Blogging on family, writing and clogging

One of the most infuriating things ever...

2011-02-15T11:04:00.000-08:00

It's been a bad weekend here, as I told y'all. The backtalk and the constant running of the mouth bothers me. But there's something that bothers me more.

The lying. My son can lie with complete believability, if you don't know him well enough to know he's lying. And sometimes I think maybe **I** am the person who's wrong even when I know for a fact I am not.

So we had the lying about the Xbox the other day. That was dealt with.

Yesterday I went to his room to put away laundry and do a quick search. (He sometimes winds up with items that are not technically his in his room or he sneaks food up there.). Sure enough, I find the corner of a bag of chocolate chips under the bed. He stole them out of my baking cabinet. AGAIN. He took them up to his room. We do not allow food upstairs in our house. I cannot locate the bag of chocolate chips or the empty bag. So I'm a little annoyed.

I passed to infuriated when he came home from school and the following conversation took place.

Me: Son, I am not happy that you snuck food to your room again.

Him: I DIDN'T.

Me: I found the evidence. Do not take food upstairs. Do not take things that are not yours. GO upstairs right now and get me either the leftover chocolate chips or the empty bag.

Him: I don't have the bag.

Me: Where is the bag?

Him: I don't know where it is.

Me: That's a lie. (pause while I remember that I used the toilet in the bathroom he uses the night before and had to plunge it). You flushed it, then.

Him: Yep

Me: Do you realize you just lied to me?

Him: No I didn't. I technically don't know where it went.

Me: (Sitting on my hands for self control at this point). You know very well that's a lie, Austin. So was denying that you had the food upstairs in the first place.

Him: I NEVER SAID THAT!

We have what's called a trust tower here. It has 35 pieces. For every day my son is honest and trustworthy, he earns a piece in the tower. If he is not trustworthy, he loses pieces (always more than one, because trust is always harder to earn than to lose). His privilleges are linked to the tower. For example, he has to have 7 pieces in the tower to play at a friend's house, 15 to attend a sleepover, 26 for PG13 movies or teen games and 30 to be in possession of his cell phone.

I marched everyone in here after dinner last night and told my husband exactly what had happened. I made Austin himself take the pieces off the tower. I explained why I was taking each one. (He lost 1 for taking something that did not belong to him, 1 for breaking the no food upstairs rule. 1. For hiding what he'd done, 1 for flushing inappropriate things down the toilet, and three for lying to me). He had already lost some for the Xbox incident (He was at 35 pieces on Friday). So he is very upset that he's unable to watch PG 13 movies or have his phone.

He's also not been able to get up on his own for school the past two mornings. He will not be happy when he remembers that tonight is basketball practice. His practice runs from 8-9. His usual bedtime is 9:00. Because he is not getting up for school, I am having to give him early bedtime the remainder of the week. This means no basketball tonight. He knows this is the consequence but likely has not realized he has basketball practice this evening.

Bad Weekend

2011-02-13T20:25:00.000-08:00

It's been a weekend of constant arguing from the kiddo. You know what I think it is?

SCREEN TIME.

In our house "Screen time" applies to anything with a screen (text messaging, computer, TV, video games, movies). Screen time is issued on two levels. There is "interactive screen time". That's screen time he uses with other people. For instance, playing a video game with a friend who is over, or watching a movie with the hubby, or watching TV with me. This is untimed for the most part, but we reserve the right to call a halt at any time (For instance, he has a friend over for 3 hours, we will not let them just play video games for 3 hours. Maybe 30-45 minutes, and then they need to go find something else to do. ) This is not the problem.

The problem is "individual screen time". This is screen time he uses alone, generally playing Xbox. This IS limited. On weekdays he gets 30 minutes, with the potential to earn 15 additional minutes if he leaves the house for school on time. On days when he does not have school he has 1 hour of individual screen time.

Additional rules are:

He must ALWAYS ask permission/ tell us he is using screen time

If he has a D or an F in any school subject, or a D or F on a test, no individual screen time until the grade comes up.

If he does not bring his homework and study materials home, he does not get screen time that day.

So, in December, Austin decided he didn't REALLY need to study for tests. Needless to say, he lost his screen time. He got it back Friday night. He LOST IT by Saturday.

Why? because he snuck downstairs to play Xbox in the morning and got caught. Well, that wouldn't have been a big deal but he lied, vehemently and REPEATEDLY all afternoon, resulting in hubby taking the Xbox away for two weeks.

While he didn't have screen time, he was a pretty decent kid to be around. Friday night, not half an hour after his screen time was up, he was arguing with me. He was sullen and rude on Saturday. Today, we would not allow ANY screen time and insisted since it was semi-warm that we all go outside. He stood in the yard trying to pick fights with hubby and I for close to 90 minutes. It was horrible.

I seriously am thinking of revoking individual screen time. Or, at the very least, making a rule that he has to spend X amount of time outside before earning X amount of screen time.

Something's got to change. I don't like the way he treats me under the influence of individual screen time.

Me and the hubby

2011-02-11T14:47:00.001-08:00

We're doing well. The hubby bought himself a scooter over the summer in order to do errands without burning so much gas. It's cool but I am terrified of the thing, due to being raised that motorcycles are bad things. I try to be openminded but it still scares me a little. I don't ride it because I do not have a motorcycle license, which I need to operate it. It's not meant to seat two adults, but Austin can ride with him, as can a small adult.

I have been struggling with weight loss. I have decided the plan I am embracing now is to implement 10 steps this year to healthier living. I will implement them one at a time. The first one was to limit myself to one soda or other sugary drink (Sweet tea, lemonade, etc) per day. This was much harder than I thought it would be, but I have been successful.

The second one took a little more work. That was to eat Breakfast every morning. I tend to be nauseated by the thought of food first things in the morning, then I get busy and forget I need to still eat breakfast. So at lunchtime, I am starving. I am still not perfect, but am managing to remember about breakfast about 5 mornings out of seven.

Item three on the list was limiting consumption of alcohol and refined sugars. Again, a pretty difficult one. I am not totally great on this one yet, but I am better than I was.

I was supposed to start Item 4 this week, Exercising 30 minutes a day. Then I was hit with the killer mutant evil cold from hell. I could not draw a decent breath without having an epic coughing fit. I had to miss clogging on Wednesday, and I barely made it through tap class last night.

So desperate was I that I went against one of my standards. I do not buy products whose ads I don't like. Perhaps the most DISGUSTING ads I have ever seen are those for mucinex. However, I hate cough syrup, and it was the only medication at my local drugstore that came in pill form and advertised what I needed it to do. I will give them due credit, they have a good product. Wednesday was the first time in 4 nights I was able to lay down without hacking up a lung.

We have done a bunch of furniture shopping and rearranging of our living room lately. I'll post the pictures of that later.

OH, and I became a great-aunt again last week! My niece Candice had her little girl, Taylor Marie. I won't get to meet her until the summer, but I am so happy she's here!

Oh my goodness

2011-02-11T14:35:00.000-08:00

I am a total slacker. I bet nobody's reading this thing any longer!

So let's play catch up this week. I will start making updates here.... Let's start with Austin

He is in the 8th Grade now. We are waiting to hear about high school now. Our local public high school is very violent and therefore is not a good option for him. He has been accepted to a local Catholic high school. We are waiting to hear if he's gotten into a different public high school in our area with an agricultural program. We should hear this month. I feel it'd be perfect for him, since he does well with hands on learning and wants to be a vet or zoologist.

His soccer team won the Championship for their league again. He's currently playing basketball and is enjoying it.

We went through an extremely rough patch of lying and disrespect and lack of studying, which resulted in the loss of his cell phone and his screen time until the problems were corrected. He got the phone back on Wednesday and his screen time back today.

He is in the OWL Program at church (It stands for Our Whole Lives and is the sexuality class taught in the Unitarian Universalist Church. I highly recommend it) and has made a lot of great friends in the group.

What a week!!

2009-10-27T13:09:00.001-07:00

So let's rewind... because as usual I have not been keeping up with my Blog. My bad, y'all.

Not this weekend, but the weekend before, I was supposed to perform all day at a show with the new clogging group I have joined, the Renegade Cloggers in New Jersey. I killed myself for two weeks trying to learn their routines. I loved every minute of it. I began to get to know the other dancers, and I was feeling like I was getting back into the swing of things. Then, we got a torrential downpour and the show got canceled. I was beyond bummed. The real kicker is, it wasn't THAT rainy on the day of the show! (The event had been canceled the day before, based on the weather forecast.). However, we went to the pumpkin patch instead and came home with like 70 pounds of pumpkin, which I need to get my butt in gear and cook and puree.

This past week was going along nicely until Friday. I figured I'd take the day to myself, sleep in a little, get up, go shopping for supplies for Coffee Hour (we take turns hosting the after church refreshment hour at our church, and it was my weekend to host. ) After that, we were going to the annual church Auction Dinner.

At noon Friday, the phone rang. My mom was calling to tell me my father was in the hospital. He has been wheelchair bound for a couple of years and seems to keep getting worse. It reached the point where he could not transfer his weight to even get out of the chair to go to the bathroom or get into bed. My mother, who has health problems and a bad back, realized she could not help him, and he was taken to the hospital for tests. The good news? They know what it probably is.... Normal Pressure Hydralocephalus The bad news is, there's nothing they can do about it. So he is now on his way to a Rehabilitation Facility. From there he will either go home or to a nursing home. I have a sinking feeling it will be the latter.

I spent all day Friday on the phone, calling back and forth to my Mom and my siblings. I got off the phone right before the church dinner. The church dinner itself was fun but I was feeling out of it. We got home to a hysterical phone message from our neighbor 3 doors down, whose father in California was being put into hospice. Her adult son was out of town for the weekend and she had nobody to come feed and walk her dog. So I wound up running over there to see how I could help. I agreed to walk the dog in the morning, and also to drive my neighbor to the train station at 4 AM so she could catch the train for the airport. I could not fall asleep and was up until 4 AM, then finally fell asleep about 5:30 AM. I had to be up at 8:30 to walk the dog, and go to Austin's soccer game.

The plan after this was to go to the Renaissance Faire, but then Jeff got a migraine during the game. Junk that plan. Austin asked if I would take him and a friend to the movie theatre and I agreed. However, for the third time this week he was over 2o minutes late coming home from a friends and I'd had it, so I told him no movie. He proceeded to have a fit, which (I should be honest) was not THAT bad of a fit. He's done much worse. He attempted to hit his head on the wall but when I kissed him on the head and gently said "No", he stopped. He stomped up to his room and started throwing things until I walked to his doorway, picked up the things he had thrown and said "I'm going to need you to stop throwing stuff.". I was freaking AMAZED when he actually stopped!! He went to his room and did a lot of loud fake-crying, and then came down and asked if we could go get his Halloween costume. I reluctantly agreed.

Having a special needs child means that some things are not easy for them. Halloween is a hard one in our house. My son is obsessed with, but TRIGGERED by violent or scary movies. So usually there's a lot of obsessing over Freddy Kreuger and wanting to tell me what happened in the movie he saw when he was six. He then keeps whining that he wants to be Freddy Kreuger/Jason/Scream/ The blood and guts zombie. It leads to an emotional breakdown, a full blown tantrum, and occasionally an attempt to hurt me. This year he did okay. He selected one of the costumes I deemed "okay". (Some skeleton dude) and took it with good grace when I told him no weapons. (He CANNOT handle toy weapons.)

Saturday night I had a ton of stuff to do. And as always, when Jeff is recovering from a migraine he becomes extremely talkative and makes it very hard for me to get things done. It was probably 3:30 before I fell asleep.

Got up at 8:15, walked the dog, took Austin to church for the field trip, came home, got the coffee hour stuff, and spend the next 2 hours in the church kitchen preparing for coffee hour. After that I cleaned up, and by the time we got home it was almost 1:30 in the afternoon. By about 3, I could tell I was headed for an emotional crash and burn if I didn't stop running like this. Jeff saw it too and insisted I sit down. He also insisted we had enough leftovers in the house that I didn't need to make dinner. Thank goodness for him sometimes!

To top it off, I have someone in my life who is pulling a lot of passive/agressive bullcrap and I have made the decision that I am not playing the game anymore. It's a hard decision to make, but I have to do it.

Well okay, I missed the mark

2009-07-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

I am still here!!

Sorry my blogging sort of fell off the radar there for a bit!

So let's recap....

It's summer, and the summer of the PRETEEN ATTITUDE. I am not dealing with it as well as I should be. I am trying hard to be loving, therapeutic parent, and there are just days it does NOT happen for me.

Austin just got new pets. A pair of guinea pigs. Peter and Oliver, who are one 1 year old. Their owner had to give them up because of allergies.

Austin turns 12 next week and will celebrate with a sleepover and pizza/movie/swimming party. He doesn't know it yet, but he's getting a wii that won't really be HIS but a family gift, so he cannot just trade it into Gamestop like he did with his DS. The Wii is for everyone but he'll get games for the Wii for his bday.

Anyone still reading this?

Reflections on 3 years....

2008-12-07T20:44:00.000-08:00

In 15 minutes it will be midnight. That will signify our 3 year adoption anniversary, and almost 4 years of having Austin in our lives.

Sitting back and thinking about it, I cannot believe how far he's come. I can't believe how far we've ALL come.

It's been a heck of a ride, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Austin came into our lives for a reason. And better or worse, we are blessed to know him.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T20:57:00.001-07:00

A few Halloween Photos for your enjoyment.

Also? If you read my blog, leave me a comment... because I am pretty much convinced that absolutely nobody is reading this....

Church Troubles

2008-10-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Today I am tired and angry and frustrated with my son. He is 11 years old and for the most part is generally a polite and well behaved young man. He has a few weaknesses, though. One is the grocery store (I will blog about that later). The other is church. He CANNOT seem to behave at church.

Let's see... there was the time he decided to light at match and set off the smoke detector (He wasn't intending for the smoke detector to go off, it just happened). There was the time he and his buddy were bouncing superballs in the sanctuary after the service. There was the time at my mother's church in Florida, when he attempted to kick me and run away and I had to perform a takedown on the front lawn of Mom's church. (Yes. I was so proud. I'm glad my mother was spared this spectacle, as she was in the building, and I had taken Austin outside because of his behavior. ) There have been many, many mornings where he has come down incorrectly dressed for church and we've had to make him change 2 and 3 times (We have very few rules on church clothing, so he has to really WORK to break them) He's tried to make me late to church. When the RE Program does not meet, he acts up during the service.

Today, we had a meeting after church that both Jeff and I needed to attend. Austin was given explicit instructions to either sit with one of us, play quietly, or go sit in the library (next to where the meeting was, so we could see him) and read a book. It started off badly at coffee hour, prior to the meeting. He was running wild, crawling under things, chasing other kids. He has a pack of boys he hangs out with. They were throwing apples in the hall. They were wrestling (Which we have explained is not okay at church). The other boys left and we told Austin it was time to settle down. First he tried crawling under tables and chairs. I asked him to stop being disruptive. Then he just started wandering around messing with stuff. At which point I told him to please go play or read quietly in the library (I felt I was not able to concentrate on the meeting with him wandering all over where I had to keep track of him, and Jeff was actively participating in the meeting at that point.)

So he sulked over to the library. I look up and what is he doing? GLUING THE PAGES OF A COLORING BOOK TOGETHER!! Yes, that's what my intelligent, creative bookworm of a son found to do. IT's not even OUR coloring book. So he now owes the church his weekly allowance since he took something that belonged to the entire youth group and rendered it unusable. He also has to pay me back inconvenience time for his behavior. He's darned lucky I still took him to his friend's birthday party today. (Jeff thinks I shouldn't have, but I had to leave to take him while the meeting was still happening, so there was no time for us to discuss what happened. Jeff didn't even know he'd glued the pages of the coloring book together until he arrived home from the meeting)

We're going to have to do something serious here because this is a consistient problem, and he is 11 years old. He can do better at this.

Harvest Stomp 2008

2008-10-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my friend Megan and I headed off to New Jersey for the Harvest Stomp Clogging Workshop. Although I was excited to go, those of you who know me know that I am very much NOT a morning person. Needless to say, the alarm going off at 5:45 in the morning failed to excite me. Megan didn't look much happier when I picked her up at 6:30, but we needed to be registered before the 9 AM class and we had two hours of driving ahead of us.

Thankfully, we had good directions. We only got lost at the very end, when we had to make 3 turns within a quarter mile, but even that just took us a block out of our way.

The workshop itself was a blast. The National Instructor routines had a little more hip hop in them than I'd have liked.... just because I feel it's not appropriate for a 33 year old, overweight white woman to be trying to do hip hop moves. However, all the classes we attended were very interesting. Probably my favorite was a dance to music that the instructor had learned in her Belly Dance class. There was also an awesome routine to 1,2 Step that had some cool non clogging moved that I didn't feel ridiculous doing. And a banjo version of the William Tell Overture.

We demoed one of our routines at the fun dance, and it got a little messed up, but by the time demo dances roll around, everyone's been dancing for 7 hours so nobody's expecting perfection I don't think.

All in all we were gone about 16 and a half hours. It was 11 PM before I got home and I still had to wash my hair and all that stuff.

You can bet I slept well last night!

It was bound to happen one day....

2008-10-21T11:59:00.000-07:00

By my reckoning I have been cooking on a regular basis for 17 years. Since I was in high school, I was responsible for getting dinner on the table several nights a week. In this time, I have met with a few kitchen mishaps, but never a kitchen disaster. I guess I was due.

To set this up, our dining area/computer area, kitchen and basement are closed off from the rest of the house by a set of french doors with glass panes. The reason for this is one of our cats, Mistie, has litterbox issues and we can't let her on the carpet. Also important to this, is she has such bad stomach problems she can not eat straight cat food, and I mix hers with cooked chicken so it's easier for her to digest.

After dinner on Saturday, I realized the cat was out of chicken. I threw some into a pot with water, intending to reduce the heat on the burner once the water began boiling. While I was waiting for it to boil, I began cleaning the kitchen. Five minutes later, Austin came in and said we were starting our weekend Family Movie, but we needed to start it now, because he had to be to bed in less than 2 hours. So I ran out the door after him, completely forgetting the chicken.

An hour into Tarzan, Jeff says "what's that smell"? You guessed it, the entire kitchen and dining/computer area are FULL OF SMOKE. We're not sure if the chicken actually caught fire, but it burned really badly. Jeff ran in, threw the pot in the sink under running water, opened the windows, turned on the fans, grabbed Mistie and threw her out the doors to me.

There was no damage, except to my pride, and it took a couple days to rid the house of the smoke smell. And Mistie had turkey lunch meat with her cat food that night, because I decided I was done in the kitchen for the night.

A quick update.

2008-10-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I totally fell down on the job didn't I?

Here's what's happened since I last blogged.....

Before school started, we went on a road trip. We took Austin to NC where he stayed with Jeff's parents. After a short visit with them, Jeff and I took off to the Blue Ridge Mountains for an early anniversary trip. We hiked to the summit of Buffalo Mountain, we went into town, we went on a winery tour, and generally had a good time. Unfortunately, while we were gone, our neighbor called to inform us our 7 year old parakeet, Winnifred, had passed away.

On the way home, we stopped off in Northern VA and stayed with out friends. I got to go to a clogging practice with my old group and had a great time, but they worked me like a dog! It was kind of nice to see that I remember so many of the routines.

Austin started 6th grade! (See picture above) He loves his teacher this year, so that's great!

Jeff and I celebrated 10 years of marriage.

I turned 33, which we celebrated with an extremely rowdy and fun board game night.

I served on the Negotiation Team at church, to draft the contract of employment for our new minister.

Sorry y'all. I'll try to do better with the posts.

2008-08-21T21:32:00.001-07:00

Wondering where I fit in

2008-08-19T19:56:00.000-07:00

I'm on a fence, I feel like. and I don't know which side to land on when I jump. I can't stay up here forever. It's lonely up here. I want to belong someplace. But there doesn't seem to be anywhere I can trust to catch me.

There's got to be a middle ground here. I am not the spoiled suburban Mommy. I do not enjoy driving a minivan. I do not enjoy feeding my kid convenience food for every meal. I don't spend a fortune on my kid.

I also am not a spendthrift. If we need something, I will go and get it.

I am also not sure I fit the "Granola Mommy" category. I am not quite as organic and crunchy and green as I need to be to fit that category.

I'm a housewife, but not a doormat. I'm independent, but I stay at home and raise my family.

I'm idealistic, but not to the point that everyone else's ideals are wrong.

I am not a tree hugger, nor am I a tree hater.

There's gotta be other people like me. Where are they?

in Memory of Maybelline

2008-07-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight we said goodbye to a beloved family pet. Maybelline the rabbit passed away tonight. She was between 7-9 years old and her health took a rapid downhill spiral yesterday. Due to her dislike of cars and vets, we made the decision to keep her at home and not make her last hours of life be spent in a vet's office.

Maybelline was Austin's buddy. She was a gift the Easter he was 4 years old and she went with him to every foster home he lived at, and unltimately they lived here. Those who knew her described her as smart, sweet and charming. She was possibly the sweetest rabbit I've ever met. Cuddly, friendly, and a joy to have as a pet. She will truly be missed.

I never wanted a pet rabbit, but Austin's social worker made it clear the rabbit came with him, so we relented. I never imagined she'd be my pal. That she could make me laugh, and that I'd use words like "Smart" and "Organized" to describe her.

She will be missed. kiddo's understandably upset, but is hanging in there okay.

The perfect day of summer thus far.....

2008-07-25T21:28:00.000-07:00

Was June 27. Cypress Gardens. Austin and I met up with my best friends Cate and Jill. We had an absolutely wonderful day. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt on several occasions. My son Austin proved himself to be quick on the uptake when he easily insinuated himself into inside jokes that are older than he is. My two best friends acted like doting Aunts. They took him on rides and talked to him and were interested in what he said and did.

There seemed to be no lines at Cypress Gardens for the rides. After lunch, we went in the water park. I remember the thought hitting me "I do not have enough days like this". This was when I was in the lazy river with Cate and Jill. I felt so relaxed. I felt so ME.

I love being married, don't get me wrong. I love Jeff. I love Austin. But every now and then it's refreshing to spend time with people who know me as AMY. Not as Austin's mom or Jeff's wife.

Testing... 1,2,3

2008-07-25T16:19:00.000-07:00

My first entry on my blog!

I'll be on later to update this I hope. For now let me just say hi. I am Amy. I live in Philadelphia. I am the adoptive Mom of an 11 year old boy who at this very moment is making brownies. I have been married almost 10 years. We have a ton of pets. In my spare time (hah! What spare time?) I enjoy clogging, taking photos, baking, writing, and reading.