Chaos and Cupcakes

My baby turns 7 at 3:14 p.m. tomorrow. I can’t believe it has been 7 years since Taylor was born, but at the same time I can’t remember life without my sweet, sweet boy. Since the moment Jared and I got married, I wanted a baby. I took several months and a miscarriage before that wonderful moment finally came when I found out I was pregnant. I was so impatient for him to come, and wouldn’t you know it? He was the only one out of the 6 to make it to his due date. He was so beautiful and perfect. He was the first grandchild on both sides of our families. He was such an adorable, happy, smiley baby. He rarely cried; only when he had an ear infection. He didn’t even cry at all when he had a horrible stomach bug and had to be hospitalized for dehydration. We could take him anywhere with us- the movies, restaurants, YM/YW dances, and he would be perfectly happy the whole time. Even as a baby, he was in a hurry to grow up. He was sitting up at 4 months, crawling at 6 months, and walking at 10 months.

Now at 7 years old, he is still a sweet, happy guy. He is the BEST oldest child anyone could ever ask for. He is such a wonderful helper and is so loving. He is also so intelligent that he constantly amazes me. People have commented his whole life that he seems so much older than he is because he has always been so mature and smart; he’s always been way beyond his years. He is only in first grade but reads at a 6th grade level and does math at a 3rd grade level. He loves computer games, reading, soccer, swimming, and running. He just loves all learning in general. He is a friend to everyone he meets and is thoughtful and generous. He never says a bad thing about anyone and can find the positive in everything and everyone.

I am so thankful to have Taylor in my life. Although I miss the baby that he was, the one who would only sleep cuddled up to Mommy with his hands tangled up in my hair, I am so proud of the boy he is now and of the young man that he is becoming.

Happy Birthday, Taylor!

We went to see Mount Rushmore a couple of weeks ago for Spring Break. Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills are beautiful and there was so much to see. It is definitely a place we will visit again. The trip, which we took with Jared’s parents, was a lot of fun and went really well. But traveling with a child with Asperger’s does pose some challenges.

Asperger kids (Aspies) function best with a set routine. When the daily routine is all mixed up, an Aspie’s life becomes totally off-kilter. So bedtime in a different place at a different time posed some challenges. The trip involved a lot of car riding; Andrew did really well with this. He brought his Game-boy and a clipboard with plenty of drawing paper. That kept him pretty happy. But when the battery on his Game-boy would begin to die, he would start to freak out a little even though he knew that we had his car charger with us. We would have to hurry and get it plugged in before a melt down occured and sometimes we weren’t fast enough. Andrew would also get so involved in his game that he would ignore us totally. So when we would stop and ask who needs to go to the bathroom, he would just brush us off. Then 10 minutes after our stop he would tell us that he needed to go to the bathroom. We would ask him if he could wait and he would say that he had to go RIGHT NOW! He ignored the need until he couldn’t possibly wait another second. That was pretty annoying. Andrew would also get so wrapped up in his game or drawing (obsessiveness is a hallmark of Asperger’s) that he wouldn’t eat when we stopped for a meal, only to wind up claiming later that he was STARVING and we were trying to kill him by not feeding him.

While at Crazy Horse Memorial, I made the mistake of grabbing some Junior Ranger booklets for the boys. In order to get a Jr. Ranger pin, you have to complete the booklet. The booklet at Mt. Rushmore wasn’t too involved and didn’t take too much time to complete. The one at Crazy Horse was very involved. We were short on time but Andrew insisted that he complete his booklet and would not listen to us when we told him we didn’t have time. So we had to rush to finish the booklet so he could get his pin. I’m glad he was able to get it, but a little flexibility and understanding would be nice every now and then.

We learned from this trip that we need to make sure we stick to a schedule with Andrew when we are traveling. It might not be convenient, but it will go a long way in keeping us sane. We will also have to do something to curb the obsessiveness while traveling in order to make sure Andrew listens to his body’s needs.

…with Grandma and Grandpa McGrath.  My mom is having a hip replacement surgery today so she will be out of commission for Taylor’s upcoming birthday (May 1st).  So she and my dad picked Taylor up Saturday night and took him out for his birthday.  He was so excited about this and watched the clock all day long in anticipation.  Then he waited outside for 1/2 hour, even though we told him it wasn’t quite time yet, but he was just way too excited to sit inside and wait.  They went to eat at Red Robin, then went to the bookstore and let him choose a book, and then they went to the carnival that was being held in the mall parking lot.  They brought back some cotton candy for the other kids.  I’m so glad they did this date as it made Taylor feel so special and important.  Thank you, Mom and Dad, for doing this and making such a happy memory for my sweet boy!

Of course I am not a Republican either. I am trying to be very proactive in staying informed about issues this election year. Tonight I was reading online some things about the Economic Stimulus checks and about tax returns and welfare in general. I think the EIC (Earned Income Credit) is a bunch of hooey in a lot instances. If it is a case of an underpaid teacher or firefighter or hard-working laborer who works his/her tush off to support his/her family and still needs a boost, then I am all for that. There are lots of hard-working families out there who are really struggling what with the horrendous gas and grocery prices and they need a break.  I read an interesting discussion on this today with a statistic (I don’t remember the exact number so I won’t quote it) of people who receive welfare and the EIC and yet are staunchly conservative to the extreme. The irony of that tickles me a bit. It’s not that I am not compassionate- I really feel for the families who work their tails off to make ends meet. I do not feel for those who believe that they are entitled to have things handed to them on a silver platter without lifting a finger. I think our country is in need of a major overhaul of our welfare system. It is abused entirely too much. Why, oh why, can’t there be a candidate with a nice melding of both Republican and Democratic views for me to vote for?

I told Jared today that I was worried about our little fishies.  They have just been laying next to each other all day and haven’t been swimming around.  Jared said, “Do you think that maybe they are doing something?”  I said, “Ohhhhh.  Maybe.  Is that what they do, just lay next to each other and act dead?  I guess I should stop shaking the bowl each time I walk by to make sure they are alive, then!”  I honestly have no clue how fish babies are made, what the gestation of eggs are, or anything like that.  I think I’d better do some googling.  But they have my blessing.  I’m all for free fishies!

…Ben and Gwen Tennyson (named by the 3 older boys after characters from the cartoon Ben 10).

We went to PetSmart the other night to get some things for a diorama of the ocean Taylor has to do for school. The kids (and Jared) were begging to get a pet. I am not ready for another dog as they are a lot of work and I have too much on my plate with 6 small kids. So they wanted to get a cat. I thought Jared wasn’t a cat person but even he wanted one. And Andrew was very concerned about the “poor cats who don’t have homes.” I went over to the cat area with them, took one whiff of the litter boxes, and said, “No, way.” Now I know that you can get litter boxes that don’t stink, but do you know who would have to change that litter? Me. And that’s a job I can do without. Taylor then wanted to get mice. No. Way. Jared then convinced them that we need a snake. NO. WAY. So we settled for fish. We got both a male and a female betta fish. As we were walking out the door, Andrew said, “Now they can get married and have babies!” Hmm, a bigger tank might be in our future.

Apparently Taylor is running for President.  I found this in his stack of papers when straightening up our art room (the big closet under the stairs):

A vote for Taylor is a vote for the future.  A vote for Taylor is a vote for robots to be more popular.  A vote for Taylor is a vote to cut taxes.

This kid is so stinking smart and cracks me up.  I don’t know many 6 year olds with such convincing campaign tactics.  He’s got my vote!

We are trying to “go green.” As a family of 8, we have a lot of garbage and waste that we are trying to curb. Springville contracts out its recycling program and we kept meaning to get the info and send in the paperwork to start, but life is so busy all the time. Meanwhile, we have been recycling our newspapers and magazines at the kids’ school, but we knew that wasn’t enough. Jared figured out our carbon footprint and while it is significantly lower than average, it is still higher than we would like it.

So these are the things we are doing in our effort to be more green. We have finally signed up for the recycling program. We have stopped buying styrofoam plates and disposable cups (although we do still have dixie cups for the bathroom). We all have an assigned cup color and we use one cup throughout the day to cut back on dish washing. We only turn lights on when we really need them and are teaching the kids to make sure to turn lights off in bathrooms and bedrooms when they leave the room. Last night we left the house in a hurry to run a couple of errands. When we got back and walked in the house, the kitchen lights were on. Taylor said, “Who left these lights on? What a waste of electricity!” For now we are putting all our food scraps in the disposable to grind them up rather than putting them in the trash where they will take longer to decompose. We are going to set up a compost bin soon and will put our fruit and veggie peels in that instead. I love to soak in my big tub but have stopped doing that as often in an effort to conserve water. We only buy bottled water when we are going on road trips and use our fridge filtered water at home. There are some steps we should take that I’m not quite ready to yet, such as going to cloth napkins instead of paper. We do use our big Ikea reusable bag when we go there instead of using plastic bags. At the grocery store we try to not get a lot of plastic bags and the ones we do get we reuse for garbage bags at home. We only buy CFL lightbulbs now. We are looking into getting a Yukon Hybrid for our next car in a few years (but they need to come out with the XL version first!). We are going to be growing lots of veggies in our garden again this year.  I am using vinegar and water for a lot of my cleaning and we got 3 years worth of green cleaning products with our soft water system.  I would like to do more laundry in cold water, but am too much of a germophobe to do that.

What are some things that you are doing to be more green? I would love more ideas!

…that Heavenly Father thinks Jared and I are strong enough to handle all the problems that seem to constantly be thrown our way.

First, we have had some awful pregnancies. Our second child was in the NICU for 6 weeks after a very abrupt birth 7 weeks early and some complications due to that, including an ambulance ride to another NICU over an hour away from our home. I had to be on bedrest for the subsequent pregnancies. Then the 5th pregnancy ended over 4 weeks early in an emergency c-section with an internal T which put me at risk for uterine rupture. And rupture it did with pregnancy #6, almost 6 weeks early, nearly fatal for both baby and me, and involving another ambulance ride to a different NICU than the hospital that I was at.

Baby #2, Andrew, has had more than his fair share of problems in life. Besides his scary first 6 weeks of life in a NICU, he spent the week of his 2nd Christmas in the hospital with RSV, has had a broken arm, and had to have urological surgery at 18 months (along with Baby #3 at 6 months), and he has Asperger’s Syndrome.

All of our children have asthma and we have to carefully monitor any coughs and respiratory infections they have in case a horrible asthma attack occurs.

Now, much or our time and studies are devoted to dealing with Andrew and his diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. We face many challenges in learning to deal with this, regulate his medicine, and help him learn to lead a successful and fulfilling life.

I thought that with all of those challenges, we have had more than our share and we could deal with what we had on our plates right now and move on.

But a few months ago I started having some weird things going on with my arms, legs, and vision. Even though I don’t know a whole lot about MS despite my dad having it (he never talks about it), after a while Jared and I both knew that the symptoms sounded just like MS. I was sent in for an MRI and it showed an MS lesion on my brain. I go into the neurologist next week to find out what the next course of action will be. Luckily, we have found out at the start of the disease and hopefully we can slow the progression. I have been optimistic through all of this, but today started to feel a little down. I just don’t want this to alter or change the way we live our lives and how I interact with my kids. I always wanted to have all my kids before I was 30 so that I would be young and energetic as a mom and as a grandma. I don’t want that to change. We have lots of things we have planned to do throughout the years as a family and I want to be able to do all of them without any problems. So my plan of action is to be positive about this, to make sure I am as healthy as I can be, and to stop this sucker in its tracks.

Jared is making some changes to my blog.  I will have separate pages for Asperger’s posts, for decorating posts, and for recipes.  The main page will just be the little family anecdotes.  That way if someone reads my blog just for Asperger posts, they can just go directly to that page.  In the next few days, my blog will probably change several times until we get it the way we want it.  We had been unaware of the volume of traffic coming into the site for people interested in Aspergers and so we are going to try to do more with that.  Hopefully we can get it tweaked just right!