating me up with the water retention of my twenties, you now decide I should be bloated with gas so bad that it hurts to sit, walk, lay down, cough, move or do anything at all.

Lovely.

But I’m not stupid! I discovered the new Pamprim for thirtysomething women. A combo shot of chocolate Ex-Lax (because what PMS’ing woman doesn’t want chocolate?) and Gas-X. I know your exact moment of weakness is six hours from the moment of arrival and that’s when I deliver the ol’ one-two. Not a moment before or after! And the five-month pregnant looking belly of gas is avoided.

I thought I had won.

Until you started arriving in the middle of the night with your own little one-two punch. Not only does your arrival rob me of sleep because of the cramps, but I also miss that magic six hour window when you are your weakest.

And so I spend three days bloated and praying to all the Gods to let me fart….please!!

Finally you let the Gods hear my plea.

Right when I’m at work in an office where two other people hear Every! Single! Noise! in the bathroom.

You’ve heard of my Rat, right?

Today, I’d like to introduce you to alllll of my rats.

This is my rat 3 weeks out of 4.

Hawt, I know.

This is my rat 2-3 days prior to an outbreak of bubonic plague.

My PMS is now officially dubbed as rat rabies. Forget “God Save the Queen!” Y’all need to be shouting “God Save the King!” when I have rabies. Really. I got all rabid with the King simply because he ran the dishwasher and left a glass out. God save him.

And then this is my rat during the bubonic plague.

The bloat! Gawd, the bloat! You could set your clock by it. Eight hours after the onset of the bubonic plague, it begins…..the tightening of the waistband, the sudden urge to wear only elastic waisted pants, the pondering that I should have kept some maternity clothes because I could pass for 4-5 months pregnant. Unbuttoned waistbands become the hottest rage in fashion statements at the Shake-Shake.

I need a serious rat tonic for this bloat. And let me tell you, Midol is for sissies.

You can’t OD on Gas-X, can you? Because I eat that stuff like candy during the bubonic plague.

Gas-X….the real Midol for my rat.

Today I volunteered at Payton’s school. It’s teacher appreciation week, so moms are needed to take the kids to the cafeteria so teachers can have a duty-free lunch. Since I’m one of the few moms who work part-time instead of full-time, I got the call.

I’ve been told by his teacher teacher of how he acts during lunch. How he doesn’t interact with the other kids during this usual social highlight of a school day. How he seems to withdraw into his own world and doesn’t really carry on conversations with the kids or act like he even cares to be there. I was aware that was part of his odd behaviors.

But hearing it and seeing it are two different things…

Today I saw for myself that in a cafeteria full of peers Payton withdraws to another place and seems to be all alone in a room full of people. After 15 minutes in there and 3 more classes make their way in, the din of voices rises and I see him pull at his bangs and rub his forehead — a sign I know means the noise of it all is beginning to hurt his head. As I watch from the other table, as I’m peeling an orange and cleaning up spilled milk, I know he is struggling to handle it all and keep it together.

Right then and there I wanted to cry because I see how the simple act of eating lunch at school is different for him. That it isn’t a happy, social event where you cut up a bit and play with your friend. It’s not like it was for me and the vast majority of other kids. Instead it means he withdraws in order to handle the physical pain in his ears and head, and that he has probably had to do this every day, 5 days a week, for the last 9 months.

My heart breaks for my odd boy out.

You’d think I would get use to this — being mom to the odd boy out. It’s always been that way, and I’ve been that mom for 6.5 years now. But I’m not use to it. I talk a good talk by voicing the positives of his unique/odd/whatever you want to call it behavior. But walking the walk is much, much harder.

I feel like I’m in the midst of chaos right now and I don’t know what to think. I’m leaving the mental safety of blaming myself; a place where his behavior was my fault, but it was safe because I could change what I did, so it’s really me and not him.

Now that road is behind me and I’m on a dirt road where the doctor cannot tell me whether my child is autistic or highly gifted. Yesterday I’m told that their neurologist would likely diagnosis him as autistic but….BUT.

That is an official, medical BUT.

Payton seems to be falling into a gray area of uncertainty. It could be that instead of autistic, he is highly gifted and the social/emotional problems we see are actually a common thing in highly gifted people.

It seems that Payton continues his pattern of leaving everyone scratching their head in wonder by not fitting into any one category. His doctor tells us that we’re in a unique, and not very easy position of having to decide which way we should proceed….down the road of probable autistic diagnosis or the road of possible highly-gifted mind.

Suddenly, the weight of parenthood is fully upon my shoulders like it has never been before. On the outside I’m sure it seems like an easy answer. What parent wants their child to be autistic? And what parent wouldn’t want their child to have a gifted mind? But the weight of the responsibility is there despite outside appearance.

Whichever path we choose, Payton has no choice but to follow us because he is a child and we have to decide this for him.

What if we decide wrong? What if we decide to take the gifted route and he begins to slide instead of thrive because he isn’t getting any type of therapy or accommodations at school? What about the years of early intervention we’ve already missed and could continue to miss in these early education years? What if his odd behaviors are not accepted by others but a diagnosis would bring acceptance and understanding to him? How can we ignore the obvious characteristics of autism that fit our son? Is this denial? Or faith?

Then there is the other path.

What if we decide to have him diagnosed and his world is now shaped by a developmental disability and all along his life could have been shaped as gifted instead? What if he is gifted and we can shape the way others perceive him in a positive way instead? What if we can’t shape people’s perceptions? What would happen to his self-esteem, his belief in himself to know he has this disorder? Especially if he were to find out we could have went a different way.

The decision can’t be made lightly. I have no way of knowing the long-term effects of either path. And I have no way of knowing whether I will get this right and be the person it is going to take raise this child well.

We’re at a crossroad where I am overwhelmed with the responsibility of how I will shape this other life. And not just any other life but the life of a person who I love beyond all things, and who innately trusts me with his life. I cannot afford to make a mistake.

As I stood in that cafeteria, I found myself wishing he were average. I wished he were less than he is and that is wrong. It isn’t fair to Payton.

What I really want is what all moms want….for their child to be happy and accepted for who they are. But I’m defining happiness and acceptance from my very average and typical mind and what it means to me. What does it for mean for him?

I’m left wishing I could get inside his mind and just understand. To know that despite how my very average mind sees it, that he is happy and feels accepted by those around him. That he doesn’t feel like the odd boy out.

So not only am I at this crossroad of decision, I am also forced to redefine what happiness, acceptance, friendship, and normal means. I obviously can’t continue to judge it by societal standards regardless of which road we take.

I’ve never felt less grounded in my life. I feel like I’ve been taken from my regular place of existence and shoved into a world I don’t know and I don’t even know which way to go for answers.

I wonder if that is how Payton feels a lot of the time too.

It seems as if my life as mom of the odd boy out will always be a dirt road to somewhere unchartered and new.

I’m following along several other bloggers who are inspired by this fabulous, thought-provoking, empowering post from Rebecca at Girls Gone Child. If you haven’t yet heard of it in blogosphere, go read it. It’s worth the read by itself but what I’m about to say will not make much sense without understanding how this got started.

The point of her blog was to help us moms (and dads too) reclaim ourselves as good, great, even amazing parents.

please pause while I give it a standing ovation.

There was one line in particular in Rebecca’s blog that really struck a cord with me. She said, “Claiming to be bad parents is the new ‘I’m fat’ for even the thinnest of women.” I completely get what Rebecca is talking about. I understand it and have seen it in action.

I just wish that was as far as it went with me. Sure, I’ve jokingly called myself a bad mother when I confessed how I folded the Spare’s cheese into squares and not in rectangles. Everyone who read that knew it was tongue in cheek.

But the whole feeling of being a bad mother goes a bit deeper for me.

I spent my early parenting years (well, the first five years, so really almost all of my parenting to date) feeling much like a failure because I had this child I could barely manage. And I don’t mean barely manage as in the rough days here and there, oh this mothering stuff is tough, because it is a tough job.

I mean barely managing as in I had a child I could not control. I mean tantrums so out of control he would injure himself, how he would purposely injure himself as a small toddler. I’m talking biting himself until he bruised and banging his head in anger until he had a goose egg.

I had a child who would rarely accept a hug from me. My child turned away from my affection. Or he would let me hug him and stay stiff that non-verbally screamed…get off!..and left me feeling rejected. He would rarely let me comfort him when he was crying, upset or hurt. I couldn’t make him feel better with a kiss or a touch. He would pull away or cry even harder when I did.

I even had zero control over what shirt the kid wore…at 20 months old. I could not control something so simple as what shirt he wore. Oh, I could force it. I could physically restrain him & wrestle that polo shirt on while he kicked and screamed but he would keep kicking & screaming long after I put it on him. And wherever it was we were going, he would continue being out of control there too.

Over a damn shirt.

And no, a shirt isn’t that big of a deal. But a shirt on top of everything else, on top of the nothing else I could do right with this child….

Those few examples just skim the barrel of life as a parent to the Heir. Other parents all around me didn’t have the kind of problems I had with my son. They could control their toddlers and kids within reason.

I could not.

Within reason? What was that and how did it apply to my son?

Parenting techniques & solutions that work so well they have been passed down for generations did not work for me. Advice from these other parents in control didn’t work. The common sense, tried and true solutions didn’t work. It had to be me. I was the problem. Because everyone else could make these things work and their children were good, reasonable, malleable. But I couldn’t do it.

Damn right I felt like a bad mother. Damn skippy I thought I was a failure at this mother gig.

That was before I heard or knew the terms Aspergers, high functioning autism, autistic spectrum, sensory integration. I spent the first 5 years not knowing his behavior problems could possibly be one of those above disorders and not because I am a bad mother.

So for me personally, thinking & saying “I’m a bad mother” isn’t the new “I’m fat.”

Just like those early years are the most formative for the children, what if they are also the most formative for the parent and their self-image too? And it isn’t like a magic light has turned on in the Heir’s mind and all of the troubling behavior is a thing of the past. I’m still faced on a pretty damn regular basis with situations where I feel like a failure again. Of not knowing what to do with him, how to handle him, how to help him. I still feel helpless a lot. Old habits die hard.

I’m still in the process of healing myself of all of the doubts, guilt, and mostly self- blame. Because it’s only been about a year or so that I even knew autism was a possibility. And we still don’t know if it is for sure because that’s the road we’re on right now. We might never know exactly what it is that makes our son tick the way he ticks. And maybe that’s ok. Maybe we don’t have to know. He is what he is and it is up to us as parents to find ways to help him thrive, regardless of what it is called.

After reading Rebecca’s post and I asked myself how I’m an amazing parent when it comes to the Heir, I had to stop and think. And think. And think. Because it isn’t easy to sift through all of the hardness of raising him and get to the good. But I’m doing it and doing it more on a regular basis than I use too. I’m beginning to focus more on the good and not the worries, which is why I haven’t really written about the problems with him before. I don’t want “abnormal” or “wrong” to be my focus with him anymore.

Friends truly are treasures and Jennifer’s post was exactly what I needed to read to get some positive feelings going. And I began to realize some other things.

I’m a good mother because I am his advocate and his voice while he is still too young to understand what is going on inside of him.

I’m a good mother because I now get that physical touch feels different to him and I ask if I can have a hug instead of just taking one. I give him the opportunity to decide what his body can handle at that moment and I respect him when he says no, not right now. I don’t make him feel guilty for turning down affection from his mom.

I’m a great mother because I take him shopping to pick out his own clothes, even if it means going to two dozen stores and touching over 200 shirts to make sure they “feel right” to him.

I’m a great mother because I support his focused & very real passion for the ocean and all marine life. I do all that I can to encourage his love of nature & learn right along with him.

I’m an amazing mother because I try to peel back all of the things society labels as abnormal and know he is something more than I’ll ever be.

I’m an amazing mother because I have faith that somehow all of his sensory issues and quirks will serve some higher purpose for him, even if I can’t see how yet. I have faith in him.

I am an amazing mother!

I’m feeling really gushy right now and want to thank all of my friends who have been there with me through this journey, seeing that there is something more to the Heir than usual, being the ones to remind me that I am not a bad mother when I really didn’t feel it at all, and also for helping me see the wonderful in him too. All of you have supported and uplifted me more than you’ll probably ever know.

It’s a beautiful Spring Break afternoon. The sun is shining, the soft breeze is blowing, the birds are singing…..

And here’s Heather…playing with her panties.

Am I the only one that gets a dose of Spring Fevah and for some reason I think I need to reorganize closets, drawers, pantries and entire rooms? Truthfully though, my panty drawer needed serious help. When you have to stuff and shove to close your underwear drawer and you do laundry every other day, it’s time to de-undie the undie drawer. Do you really need more than 4 pairs when you’re doing laundry that often?

It turns out you do.

Any gal knows all of the different panties that make up an undie drawer. Your comfy panties, sexy panties, period panties, low rise jean panties, panties to match your new pretty bra and on and on. And with all of those different panty categories, it is very easy to get panty drawer overload and it must be thinned out every now & then.

It was time for me to get honest with my undies.

I sat on my bed surrounded by allllll of my panties and asked the age old question…..

Which would stay and which would go?

Alas, it was the 9 year old pairs of thongs that had to go. These babies haven’t seen the light of day in years. Thank god for small miracles. They are relics left from my pre-baby days when I actually looked good in them, but now they just mocked me and my post-baby body. With the badly stretch-marked tummy and cottage cheese butt cheeks, I’d have to be married to a blind man for a pair of thongs on my ass to turn him on. Not to mention the the extra cushion on my hips that didn’t use to be there. Nothing says sexy like loose skin rolling over the waistband. Gag. (That’s gag with a capital G.) Why do I need to keep them? I certainly can’t recall the King Consort recently (as in over 2190 days recently) giving me the looky-look and whispering to me to go put on my thongs. And there are just some things that do not go hand-in-hand with thongs.

During this time of deep panty reflection, I had to admit to myself that I’ll probably never look good in a thong again. So I said goodbye to the sexy panties of ole, you lacy black thong you, you butt flosser you, you hemorrhoid irritant you. The times we had were good but times have changed and so has my ass. In your place the lacy hipster has become all the rage in my panty drawer by turning post-baby bottom into sexy mama. I heart the hipsters.

Oh, and I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that this one pair of panties made the cut & stayed in my panty drawer. Ok, I have two pairs…..

Can you say MILF?
*snort*
I hope none of my hubby’s co-workers are reading this. If they are, there is no longer anything left to the imagination as to what I have on under those dresses I wear to the yearly Addy awards. As if anyone was wondering in the first place.

and quite frequently I might add. Before giving birth to my first child, I believed only old people had hemorrhoids. Even though I had read pregnancy could cause them, I sailed through my entire first pregnancy without them. Given I made it 9 months without having the ‘Roid experience, I thought I had a Superhero Butt that was immune to this affliction. Funny how 22 hours of labor and over 3 hours of pushing to get out a 9 lb 6 oz baby resulting in a 3rd degree tear with no epidural can bust your Superhero Butt myth.

Instead of K-Y Jelly, I purchased Preparation H. Forget the “Honey not tonight, I have a headache.” excuse. But what could he say really? It was his son that did it to me. And it was his genes that made our son so big at birth. The King Consort did the right thing and patted my back, apologized and said he felt bad for me. But I could have sworn I heard him roll over and giggle a time or two.

Now I’m older and wiser, the Superhero Butt Myth is long busted and I now know that hemorrhoids aren’t just for old people but for all of the moms of the world too! They are like stretch marks and should be considered a badge of honor. snort. riiiiiight. Fortunately, unlike stretch marks, you can hide them AND time does heal all wounds so the ‘roids do get better. Some. Still though, it doesn’t take a whole lot of exertion to bring on another occurrence.

Nevertheless, I’m a real mom so hemorrhoids won’t hold me back. While they may come in between me and my K-Y Jelly, they’ll never come in between me and my boys and doing what I do best…having fun.

Real Moms: Making Hemorrhoids Happen While Having Fun

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In the beginning of motherhood, who would ever imagine that you might, one day, experience & become an expert in Poop Negotiations? I certainly didn’t but it was in my future. It started off small with claps and exclamations of positive reinforcements…boy, doesn’t that sound dumb. Acting like a cheerleader over poop? But then, when that didn’t produce results, I started bribing with candy, prizes, rewards of trips and on and on.

If you are forunate enough to have a child who potty trains easily, you’ll probably sail through Poop Negotiations quickly without even realizing you had them. I, on the other hand, was gifted by God with “determined” children and have become thoroughly immersed in Poop Negotiations. Having been in and out of Poop Negotiations for over 3 years now, I’m an old hand at the game.

But there is one paritcular Poop Negotiation that I wonder is exclusive to mother vs. male toddler negotiating parties. It’s a negotiation point I have over and over, and it is the “Don’t Hold Your Poop” Negotiation. I’ve been through it so many times and am still not successful in reaching a mutual understanding. My argument of ‘when you hold your poop you get dirty skid marked butt cheeks, thus making it sooo much harder to clean’ just doesn’t seem to work. And the other party can’t seem to understand the ‘when you have a skid marked up butt it actually takes even MORE time away from your playing due to the extra clean up than if you just pooped as soon as you felt the urge.’ negotiating argument either. I seriously think this is, in fact, an exlcusive mother-male child Poop Negotiation, and I have discovered the reason why grown men have skid mark stained underwear & take so damn long in the john. They never ever understand how to prevent skid marks.

Another Poop Negotiation that I frequently have is the “Flush Away vs. Save It for Daddy”. The other party is so proud of their excrement that they insist on not flushing the potty but keeping the poop in the bowl until Daddy gets home to see it. Oh lovely. I had that particular negotiation just yesterday. I admit, sometimes I do cave on this Poop Negotiation because I sooo want daddy to enjoy looking at and commending the poop like I have to. Some parenting moments you just want to share with your spouse. However, that is all dependent on the time of day the poop occurs and the odiferous quality of the poop. If it is shortly before dad arrives, oh sure let’s share the moment with him. Who doesn’t love a surprise waiting for them at home, right?! Yesterday, however, was quite a few hours before daddy got home and when I started to smell it in the den, I had to take a stand and flush away. Which upset the opposing party, of course. How dare I flush the poop! Oh well. Sometimes you have to cut the negotiations and tell it like it is. Buddy boy, I’m not going to sugar coat it — you’re crap actually DOES stink so you’ll have to make more for daddy when he gets home if you feel that strongly about showing some to your dad!
Poop Negotiation Over!