This Is Where We Used to Live...

This morning I had a doctor’s appointment on the other side of town. On a whim, I decided to drive past the first house Matt and I lived in when we moved to Athens 12 years ago. It looked a little different, but it sure did recall some sweet times.

It wasn’t a particularly impressive house. In fact, it was downright tiny, but it had its charms. It was a little blue, two bedroom house with a bit of a front porch, and a patch of lawn nestled amongst far more stately dwellings in a historic part of town. I loved being surrounded by gorgeous hundred year old homes on tree-canopied streets. And I loved that little house, right down to the orange laminate countertops in the minuscule kitchen.

It was special, you know? It was our first place together. We were 22, poor as church mice and living in sin, but we were excited and hopeful. So many of our big things happened there. I started my first teaching job, Matt graduated college, we got our sweet dog, we got engaged in the living room in front of the Christmas tree.

The big things are special, but I think my sweetest memories lie in the little things. Like our first Halloween. I was so excited at the prospect of trick-or-treaters, and we carved a bunch of little pumpkins in the images of dead rock stars- Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, Bob Marley, The Beatles. We’ve done some elaborate carvings since then, but those will always be my favorites.

And then there was the day that it unexpectedly snowed, and Matt and I walked through the swirling flakes with our yellow dog down a street that looked like a Victorian postcard. It was one of the most beautiful, magical moments I ever experienced.

I hosted my first Easter dinner in that tiny kitchen, and I was so proud to serve my sister and her friends on my brand new wedding china that had just started to arrive. We started our life in that house, and it will always be dear to me. So when I drove past it today, even though it was a different color and the yard had changed a bit,  it still looked like hope, love, and the eternal optimism of youth. 

Is There a Rehab Program for This??

            You know that story The Red Shoes about the ballerina that gets a pair of red slippers that make her dance beautifully, but she can’t stop dancing? Literally can’t stop at all and dances herself (spoiler alert) to her death? Well, I’ve had a similar situation over here, only it wasn’t toe shoes. Let’s call it The Red Glue Gun.

            I don’t know what it is about fall, if it’s cooler air, the kids going back to school, or the sheer abundance of holiday crafts and recipes that start appearing everywhere, but I start getting the urge to get crafty. This year it was especially bad. I think it has something to do with the fact that all the kids are in school all day and I actually have time to do stuff. And since the beginning of September, it has looked like Hobby Lobby exploded all over my house.

            First it was the dollhouse. I have always had a thing about dollhouses- really anything in miniature, and I’ve wanted a dollhouse for years. Attempting to build one from a kit proved beyond a doubt that that requires way more patience and precision than I will ever possess. So I turned to Ebay and bought an exact replica of the tin dollhouse I had as a child.

            It was great. I made some furniture, it was cool. But not as cool as it could be. So I set out to help it achieve ultimate dollhouse fabulousness. For an entire weekend I glued tiny wallpaper, sewed tiny pillows, mitered popsicle sticks to make window mouldings and chair rails, I even painted tiny pictures and made a tiny beaded chandelier. I think I remembered to feed the children somewhere in there, but who cares if I didn’t? My dollhouse looked fabulous! It lights up!!!

        I thought an entire (tiny) house makeover would quell the crafting urge. Nope. The Sahara-hot days of summer started to cool down, and I made the mistake of looking at Pinterest. Then I discovered burlap canvases at Walmart. Cue the deluge of pumpkin paper crafts, fall leaf paintings, and scarecrow embroidery. Surely that would do it, right?

            Ha ha ha, no fool, of course not! Because the second most crafty holiday in all the year is approaching. That’s right folks, Halloween. Second only to Christmas when it comes to glitter and glitz. And this year, I attempted to take on every craft project that I had filed away in my brain from last year. I painted a wall of Halloween silhouettes. While searching for a haunted house image to trace, I stumbled across awesome paper mache haunted houses people had made. Several hours and 15 pounds of glitter later, I had one of those. Painted wine bottles? Check. Chicken wire ghost? Obviously. I have become a weekly fixture at Hobby Lobby and the Dollar Tree. And walking into either of those establishments has started to cue a reaction similar to a drug addict. My pupils dilate, I start to breathe a little heavier, and my mind starts spinning at all the project possibilities.

           But I’m in recovery. Yesterday was October 1^st, and I put out all the Halloween creations that I had been furiously churning out. There are no longer a pile of paintbrushes drying by the sink, bottles of paint, glue and paper scraps littering the laundry counter, and I swept up the fine coating of glitter that covered everything. I’m pretty sure I have a hunchback, and I have severed all the nerves between my finger tips and fingernails trying to pry up all those little metal tabs that hold the backs of dollar store picture frames. But I’ll be okay. The glue gun burns, wire scratches, spray paint carpal tunnel and glitter lung will all heal- just in time for the flurry of Christmas crafts to begin…

Success, redefined

Did you miss me? Did you worry that I had fallen off a cliff and disappeared forever? Nah, I just got lazy. And I'm still trying to toe that fine line between writing my mind and respecting my kids' privacy. But for today, I'm saying screw those kids' right to internet anonymity. I've got something to say, and I'm shouting it from the top of the blogosphere!!! So, here you go, friends, my first (and, let's be honest, maybe last) post of the 2013/14 school year....

 Everyone is back in school, and I hope that all of the children are having great success in the classroom.  Personally, we’re having to define success a bit differently this year. We’ve always been able to judge Mason’s year by grades, test scores, percentiles in standardized testing- and we’ve always been pleased with what we saw. All the numbers reflected the bright, capable boy that we knew we had.  (The same cannot always be said for his homework!)

But once the twins started school, those numbers became useless to us. They painted pictures of children so terrifyingly behind that they had no chance of succeeding in school. Children that knew little to nothing. They showed kids that were struggling. They weren’t entirely wrong- our boys were struggling.  But the tests didn’t reflect what the boys actually knew, or how quickly they were learning, so we’ve had to start defining success in a different way for Will and Hays.

The boys are developmentally delayed and they have learning difficulties, this has been the case since preschool. Will’s ADHD makes it very hard for him to focus, and both have trouble completing assignments without a great deal of help. Independent work leaves them frustrated or wandering aimlessly around the room. Their weak fine motor skills make it difficult for them to do activities that involve cutting and writing. And kindergarten is not what it used to be. It’s no longer coloring, and dress-up centers, and learning colors and letters. Kids are expected to come in knowing all shapes, colors, letters, and numbers. An understanding of historical literature and quantum physics isn’t required, but is certainly encouraged. Okay, I’m kidding about the physics, but only a little.  Basically, school is hard and they’re behind.

And if we just focus on those things, kindergarten becomes one huge depressing glob of poor test scores, incomplete work, frustration, and fear for their future. So we’re not. We’re putting aside the tests for right now and we’re looking in front of us, and what we see is progress. It may be smaller and slower than the leaps and bounds other children are making, but it’s progress. They can identify almost all the letter sounds, read a few sight words, write their names (mostly) clearly, recognize numbers, count objects- all things that they could barely do three weeks ago. Tonight Hays bit his triangle of cheese quesadilla into a “k” shape and said, “Look, I made a K. It says kkkkk. Katie and Kangaroo start with K.” And let me tell you, folks, that is HUGE. They may not make a MAP test question for making quesadilla Ks, but if they did, my kid would be in the top percentile!! So we are celebrating these day-to-day accomplishments.  And we’re seeing them learn and understand more every day. How could that possibly be anything other than success?

The test scores may say otherwise. If you compare my kid’s work to some other kid’s work, it may not look like he’s doing amazing things. But if you put all that unimportant outside comparison away, and compare his paper today with his paper from three weeks ago, you will see something amazing and beautiful. They are growing and learning at lightning speed and it is awe-inspiring. I’m so very proud of them and grateful to the teachers and early-intervention teachers that are helping make this happen.

I’m growing and learning too. If you’d told me a few years ago that my children would need early intervention and special education services- that I’d be sitting in a meeting with both teachers, the assistant principal, the speech teacher and the school psychologist, I would have been horrified. And probably cried my eyes out. But now I see it as the blessing it truly is. We have a whole freakin’ team of dedicated professionals who will help my boys. All these wonderful people that will work their butts off to get my boys everything they need to continue to grow and learn and succeed.

My wounded mommy pride that was so quick to blame my parental shortcomings for any problem my boys have ever had, has lightened up a bit. This isn’t about me or anything I didn’t do. Plenty of smart, wonderful, involved parents have children with learning difficulties. This is not an indicator of bad parenting. In fact, the willingness to seek out every possible program or modification to help your child learn, is the sign of a very good parent. So I’m no longer beating myself up for missed flash card opportunities when they were toddlers, or crying over poor standardized test scores. I am focusing on the growth I see every single day, and how proud they are of every accomplishment, and I know that they are having a successful year. They’re in school to learn, and that’s exactly what they’re doing, and that’s good enough for me.