p.s. Thanks, Lucy, for adding a playlist to your blog. I got one on mine, too, by clicking on yours :-)
Saturday, January 31, 2009
exerpt from expecting adam
KLEENEX WARNING -- get a box! This is parts of one page from the book Expecting Adam (the book I'm reading about a child with Down syndrome -- if anyone's offended by my copying this section, I'll gladly edit the page with all the proper citations :-):
When Adam was three years old, I began to lose hope that he would ever communicate verbally . . . One day . . . I took my children to the grocery store and offered them all bribes to keep quiet -- I was too tired and discouraged to enforce discipline any other way. I told them they could each pick out a treat from the candy stands next to the checkout counter. When we got there, Katie chose a roll of Life Savers and Lizzie a chocolate bar. Adam, who seemed to understand everything I had said even though he couldn't speak in return, went over to a basket of red rosebuds and pulled one out.
"This is what you want?" I asked incredulously.
He nodded.
"No, honey, this isn't candy," I said, putting it back and turning him toward the rows of sweets. "Don't you want candy?"
Adam shook his small head, walked back to the bucket, picked out the rose, and put it on the counter. I was baffled, but I paid for it. Adam took it gravely as the girls unwrapped their candy. He held the flower with both hands all the way home. When we got there, I was immediately engrossed in putting away the groceries and forgot all about his strange request.
The next morning I awoke to find sunlight streaming through my bedroom window . . . As I yawned and stretched, I heard Adam's small feet padding down the hallway toward my bedroom. He appeared at the door with the rose, which he had put in a small crystal bud vase. I looked at him in surprise. I didn't realize that he knew what vases were for, let alone how to get one down from the cupboard, fill it with water, and put a flower in it.
Adam walked over to the bed and handed the rose to me. As he held it out, he said, in a clear, calm voice, "Here."
Now if you're not at LEAST getting tears in your eyes, you might want to check if you have a human heart beating in your chest.
When Adam was three years old, I began to lose hope that he would ever communicate verbally . . . One day . . . I took my children to the grocery store and offered them all bribes to keep quiet -- I was too tired and discouraged to enforce discipline any other way. I told them they could each pick out a treat from the candy stands next to the checkout counter. When we got there, Katie chose a roll of Life Savers and Lizzie a chocolate bar. Adam, who seemed to understand everything I had said even though he couldn't speak in return, went over to a basket of red rosebuds and pulled one out.
"This is what you want?" I asked incredulously.
He nodded.
"No, honey, this isn't candy," I said, putting it back and turning him toward the rows of sweets. "Don't you want candy?"
Adam shook his small head, walked back to the bucket, picked out the rose, and put it on the counter. I was baffled, but I paid for it. Adam took it gravely as the girls unwrapped their candy. He held the flower with both hands all the way home. When we got there, I was immediately engrossed in putting away the groceries and forgot all about his strange request.
The next morning I awoke to find sunlight streaming through my bedroom window . . . As I yawned and stretched, I heard Adam's small feet padding down the hallway toward my bedroom. He appeared at the door with the rose, which he had put in a small crystal bud vase. I looked at him in surprise. I didn't realize that he knew what vases were for, let alone how to get one down from the cupboard, fill it with water, and put a flower in it.
Adam walked over to the bed and handed the rose to me. As he held it out, he said, in a clear, calm voice, "Here."
Now if you're not at LEAST getting tears in your eyes, you might want to check if you have a human heart beating in your chest.
driving lesson
I HAVE to get this off my chest! I'm NOT a good driver, but there's one driving "rule" that I try my best to always follow: STAY IN YOUR OWN LANE!!!! It is SO very annoying to be trying to turn left when someone on the opposite side of the road is turning right and the other driver DOESN'T stay in his or her own lane! We can save time, irritation, confusion, and possible accidents by staying in our own lanes when we turn. WE CAN BOTH TURN AT THE SAME TIME, for crying out loud!
k -- i'm done now
k -- i'm done now
Friday, January 30, 2009
a bunch of little stuff
The book I just started today is SO interesting. A little too pro-choice, but I think that might change. Maybe that's why she's stressing the point so much -- to show how wrong she was before she had a child with Down syndrome who made her recognize how sacred human life is. The author writes a lot like Rachelle -- funny, sarcastic. It makes me laugh, but then sober up when she starts writing about her son.
The heat is fixed, thank God and Mountain Mechanical! It took almost ten hours to get back up to 72 degrees, but we finally made it :-) I had to miss lunch with Luke and Makenzie, but I made it to the very end of their lunch to hug and kiss them and then work at the computer for my 20-minute job.
MAC POWELL HAS ONE OF THE GREATEST VOICES EVER AND IS SUCH A TALENTED SONG-WRITER! I know that everyone else in this house is getting tired of hearing the same cd's over and over, but Seth and I LOVE hearing them!
I've gotten two comments from "anonymous" on here, and I'm a little worried. The comments are very nice, so I'm not complaining about them. I'm just wondering if whoever it is could e-mail me and identify himself or herself so I don't get paranoid about stalkers: polar_mom@hotmail.com. Or put your name and picture on your profile. Thanks for the encouraging comments, too!
I was asleep by 9:00 last night, but woke up at about 12:30 a.m. and had a little trouble going back to sleep. That made it VERY difficult to get up at 5 a.m.! I thought I was really doing an amazing thing -- going to bed at NINE O'CLOCK! But it didn't help much. And it won't be repeated tonight because I'm still on the computer, still have my little nighttime computer game/Third Day ritual to do and then read until my eyes start blurring.
Jason didn't feel like taking the kids to church for the Veggie Tales Family Fun Night, so we had our own family fun night -- pizza, popcorn, movie. It went very well for once! There were no major fights, no yelling, no crying. AMAZING! Maybe the kids are "growing up?" I can hope :-)
What kind of mother tells her five-year-old mischief maker to take care of her three-year-old? Let's just leave that unanswered! He did a good job, and I got the laundry finished. "All's well that ends well," right?
I can't figure out how to re-charge my mp3 player, and it's about to die. How annoying.
The heat is fixed, thank God and Mountain Mechanical! It took almost ten hours to get back up to 72 degrees, but we finally made it :-) I had to miss lunch with Luke and Makenzie, but I made it to the very end of their lunch to hug and kiss them and then work at the computer for my 20-minute job.
MAC POWELL HAS ONE OF THE GREATEST VOICES EVER AND IS SUCH A TALENTED SONG-WRITER! I know that everyone else in this house is getting tired of hearing the same cd's over and over, but Seth and I LOVE hearing them!
I've gotten two comments from "anonymous" on here, and I'm a little worried. The comments are very nice, so I'm not complaining about them. I'm just wondering if whoever it is could e-mail me and identify himself or herself so I don't get paranoid about stalkers: polar_mom@hotmail.com. Or put your name and picture on your profile. Thanks for the encouraging comments, too!
I was asleep by 9:00 last night, but woke up at about 12:30 a.m. and had a little trouble going back to sleep. That made it VERY difficult to get up at 5 a.m.! I thought I was really doing an amazing thing -- going to bed at NINE O'CLOCK! But it didn't help much. And it won't be repeated tonight because I'm still on the computer, still have my little nighttime computer game/Third Day ritual to do and then read until my eyes start blurring.
Jason didn't feel like taking the kids to church for the Veggie Tales Family Fun Night, so we had our own family fun night -- pizza, popcorn, movie. It went very well for once! There were no major fights, no yelling, no crying. AMAZING! Maybe the kids are "growing up?" I can hope :-)
What kind of mother tells her five-year-old mischief maker to take care of her three-year-old? Let's just leave that unanswered! He did a good job, and I got the laundry finished. "All's well that ends well," right?I can't figure out how to re-charge my mp3 player, and it's about to die. How annoying.
books and heat
I try to match the color of my typing to how I'm feeling or what I'm writing about. So is this the color of FREEZING????!!!!! Sometime in the night, our furnace stopped working. It is now down to 57 degrees. I'm used to 72! Seth is sleeping right through it, even though he always wakes up when I come in his room and start the computer. Someone's supposed to be calling sometime today to come fix it -- I HOPE! It's about 25 degrees outside, so I'll be getting a space heater right after work today! Even if they fix the heat before then, it's best to be prepared -- and at this exact point in time, I'm NOT prepared and suffering the consequences of that.
I finished one book and started another. The book I finished was Bella. I got the movie for my birthday and the book for Christmas. The book is better in my opinion because there's more detail and less Spanish. The movie is good, too, but I'm not a big fan of subtitles (I think that's the correct term for translating the Spanish to English in lines on the bottom of the screen -- someone educate me here if I'm incorrect). Lisa Samson (one of my favorite authors) wrote the book from the screenplay, and she did a great job! It's a very sad story with a pretty much happier ending, but not the kind of ending that makes the reader say, "Oh, good, I'm glad everyone will live happily ever after." It's more like "Well, that's better, at least." The book was hard to put down, so I finished it in less than a week, I think. The book that I started is Expecting Adam. It's another book about a child with Down syndrome. These kinds of books are very interesting, but absolutely heart wrenching for me. The first one I read (Beyond the Clouds by Karen Kingsbury) almost left me in a balled up heap of tears; but the author is a Christian, so the whole message of the story was about seeing this type of situation as one of God's many workings in human life. The second one was The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, which I wrote about on here extensively already. Only the first chapter was really difficult in that one; but it wasn't (as far as I know) written from a Christian perspective, so it was a little difficult to see everything as a happy ending. This third one is about a couple of Harvard post-grad students who have a son with Down syndrome. I've only read two chapters so far, but the philosophy of these people seems to be that only highly intelligent people deserve to live and that abortion is a good idea for people who would be inconvenienced by a child of any health or ability. Obviously, they didn't follow that philosophy themselves because they had their baby, knowing that he had Down syndrome. It amazes me that people can be so wrapped up in themselves that they can honestly believe those kinds of things with no thought whatever for the sacredness of human life.
ok -- all this typing has finally gotten Seth to start waking up, so it's time to get his clothes on (he refuses to wear pj's, so he's in a onesie only -- thank goodness he didn't move when I put a blanket on him this morning!).
I finished one book and started another. The book I finished was Bella. I got the movie for my birthday and the book for Christmas. The book is better in my opinion because there's more detail and less Spanish. The movie is good, too, but I'm not a big fan of subtitles (I think that's the correct term for translating the Spanish to English in lines on the bottom of the screen -- someone educate me here if I'm incorrect). Lisa Samson (one of my favorite authors) wrote the book from the screenplay, and she did a great job! It's a very sad story with a pretty much happier ending, but not the kind of ending that makes the reader say, "Oh, good, I'm glad everyone will live happily ever after." It's more like "Well, that's better, at least." The book was hard to put down, so I finished it in less than a week, I think. The book that I started is Expecting Adam. It's another book about a child with Down syndrome. These kinds of books are very interesting, but absolutely heart wrenching for me. The first one I read (Beyond the Clouds by Karen Kingsbury) almost left me in a balled up heap of tears; but the author is a Christian, so the whole message of the story was about seeing this type of situation as one of God's many workings in human life. The second one was The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, which I wrote about on here extensively already. Only the first chapter was really difficult in that one; but it wasn't (as far as I know) written from a Christian perspective, so it was a little difficult to see everything as a happy ending. This third one is about a couple of Harvard post-grad students who have a son with Down syndrome. I've only read two chapters so far, but the philosophy of these people seems to be that only highly intelligent people deserve to live and that abortion is a good idea for people who would be inconvenienced by a child of any health or ability. Obviously, they didn't follow that philosophy themselves because they had their baby, knowing that he had Down syndrome. It amazes me that people can be so wrapped up in themselves that they can honestly believe those kinds of things with no thought whatever for the sacredness of human life.
ok -- all this typing has finally gotten Seth to start waking up, so it's time to get his clothes on (he refuses to wear pj's, so he's in a onesie only -- thank goodness he didn't move when I put a blanket on him this morning!).
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Joel's checkup
Every year sometime close to birthdays, I take the kids to the pediatrician for a checkup. Today was Joel's turn. Just a warning here -- possible inappropriate information coming up. Everything was going normal until the doctor asked Joel if he had any stomach problems. Joel didn't really know what the doctor was asking, so the doctor reworded the question to be more to the point.
dr: "Do you poop every day ok?"
joel: "no"
dr: "Well how often then?"
joel: "ummm, once a week?"
dr: "WHAT????!!!!!!"
I'm cracking up just typing this! "poop" talk shouldn't be this funny to a 36-year-old woman, but if you had heard that doctor's voice, you'd be laughing, too. He really thought he had a problem case lying there on his table. I stepped in at that point to inform the doctor that Joel was probably confused and that he does go almost every day. The doctor's look of complete relief also made me chuckle!
This is one of my favorite Joel pictures. He was concentrating on "reading" that movie box. I thought it went along nicely with this little story about "concentrating" in the bathroom:-)
dr: "Do you poop every day ok?"
joel: "no"
dr: "Well how often then?"
joel: "ummm, once a week?"
dr: "WHAT????!!!!!!"
I'm cracking up just typing this! "poop" talk shouldn't be this funny to a 36-year-old woman, but if you had heard that doctor's voice, you'd be laughing, too. He really thought he had a problem case lying there on his table. I stepped in at that point to inform the doctor that Joel was probably confused and that he does go almost every day. The doctor's look of complete relief also made me chuckle!
This is one of my favorite Joel pictures. He was concentrating on "reading" that movie box. I thought it went along nicely with this little story about "concentrating" in the bathroom:-)
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
THREE!!!!
I promise I won't write on here every single time he does this -- this is the last time until the words are coherent. Seth said a THREE-WORD "sentence": Mom, Makenzie, dance! Actually, he signed it with his attempt at parts of each word, but THREE WORDS! He's been just saying one word for a really long time; then all in one day, he said two and then three!
And on a little side note about Seth -- here's a little piece of my bad side. I stopped cutting Seth's hair several months ago. I just couldn't handle the fight, so I gave up. And his hair is pretty long and REALLY cute now! But it's definitely NOT looking like "A.C.S. hair code." I have no problem with that first of all because his hair is kinda resembling Mac Powell's (lead singer of Third Day) and second of all because I've learned somewhere along the way to be a little more open-minded about people's appearance (as exemplified in the way I sometimes look like a hippie/gypsy). Anyway, I've gotten several comments along with "frowns" about his hair that have made me decide that Seth's going to keep his long hair. Here's a hint -- saying something to me with a judgmental or condemning attitude is a surefire way to get on my bad side! I love the people no matter what they think of my son's hair, but this little rebellious streak in me laughs at their horrified looks. I will get his hair cut, of course, if he is allowed to attend A.C.S. That's a whole two or three years away, though :-)
And on a little side note about Seth -- here's a little piece of my bad side. I stopped cutting Seth's hair several months ago. I just couldn't handle the fight, so I gave up. And his hair is pretty long and REALLY cute now! But it's definitely NOT looking like "A.C.S. hair code." I have no problem with that first of all because his hair is kinda resembling Mac Powell's (lead singer of Third Day) and second of all because I've learned somewhere along the way to be a little more open-minded about people's appearance (as exemplified in the way I sometimes look like a hippie/gypsy). Anyway, I've gotten several comments along with "frowns" about his hair that have made me decide that Seth's going to keep his long hair. Here's a hint -- saying something to me with a judgmental or condemning attitude is a surefire way to get on my bad side! I love the people no matter what they think of my son's hair, but this little rebellious streak in me laughs at their horrified looks. I will get his hair cut, of course, if he is allowed to attend A.C.S. That's a whole two or three years away, though :-)
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