Anxious Mom

A Rant And A Recap

Well, this was meant to be posted on Monday, but here we are on Wednesday.

I’m a pretty handy person, but I cannot undo the damage my husband did to our front door. He thought the handle was sticking a little, so he tried to fix it. And his fix means that it is now damn near impossible to get in the front door of our house. You have to press down on the button thingy on the handle with both hands, apply a lot of pressure (more than what our 100-pound son can muster), and if you’re lucky, it’ll open. It usually takes several tries and a handful of curse words to open.

And the back door is bad, too. He thought some air was getting in under the door last winter, so he screwed a strip of wood or something in the door frame. Because maybe he’d save a couple bucks on his power bill. And now, not only does no cold air come in (and I was confused about the air that was getting in last winter, because IT WASN’T COLD), but I also cannot close the door tight enough to lock the deadbolt. My husband is the only person in our home who can lock the back door. He says the door is fine and we’re just not doing it right and insists on keeping it the way it is.

Last week, I noticed that the door was unlocked and my husband was already in bed. Rather than wake him (and likely get no response), I tried to lock the door. I leaned on that door as hard as I could, but nope. I even took a running start and rammed my shoulder against the door in the hope of getting it close enough to do the deadbolt, but also, nope.

I need different doors or locks, people. Or a husband who will leave stuff alone.

Rant over.

We had a pretty good long weekend. We did fireworks on the fourth. We don’t usually do fireworks and the such because we aren’t very patriotic, but BG wanted fireworks, so she got them. She later regretted this when one of the fireworks “attacked us.”

So, my husband lit one of the big fireworks he bought and it started going off, but it was firing sideways. I told him I didn’t think that looked right, but he insisted it was fine, even though it was dangerously close to hitting the neighbors house. And then it shifted somehow and fired where I was standing with the kids. Like, two feet away from my head. I grabbed BG and ran (sorry LM) while fireworks whizzed past us. We did not become an ER statistic that night, thankfully. The girl has complained a lot about how her daddy attacked us with fireworks. Never again.

On Saturday, the kids stayed over with the grandparents while my husband and I went to a cookout at a friend’s house. I was not looking forward to peopling, but they had so much rum. So much. Between the rum, a pool, and a hot tub, I enjoyed myself. I tried to play volleyball and embarrassed myself, but that would’ve happened rum or no rum, because I suck at volleyball.

We didn’t do much on Sunday, and yesterday, BG had to go to the doctor for her five-year checkup. Just ten minutes after we got there, BG loudly announced that she had been waiting for two and a half hours and she was ready to go. After much shushing, she shifted gears from complaining to filling up my camera roll with her random pictures:

That’s her Forky and heart. I’ll pass on including the ones where you get a good look up my nostrils.

The checkup was all good. BG’s still petite (9th percentile for height and weight) and didn’t grow much from last year. She’ll probably have a growth spurt after we buy and take the tags off of her school uniform stuff 😉 We talked to the doctor about the ASD diagnosis, and she said she was glad that we got a second opinion and that’s what she thought was going on, too. She gave me a list of books to check out that she said she found helpful with her own child, so my stack of books is continuing to grow.

And I’m going to wrap up the post because a) it’s two days late and I can’t remember how I wanted to end it and b) my son wants to have a staring contest for some reason.

That’s What She Said

Some of y’all know that The Office is one of my favorite TV shows ever. The boy has watched it with us for a long time. We used to be careful about which episodes he watched, but since turning 11, we haven’t paid attention as much. And this has resulted in him saying a few things that are rather inappropriate.

I’ve heard, “That’s what she said” about 500 times. In all fairness, that became a thing at LM’s school. A lot of his classmates also watch The Office, so they have all picked up on Michael’s favorite saying. The kicker? They don’t have a clue what it means judging from the examples LM has given me. For example, if the teacher said, “Read blah blah for homework,” one of the kids would say, “That’s what she said.” Or if the teacher said, “Line up for lunch,” someone would say, “That’s what she said.”

They basically think the phrase is supposed to be used for whenever a female says something, which is hilarious. LM accidentally used it appropriately recently. I commented on something being a mouthful, and he said, “That’s what she said.” He had no clue why I thought that was hilarious vs. my lack of laughter when he later told me, “That’s what she said” after I commented on how good the tacos were.”

Remember this one?

Yeah…LM called his sister that a few weeks ago when he got pissed off at her. I was driving at the time, and driving isn’t a good thing to be doing when you hear your son call his sister that. After telling him not to ever repeat that again, I asked him what he thought it meant. “It means she’s a dumb brat,” he told me. Uh, no. Just no. And even then, we don’t call names.

(BTW, when I had to reorder checks last year, I tried to have this printed on my checks. I know, I know, not mature, but the lady in the office at LM’s school is someone I don’t like at all, so I wanted to print them for her — every time I send in a check, it’s in an envelope only she sees. Unfortunately, the company canceled the order.)

And just last week, LM made a reference that caught his dad off guard. He was in the bathroom supervising the kids brushing their teeth when I heard him yell, “NO! Don’t ever say that again!” LM said this:

And we’re back to making sure he only watches certain episodes of the show.

Home Alone

Y’all remember how busy my June was? Well, it was riddled with stomach bugs, too. I guess that’s the price you pay when the kids a) go to camps and b) constantly have their hands in their mouths. They pick up everything.

The last bug didn’t involve puke or diarrhea, so that was nice at least. It involved fevers, headaches, earaches, muscle cramps, and a sore throat and lasted a few days. And now that I’ve written that out, I realize it sounds a lot like the flu. Do people get the flu in the summer? I’ve never heard of it, but if anyone would get that, it’d be my two.

The girl won a free stay at a themed hotel/water park near us, so that was planned for Sunday. Unfortunately for me, a migraine hit on Saturday, and then I woke up in the middle of the night with a fever and the absolute worst headache I’ve had in my life. The rational part of my brain knew it had to be a double whammy of the migraine and their bug, but the non-rational part (which tends to be a big part at times) was convinced I was gonna die. When I had that cochlear implant surgery, they told me there is an increased risk of meningitis, so I was freaking out a bit. WebMD suggested a brain hemorrhage, by the way. I don’t know why I even bother with that site.

I woke my husband up after I took my temperature and told him I might be dying. He said “Sorry” and went back to sleep. So in between groaning over my head throbbing, I silently fumed at him.

I stayed home from the trip. Hearing the girl scream at the top of her lungs in the other room made my head hurt worse, and there was no way in hell I was gonna try to be in the car with her for an hour. Plus I knew I’d just be in the hotel room, so no point in going. I’m 35, and that was the first time I have ever stayed alone at night. I don’t necessarily want to be around people, but I don’t like being alone either, because I’m a fraidy cat. On the rare occasion I was supposed to be alone in the past, my baby brother would stay with me. He works weekends now, though, since he’s a cop.

Y’all would’ve laughed at my paranoid self. I had the house all set up so I would hopefully hear any intruders. I put stuff at all the exterior doors that would crash over if anyone broke in, had the lights and TV on, and I stuck a door stop thingy under the bedroom door. And then it occurred to me that if I super felt like I was dying in the night and had to call 911 that they wouldn’t be able to get to me. Paranoid/anxious person problems.

No one got me. And the possible meningitis obvious was just a migraine and bug. Whoo hoo, I made it!

Hopefully with July being slower, and staying inside more because of the heat wave, we can avoid more bugs. 🤞🏻

And Now We Know

Some of y’all who have been following this blog over the past few years know that our parenting experience with Baby Girl has been challenging in ways. We kept waiting for her to outgrow certain behaviors (I can’t tell you how many times we were told it was all a phase), but that never happened. At the end of last year, BG’s pediatrician referred her to a specialist. We saw a family PA prior, and she always brushed us off about BG’s issues. The pediatrician found the behaviors alarming, so she referred her to a specialist and also got the ball rolling to start speech therapy and occupational therapy. The specialist didn’t seem very concerned about the meltdowns, though, and thought she has ADHD. The appointment was very short, though, and when LM was diagnosed with ADHD, his doctor took several appointments to come to that.

We decided to get a second opinion. We wanted to meet up with the folks from her school before summer ends with a better idea of what was going on so we could all be on the same page and develop a game plan. We expressed our concerns with the new doctor in the initial appointment, and he said he wanted to do a thorough evaluation to look at different possibilities for what was going on with her, but that he was primarily concerned about autism.

Over the past couple of months, BG saw the psychologist several times, we did a shit ton of questionnaires, and he talked to her preschool teacher. On Friday, we got the results. First, he agreed with the other specialist and said she does have ADHD. He came to that conclusion after spending more than 10-15 minutes with her (which is what the other specialist did, sigh), so we were comfortable with that. Next, he said that she also has high functioning autism. He spent about an hour going over the tests and stuff and showed us how everything supports his diagnosis. The doctor said that it can be tough to diagnose in gifted younger girls, but that she was a textbook case of a little kid with HFA.

I was surprised. I knew autism was a possibility, of course, but still didn’t expect it. And I was flabbergasted at first on how she would be considered a textbook case. She can be very outgoing and chatty when she wants to be, she can be very charming, she doesn’t stim (or so I thought), she made a couple of friends at preschool last year, and she isn’t terrible with making eye contact. She has such a feisty and mischievous little personality, too. BG just has a real spark to her.

Granted, there are “buts” to some of those things. Like, she can be outgoing and chatty, BUT it’s usually her talking on and on about the stuff she’s into. And with her friends, she told me how she doesn’t play with them at the same time, but switches up depending on who will do what she wants. As far as eye contact goes, sometimes she does okay and sometimes she doesn’t make it at all. Like last week when she and I met with her teacher, BG talked excitedly about her birthday for a few minutes, and then wouldn’t make eye contact with her teacher at all, would barely speak outside of “yes” or “no” questions, and talked in the flattest voice ever. It was like someone flipped a light switch. She can be in her own little world a lot, though, so it’s hard to say that when she doesn’t make eye contact (or doesn’t maintain it well) that it’s because of a specific reason.

Aside from not having any of the severe behavioral issues that BG has, LM seemed to be a better fit for that when he was tested around age 7 or 8. My husband, on the other hand, later told me he wasn’t surprised at all and said he knew she had autism, that it’s obvious, and it was just a matter of getting it diagnosed. I don’t remember him ever saying that before, but okay. He also pointed out that LM was also chatty and charming when he was younger, which I guess I had forgotten since he is now a moody tween. At his theater camp, he wouldn’t even sit with the other kids…he wanted to sit by himself and look at his Pokemon cards. I asked why and he said, “None of those kids will be in my class next year, so why should I try to be friendly with them when it doesn’t matter?” As an introvert, I can relate so hard, but as a mom, c’mon, kid!

When I brought up that non-textbook stuff with the doctor, he reminded me that it’s a spectrum disorder and that girls with it present differently from boys. Being outgoing can be normal, he said she does stim (but it isn’t obvious like hand flapping would be, but he considers the nail biting, skin picking, and licking stuff to be stimming). He also said girls like her are excellent as masking and can come off as being “normal,” which is part of why it can be tough to diagnose.

All righty, then.

This has been quite a year for her. She was diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder this year, she has been in speech and occupational therapy all year, and now this. It has been a lot, but I am SO glad we are figuring things out and getting her help. She’ll also start therapies for social skills and helping her learn to cope better (thereby reducing the meltdowns, I hope). The doctor said doing diagnosing her early and adding in those extra therapies now will make a world of difference down the road.

And, oh…remember how BG often acts like she can spell or read a lot? She didn’t hold back for the doctor, who said she tested as reading on a second grade level.

Yeah.

This is long enough, but I have a lot more to say — especially regarding the stuff the diagnosis explains the hell out of — so I’ll tackle that in the coming days/weeks.

We Have A 5-Year-Old

Our weekend was a busy one since our sweet girl had her birthday! She’s five now, which she is equal parts thrilled and angry over. Thrilled because, “I’m five and have been wanting to be five my whole life” and angry because “I’m not a baby anymore and want to stay four forever.” She cracks me up.

She had her preschool party last month since we hoped having it early would ensure most of her classmates would come. (It did not, sigh.) And we had her family party on Saturday and spent Sunday just the four of us. Usually I make a special birthday breakfast, but she wanted to go for McDonald’s for breakfast, so that’s what we did. And her special birthday dinner was a grilled cheese sandwich. She was easy to please at least.

We went to see Toy Story 4 yesterday, too, and I cried more than I did over Toy Story 3. (But not as much as Endgame, which is the most I’ve cried over any movie ever.) I won’t give away any spoilers, but despite the crying, it was probably the worst of the series. And by “worst,” I mean it was really good, but probably only a B+ compared to the A or A+ the other movies are.

We got the girl a few birthday presents, and her favorite was a uterus/ovary plush. She has been obsessed with body organs lately and requested a bunch of different plush organs. She wanted a fetus, which I ordered, but it got canceled. We’ll see how long she sticks with that obsession. I think she’s shifting gears to space stuff from her other obsession (road signs), as she’s been talking about the solar system a lot. If that obsession would have kicked in earlier, it would have been much easier to find gifts for.

She told her teacher all about how much she loved body organs at our meeting last week, and the look on that woman’s face was priceless. Especially when she mentioned getting a uterus cake. And then BG broke out her “About Me” bag, which included a tiny gallbladder and stomach. After recovering, the teacher said she couldn’t wait to tell her assistant about that since that was the most interesting student interest she has seen.

The kiddo is sick today. After seeming fine all day yesterday, she got a headache and started running a fever last night. Same thing today and no other symptoms. We’ve been passing bugs around for the past month (of the 24-hour variety), so hopefully that’s all this is. If we can get by without projectile vomiting again, that’d be nice.

We Don’t Love Her Anymore

When Little Man was Baby Girl’s age, there wasn’t a lot of drama. Aside from him telling a kid he was going to hell (he said “hot place”) for telling a lie and for claiming we broke his heart when he was upset once, we didn’t get a lot of over-the-top stuff with him. (That came later.) Baby Girl, on the other hand, has a flair for the dramatic. She has been this way quite some time (she has tried giving her brother away on several occasions), and whenever she gets upset with us, she lobs all sorts of accusations at us.

When Baby Girl doesn’t get her way, sometimes she handles it fine, but other times we get the little pint-sized tyrant raging around, stomping her foot and other nonsense. The other nonsense these days is telling us we don’t love her anymore.

“Nobody likes me! There’s not a person in this house who loves me. I wish my mommy and daddy loved me. I’m so sad now.”

Lord. We tried reassuring her that we love her when she first started that, but now our reactions are more like RDJr’s above.

And, in addition to not loving her, she also isn’t our friend anymore. No screen time? “I’ll never be your best friend again!” She also uses this one when kids don’t play with her, whether she knows them or not.

She also accuses us of trying to starve her. The kid is a picky eater, which is frustrating (although I am, too, so I can’t complain too much), but I can deal with that. Some folks wag their fingers at parents who fix more than one meal, but I’ve been there myself and know that with certain head-strong children, they’d rather go days without eating than give in. So, we make sure to get something she likes whenever we’re eating something she won’t go near. Sometimes, though, she refuses to eat the things she likes and even the things she asked for minutes earlier. I’m flexible, but I have my limits. If you don’t eat what you asked for, there’s no way in hell I’m making/getting something different.

(I hope she never mentions us starving her when we’re at an appointment with her pediatrician. She is a petite little thing.)

This doesn’t sit well with BG, of course. After grumbling, she eventually tells us, “You just want me to starve to death! I’m going to starve and you don’t care!”

Lord.

So…we don’t love the girl, we aren’t her best friends, and we try to starve her. What else? Well, one of her most recent comments wasn’t as dramatic as the others, but there was still an attempt.

After watching a TV show, she wanted another. I told her “No,” because we try to limit her screen time. Too much, and you’ll have a moody devil child on your hands. She wasn’t quite at that point when I told her “No” the other day, but she still voiced her displeasure.

“I just want a good mommy,” she told me.

Is a second RDJr eye-rolling gif too much? I don’t know what the poor child has done to deserve someone like me.

The drama will only increase, I imagine.

Hell Month

There are certain months of the year that I call Hell Months. Those are the months where there are hardly any blank spots on my calendar. It can be overwhelming, and some of us with our sanity intact more so than others. As it turns out, with both kids getting older, we have more of those types of months than not. (So it’ll become normal instead of overwhelming soon enough.) June is one of those months.

Before summer started, I added on extra appointments each week for BG’s speech and occupational therapies. I wanted to do twice per week for each one to try to get her as close to being ready for kindergarten as possible. And then the teacher she’ll have for 5K contacted me about a program that helps with kindergarten readiness. That is once per week for several weeks. The appointments are supposed to be an hour long, but BG blows through them in under 15 minutes. Her issue with readiness has nothing to do with the academic side of things, which is what these sessions are focused on. I’d rather not drive all the way into town for this, but at least she’s getting better acquainted with her teacher.

At the last appointment, Miss “I don’t know how to spell anything” used letter tiles to create words on her own and wrote words on a sheet of paper without being prompted. For whatever reason, she likes to pretend like she doesn’t know jack at home much of the time. I can ask her to read or spell a simple word like “did,” and she’ll usually act clueless. But then I’ll catch her spelling and printing out words on my label maker. I guess she likes telling us “no” so much that it’s just second nature for her to refuse to do something that she can easily do.

Back to June busyness.

So, after the therapy and school appointments were put in place, we then added on a few psychologist visits. A visit to the ENT. (She recently tested for a higher frequency hearing loss, so they’re gonna double check that. If she does indeed have that, it would explain why she struggles with certain sounds, which are also in the higher frequency range.) Another visit to the ENT to discuss possibly removing her tonsils. (Sleep apnea.) LM’s basketball camp. Plus some other random stuff. Since most of those appointments take place in the city an hour+ away, we have/will put some miles on the car this month. Therapies aside, though, July is looking much slower. (KNOCK ON WOOD.)

This week is one of those weeks were we have at least one appointment per day and sometimes two. Plus the girl’s birthday parties. It’s gonna be long, but will end on a great and fun note! BG has a very peculiar cake request, which I’ll be sure to share pictures of later. And we’re going to take her to see Toy Story 4 on her birthday. I hope it’s a little more lighthearted than Toy Story 3, because that one about broke me when we took LM to see it at the theater (he was 2, I believe).

How is your month looking?

Growing Up

It feels nice coming back to this blog. Kinda like coming home from a long vacation, except without all the suitcases to unpack and dirty laundry to wash. (Well, maybe not, since I’ll be airing out some stuff…expect lots of posts soon…but ya know.)

I’ve been lingering around the blogverse since late 2014, back when I had an infant and a first grader. And here we are, heading off to middle school and kindergarten. It’s funny how the first six years with LM didn’t fly by that quickly, but the last five have. You know, I expected to be a train wreck for the last part of May, when their graduations were taking place. Milestones — especially major ones like that — always get me. Jeez, when LM graduated from preschool, I was probably more of a train wreck than at any time in the past few years of blogging, so some of y’all know that’s saying something. (Being 29 and feeling all old for being so close to 30 didn’t help.)

I teared up at the preschool graduation, but only at the end when they showed photos from the year, including a baby photo of each graduate with a sound clip of those sweet little voices saying what they wanted to be when they grew up. One kid said Spider-Man (not mine, shockingly), a bunch of kids said teachers or firefighters or police officers, and mine (and her best friend) said doctor. That got to me. So much hope in those voices, so much innocence, and so much confidence because the world hasn’t knocked them down yet.

The boy’s graduation got to me a bit, too. Y’all know that song 7 Years by Lukas Graham? (I’ll link it at the end.) LM started listening to it when he was 7 years old, and now he’s 11 (another age that is referenced in the song), so it already makes my eyes wet. Well, some monster who really wanted to fuck with everyone’s emotions changed it to 5 Years and was about going from kindergarten to fifth grade. I don’t think there was a dry eye there, and a couple of the girls singing started bawling during the song. The rest of the kids faces looked like stone — you could tell they were really struggling to keep it together.

Once I was 5 years old
My mama told me
Go make yourself some friends in kindergarten
Once I was 5 years old

Soon, I’ll be all grown up
Right before your eyes, remember that we’re making lots of memories
I make my teachers happy when I use vocabulary
I hope my classes are just as fun as elementary
Soon, I’ll be all grown up
I will find success with lots of friends to support me
Soon, I’ll be all grown up
Soon, I’ll be all grown up
Will my parents be proud of me? Will I become what they hope for me?
Soon, I’ll be all grown up

That’s not all of it, just some from the beginning and the end, but you get the gist of it. I was glad the ceremony was outside so I had on sunglasses. I told LM that if he ever has to sing anything like that again to warn us. Or at least pass out xanax with the programs. Really, though, that part aside, it wasn’t that tough emotionally. Lots of happiness, lots of pride.

I didn’t really intend to write a post just about the kids growing up, but *shrugs*. I’m feeling all sentimental now, but next week I’ll probably write about some of Baby Girl’s more stressful antics and the hellishness of tweendom. (For real, though, why didn’t some of y’all warn me?!)