Wishes Granted Everywhere….

Ok, just the material wishes….

I have always adored the wishlist feature on Amazon.com… It makes shopping/giving so much easier and I am convinced it is a clutter buster as we don’t always wind up with things we will never use (or can’t use…I’m not an XS. I haven’t been an XS since I was a fetus.)…

On the other hand, all of you know I love handmade. Most of my amazon.com list is comprised of books on metal technique, SID, SPD, ADHD, etc… There are a couple of tools, and occasionally a big ticket item… I often use my wishlist as a holding place for things I will buy myself…Of course, if anyone wants to get them for me before I save up enough ducats, than hey. I’m not complaining! I like them because they give direction to family members that are far away when buying for boyo… It’s all good…

What I really love is handmade stuff (and not just because I am a maker of handmade goods)….

I have a million things I adore on Etsy.com and SmashingDarling.com that I would love to put in a wishlist… Etsy has a favorites list but I tend to favorite things either I want to give to someone else or that I want… Last year I wound up with a really cool nitroglycerin holding keychain from hubby. Um, I’m not on nitroglycerin…I can’t remember who I earmarked that for, but it wasn’t me…. So until that allows for greater organization and clarification I am so excited that Amazon now has a Universal Wish List button that you can add to your browser.

You can add anything from anywhere. It adds a title, image, and link…You can put a description and the price if you would like… When someone views your wishlist they just click and bam! they are on the item page… The only potential issue I can see on this is that checkout will of course be with the linked site, not with Amazon…Might confuse those who are not yet familiar with venues like Etsy… For now though I am hoping it brings more exposure for the fabulous Etsy (and all of us who peddle our handmade goods there…Me included, of course…) and a great way to organize and add to wishlists….

Here’s a link to the button!

Now head to Etsy.com and have fun! Enjoy!

MangoMania! 2008

MangoMania!

Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek

Ahhhh MangoMania 2008…
What can I say? There were mangoes.
Mangoes for sale…Treats incorporating mangoes…Mango preserves… T-shirts aimed at mango humor… Ahhhh yes.

We went. We wandered. We purchased some mangoes and a dwarf Meyer Lemon tree for the lanai (I have always longed for my own fruit tree… more on the new leafy addition to our home later)….

We did a ton of wandering around looking for the Mr. MangoHead competition which promised a mango decorating opportunity for the pee-wee set. Alas, nobody(not even the supposed Mr. MangoHead sponsors) had any clue where or what it was. But that is life in SW Florida…If information about a local event can be gleaned from the internet it is always a year out of date (minimum) or just completely inaccurate…

The only folks who were able to help were the kind librarians from the Pine Island branch…

And boyo got his first library card and is so excited to swipe it through the machine on his next visit…

Turns out we missed the competition entirely by wasting all the time looking for it. They had 3 prizes (great ones, according to one of the librarians) and nobody entered. Probably because nobody knew they were supposed to decorate their mango at home and bring it to enter it in the competition… Oh well. Maybe next year our strategy will be much improved.

Anyway- it was a nice morning out for us… We returned home after 2 hours dodging some of the pushier vendors (of various services and “event only exclusive offers” blech) with 6 mangoes, a meyer lemon tree, and we bought 3 jars of preserves but the gentleman packing them for us goofed and instead of a variety we have 2 jars of mango raspberry and 1 of mango strawberry (and none of the tropical ginger which sounded so freaking tasty)….

Next year, I hope they don’t have such a vendor free for all and they make better use of the German American Social Club’s sprawling grounds…It was a little suffocating and not as tropical fruit festival feeling as it was even last year…

Also, there was a rash of brutish boys terrorizing the little guys. These were kids that should have been taught manners at some point and probably denied entrance to the bounce houses, where they terrorized the younger kids and annoyed their parents.

Also, note to mangomania 2009 vendors: yes, water pistols are fun. It is however unwise to spray strangers with water pistols from your booth if they are not interacting with you at the time. It will not gain you business and you might just shoot the wrong person. People carry all sorts of electronic devices- from medical related things to shmancy iphones. I would not want to short out someone’s gadget or spook the wrong person in this firearm toting, quick tempered region of the world…. It is not refreshing. It is rude. Even the rudest of the brutish wild boys wouldn’t stoop to zapping strangers with water. Even they know better.

Sorry to come off as cranky, dear reader…But for the love of pete those two elements were *that* irritating…

The best tool in our potty training arsenal…

For years (a little over 4 of them) we struggled with potty training the little guy. Yes, he has some other issues (on top of the drama that is a 4 year old boy at times) which threw a little extra zest into the challenge, but as we had never potty trained another kid this was our normal…

We did, however, amass quite the arsenal of potty paraphernalia during out journey…Most of it addressed specific issues boyo and I were having during the process, but none of them were a perfect solution.

Here were our main issues:

1. boy is blessed with my proportions. He has a long torso and short legs.

2. boy is bigger from front to back than most potties and potty seats

3. boy is fiercely independent when it comes to learning new things. he is also secretive. he will practice something, in private, until he gets it perfect to show us. We think this may be genetic, as we are big on the “do your best” thing rather than the “you have to do my version of your best and I am completely delusional and this will scar you for life” dealio. Anyway, example: he didn’t walk until 22 months (for many reasons) but when he did he just walked. He never stumbled or fell down. He just walked like he had been doing it for a year.

4. With my physical issues (arthritis and early on in his potty training history, projectile vomiting whenever I would move, and a giant tumor, pulsing with hormones, in my neck) emptying and cleaning the little floor potty was necessary, but frustrating and frequently painful and exhausting.

Eventually, we discovered that boy was still dropping a dook in his shorts and telling us, proudly, that he had crapped or wet his pants. Odd. Well, as it turns out, we were encouraging him to, in basic terms, do his business in a container and then we were dumping the goods in the big, flushing toilet and then scrubbing the “container”, he figured he would up our efficiency and just crap directly in his underpants which could then be thrown into the washing machine with some stain treating and rinsing. He decided that this system was much easier and more efficient and he didn’t have to break up his playtime as quickly to get to the “container” to drop the kids off in a timely fashion.

It was at this point that I realized we had taught him that you poop and pee in one place and then you transfer them to, basically, a garbage (that flushes)…

Boyo is very literal. I can see clearly, how our struggle went on for so long… Hindsight is 20/20

So we moved onto the Baby Bjorn potty seat, which was the only seat around that would accommodate all of the necessary little dude gear without him shifting around (and possibly wiggling the seat a bit and scaring the…well, you know… at least he was in the appropriate place for having the poo scared out of him)….

Of course, this meant that every time he had to use the potty he had to locate me, communicate with me regarding his needs (or just do a dramatic pee-pee dance and then flat out deny that he had to pee while a puddle formed around his feet) , and then we both had to venture to the bathroom, where I would lift him (remember the arthritis? Not a good match for lifting my 36lb wiggly kid)… He would then do his business and wash his hands and move on.

I did notice that he was doing better with the potty thing when he started school, but of course everyone had been chanting before he started “when he sees the other kids being big boys and big girls and using the potty he will want to as well”… So I just wrote it off as peer pressure…

One day, my genius child got the stepstool out (we rarely used it as he still couldn’t reach much even with it) and attempted to climb up onto the regular toilet by himself (I just watched and didn’t intervene as he is a “practicer” with everything). Well, a stepstool (made for kids) has a few critical flaws: the one we have (which we love for other uses) has 2 steps…If boy is on step 1 he doesn’t have enough turn-around space and does not have the leg length to just park his butt on the toilet seat… If he is on step 2 he is very high and the drop down to the toilet seat is terrifying… It definitely doesn’t help that the regular kid stepstools do not have a handrail or grip bar of some sort.. Poor kid was so scared at the top of the stool that he just stood there crying softly and shaking a bit… Pants around his ankles and he couldn’t move because his balance, at that time, was still not the greatest… Note: to this day he takes his pants completely off when he has to pee, even in public restrooms… I have a feeling it was this particular incident with the stepstool that triggered that quirk…

Anyway, I toyed with the idea of installing handicap restroom railings in his bathroom. But still the wooden, very cute, and personalized stool wasn’t the right proportion for this purpose…

Then one day… EUREKA!

When I had my spine surgery I found that even just boosting myself a little bit, to get my butt onto the bed, was torture (occasionally, I blacked out and fell over from the pain doing this)… So one of the nurses hooked me up with a metal step stool- with a higher handle on one side and a grippy surface to step on. It was a life saver for me (and later on, at home, my underused reebok step (with risers) replaced it as I had enough strength to step down without the handle)…

So I ordered one for boyo. I got mine off ebay… If you click the image above it will take you right to the stool we have (and love) and ParentHacks.com gets a percentage of what you buy. By the way, if you have a kid(or kids) or are ever planning on interacting with the pee-wee set, you might want to subscribe to parenthacks… Truly awesome stuff…

Anyway- within a week of it’s arrival we made a huge amount of progress- boy was potty trained. Most of all, it taught me, as a parent, that the key to my little guy’s success is letting him take ownership of his tasks. Helping him get to and from the potty solved some of the mess issues, but it was killing my back, and teaching him that he doesn’t have to be responsible for his bodily functions and the state of his underpants. The step stool has given him the freedom and responsibility to handle those things, and to manage his time better as it is up to him to get his butt up on that toilet before it is “too late”…

Some tips if you do get a stool like this for your kids:

Do not let little kids use the adult toilet, unsupervised… (kids can drown in 1-2″ of water…) Perhaps in the beginning of using such a stool it would be wise to park it a few feet away from toilet while it is not being actively used… The legs are wide (like a bulldog) apart and rubbergripped and the stool is fairly solid…It is not easy for someone under 3.5 feet tall to move..Use your judgment, of course, you know your kid best.

Do not attempt to wipe down the grippy surface with a disposable cleaning wipe(ie clorox wipe). Cleaning wipe dingle berries will accumulate rapidly. A spritz of spray cleaner and a wipe with a microfiber cleaning cloth works wonders… If the crevices are getting dusty, try a utility/scrub brush after spraying…

And after your dear child finishes potty training and his/her legs grow long and strong enough to not need this very valuable tool, do not dispose (donate or sell) of this… This stepstool is also steady and useful in the kitchen and, as I mentioned previously, after surgery…

I hope this helps at least one parent and one kiddo….

Hugs all around…

B

School Glue is Too Fast For Us….

OK. So eventually you have to let little kids use elmer’s (or other brand) white glue in the squeezy bottle, right?   Child cannot glue with gluesticks alone…

BUT the problem with anything that isn’t a complete solid and it’s interaction with younger kids, is that the combination of boundless enthusiasm combined with the sheer joy of “more” usually leads to a puddle of glue that frequently drowns whatever they were trying to glue and if on paper, can form a soggy, rippy, drippy mess…

For kids who will only sit and glue for a little while I have a suggestion… I tried this on a whim yesterday and so far so good…

Try putting your squeezy bottle of white school glue in the fridge- even 30 minutes works… I may start storing one in there to see how it “keeps” over time…

The cold thickens the consistency of the glue just enough that, when squeezed, it comes out slowly…

This effect seems to wear off (keep in mind we live in Florida and it is hot hot hot here) after a short while (I stopped trying it after 20 minutes because not only do I have a 4 year old, I have the attention span of one…) but lasts long enough that junior can glue a little bit without needing triple tarp protection and the vigilant hovering of the mama….

Not really type-A at all….But I have to be… For the boy….

Magnet Board…

Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek

This is our magnet board. I am not a neat freak. I’m nowhere near organized.  I am struggling with this, but it is helping…. *phew*
The magnets were made by me using the Make-a-Schedule software from Do2Learn.com ….
We use the magnet board to lay out boyo’s every task for the day… As he does the various things he gets to put the magnet in a little container (like a piggy bank)… At the end of the day we count them up and they count as points to be used for things on the “menu” of treats…

Right now it is broken down in a fairly detailed fashion but as he masters certain tasks that contain multiple steps they will be truncated to focus on other areas…

The Prize Menu comes from conversations with kiddo, so they really mean something to him…
He loves going to the big car wash (actually, it’s the same size as the other car washes, but that’s what he calls it…) so for 200 points he gets to go to the carwash with us… Or for 200 points we can go out for ice cream on the weekend… 200 points can also be watching a DVD movie with baldguy and me…

The magnet board/scheduling like this is not easy. Right now it and helping boy with the tasks on it are all consuming. I’m exhausted and burnt out but boyo is doing great. This is helping in a huge way with transitions- it’s like he can fight with us and totally lose his marbles, but the pictograms are irrefutable….

We are still working out the kinks… And eventually will have a more variable point system, but starting with the basics works best for us… So here we are…

Oh and the do2learn.com software is wonderful- the desktop version requires a bunch of downloads to get all of the images onto your computer (so you can use the software without a live internet connection- I do most scheduling during boyo’s therapy and they do not have wifi in that building so using it off-line is important to me… If you do order the desktop version make sure you scroll down on the get images menu- there is a “get all” option at the end- you don’t have to be a dolt like me and click them all and wait one by one… Ugh. need more sleep…)

Maybe I should put my sleep on the schedule…. :-)

Argh.

Argh.

Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek

In a recent raffle, baldguy won tickets to Pieces of Eight- a fun Pirate ship excursion into the Gulf of Mexico… They are currently repositioning to service the keys…I do recommend it- it’s a freaking awesome pirate ship with modern amenities and a rockin’ band of pirates. Fun was had by all!

It was so nice to be disconnected from the world for a bit, out on the boat… Here’s a picture of boy on the boat. He doesn’t understand that a costume or a painted on mustache are just pretend- he thinks they actually transform him into another person.
I was amazed that he let them draw a mustache on him.

After around 5 minutes he furiously tried to wipe it off and had a running in place moment of freaking out when he declared

“Just me. I want to be just me. No pirate me. Just ME.”

It was huge though- he went on a boat, he tried something new at lunch, he had his face painted, he took pictures, he wore a hat and a pirate hat, and there was a brief moment where he donned an eyepatch.

Awesome.

Kauai.

Having a difficult week here… Everything out of sorts…

Baldguy is in Kauai for Winner’s Circle (Gartner’s sales award)…It’s an all expenses paid vacation… He took our old friend Kim (Kim is a dude, by the way…Of course now I realize why so many people were confused about how I was ok with baldguy taking another chickie with him. But yeah, Kim is a guy. A really awesome guy who we have known from way back in Baldguy’s days moonlighting in a video store up north.)

Everyone keeps asking why I didn’t go. The truth is, I really wanted to go. My hip isn’t as bad as it was when he received confirmation that he had qualified for the trip- and the hip was a worry as I wanted to explore Kauai as actively as I possible could. I’d still need some modifications to handle my physical issues, but we would have had some serious fun. After all, the last time we took a vacation was the year after we were married. We drove from Boston to Burlington, VT. We were gone for 2 days. We stayed in a hotel we found on priceline… I think it was $50/night. We felt so decadent.

Imagine how we would feel in Kauai, at a very expensive resort with every expense paid… Wow.

But someone needed to stay with kiddo. We don’t have anyone that will watch him and keep him safe, not here. And we are making little bits of progress here and there… Leaving him (yes, for the first time in almost 5 years…not because I don’t recognize the need for time apart, but because the logistics are insurmountable) would have set us back so far in regards to progress, and taking him wasn’t an option (no comment). I let baldguy work on the logistics of possibly going as a family (baldguy’s idea) and was told that it couldn’t happen. I think it could have happened with some planning, but I have been focusing on the day to day with the kiddo, so I delegated and these were the results..

Hopefully, baldguy comes back refreshed and rested and ready to help tackle this beast that is our family life. Because I’m having a hard time holding onto the little bit of me that I finally found again after so long (my need to create) and managing the day to day things and staying on the various regimens that everyone tells us boy needs and that I see are helping him make progress. I can hope, right?

Huge hugs… Tough morning…Tough day yesterday with kiddo.

b

The secret math of growing up….

Boy is wailing away on his kazoozaphone (little tikes had their way with a kazoo on this one… thankfully he doesn’t like the music it plays on it’s own…just the kazoo…)… A little while ago he wanted to watch his “year one” video… I think he has trouble connecting the baby in the movie to him as a big guy (relatively speaking)…. We talked about it for a bit and here’s the official word on age:  When you are O you are a baby….When you are 1 you are a baby…When you are 2 you are a big guy….When you are 3 you are a big guy…When you are 4 you are bigger…When you are 5 you are bigger….When you are 6 you are bigger….When you are 7 you are bigger…When you are 8 you are bigger….When you are 100 you are biggest  (fingers splayed and hands stretched up to the ceiling) and then you get very small again. No wonder he was cheering me on at my last doc’s appointment when the doc mentioned weight gain… Alex thinks I’m growing just like him…  Ahhh if only…  (by the way, the formatting screwiness is courtesy of safari it seems…. I’m switching over to firefox tonight….) 

Labelmaker

Off the deep end….

Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek

Ok. So I was talking to someone yesterday and I was explaining the steps I have been taking, or attempting to take, in reorganizing the household so there are less distractions to send boy and me into our personal ADD spirals…. So my side of the conversation went something like this:

“I bought small plastic containers”

“They stack”

“I bought a bunch of them. Everytime I go to the store they have more in the same color. I’m not even a big green person- more into blue, which they had…Anyway. I bought a bunch”

“And I bought a label maker”

“This project has been going on for a month. I have a tower of plastic containers with green latches in my living room. I’m going to put everything in plastic containers and label it so it’s out of sight but I can still find stuff” (note: true to a life of ADD and being the creative sort I tend to leave things out because for me, out of sight=out of mind and leaving things out typically means I do eventually finish them but it also means that we have tons of visual clutter which would be distracting for a person without ADD/ADHD….Hence the reorganization)

At this point I confess the following.

“The label maker is put away. I made a label for it that says ‘LABEL MAKER’.”

And it is at that point that we both start laughing, hard.

The truth is that I have been having a hard time with my ADD and fatigue and a whole host of health issues…

And of course, boyo comes first- always. So now I’m staring at a pile of information about how to help him, how to help me help him, how to help the teacher help him, how to explain all of this stuff to his grandparents, and a sizable pile of how to help me. Because if I can’t focus at all, I can’t very well help him.

So today I went in and dug around and found some more suggestions on being a productive adult with ADD.

Those of you that know me, know that I work my arse off and I always have and I always will, it’s my nature. I do, in fact, get things done.
But what I cannot do is focus. Have a conversation with me in person and you will find that my brain likes to take detours. Trying to complete a task as simple as getting a cup of coffee in the morning can often turn into a 2 hour event, if it happens at all. Most folks have blinders that they don’t even think about- that ability to get out of bed and get the cup of coffee. They can tune out the things that derail me in my attempt at having just a regular morning. Everything has a million steps and points at which I can be pulled off of my track. I do many things exactly when they occur to me and it takes every bit of strength not to be derailed from one tiny task, and then I’m wiped out if it gets done at all…I’ve had other artists ask to come hang out- to have fun and to learn from each other,  I’d love that, but I can’t function with more distraction, and I’m a little shy about my visual clutter and my mad scientist work style…  I did function, for years, in office situations.  Surprisingly, many of my jobs in the past have involved organizing other folks.  But that was before the many things that make my ADD more symptomatic… I do manage to get my orders out on time, but instead of completing them in one simple swoop I have been finding that having more of a schedule/to do list of every part is necessary and while it only takes me a few minutes to get an order out (ready to wear pieces) those few minutes are quite broken and scattered across the day…

But as long as the label maker box has a label that says label maker on it and the label maker is in the box, then everything will be A-O.K., don’t you think….

(hubby just came back in the room and said “what’s up kid?” and that’s all it takes for me to be knocked off the track….eeeeek. I’ll post this anyway, even though I’m pretty sure it didn’t go where I intended it to….)

*hugs*
b

Update on neuro

Just a quick and brief update…

Looks like pretty bad ADHD (don’t worry anyone, nobody is jumping the gun and medicating the kiddo. With our family medical history we know better) combined with Sensory Integration Disorder and higher language issues, low tone, and poor fine motor skills. Of course, all of these things play off of each other and everything needs attention…

Working on strategies to work on structure and impulse control….

Doc suggested putting boy-o in the public school system where he will be better supported… I agree that he may need a change in school environment/structure in regards to learning with ADHD and not having it be such a mix of “he sat still and learned today” and “he needs to work on his listening/he doesn’t listen” (which seem to be the two brands of report that I get when I pick him up). Maybe that structure is a trial run of more days at school because it seems like the minute he settles down (in his 3 mornings a week) it’s the weekend again…. I understand that public school might be a better fit and better support and it might be more of a no-brainer if we still lived up north. But we don’t. We live in Florida where corporal punishment (physical paddling…rationing of bathroom use…physical restraint) is permitted according to state given teacher rights and those rights offer too much personal interpretation and gray area for me to be comfortable sending my kiddo into that environment without a ton and a half more research and trying out a few more things before we make that big change. I realize not every teacher paddles or believes it is a positive approach to managing behavior in the classroom, but in our county it is allowed….I have lots of what ifs these days…What if a sub comes in for the day and thinks paddling is the only way to deal with a child who can’t sit still or won’t stop talking a mile a minute and can’t stop disrupting his peers? That one person could do a whole lot of damage to my kid, and I’m not willing to take that risk especially before exhausting all other avenues.

Not deciding anything overnight. Not when it comes to my kiddo.

Especially with this. Especially because I have fairly difficult to manage ADD, and I have been through the medical wringer. I ‘m more than a little wary of doctors and other medical professionals making snap judgements based on one little trait…I’m more than a little exhausted from staying on my toes as far as my reasoning goes and being aware that some things can be helped by medicine and need medicine, but not until all other avenues have been exhausted. In our situation that means creating structure at home and in school and working on the kiddo’s other areas that need improvement….

Updates to come… For now I have a whole bunch of organizing of pretty much every part of our lives. Not easy for as our lives have been pretty much an endless series of “survival” modes since I became pregnant with my little guy long ago. Medical and family and financial and work emergencies have kept us moving, but haven’t helped with taming our environment. So that is what we are working on now, so we can have a cleaner canvas to build upon.