It's more than just a wall

pre planning

Where I'm From

Based on

I am from the normal,

Though I live next to fantasy,

And from the forest to the beach,

The caves,

And the cape.

I am from the evenings,

Filled with sounds of a guitar,

By others and by me,

And the sounds of crickets,

Tree frogs and cicadas.

I am from the taste,

Of tripe and pasta,

And on the cape,

Clams, shrimp, lobster, and oysters.

I am from the long days,

Spent in the wild,

Camping, caving, hunting, rafting, and fishing,

Roasting marshmallows over a fire,

And shrimp scampi on a stove.

I am fromt he coast of Massachussetts,

With the sea breeze at my nose,

And sand and salt water at my feet,

To catching clams and hunting co-hogs.

And most importantly,

I am from family,

The Scalzis and the Rosses,

The Caseys and the Garys.

Foul Language

For years, my children have been fascinated with foul language. Firstborn has made it his business to learn all cuss words possible in as many languages to which he can have access. Lastborn waits patiently for me to let one slip while driving so that he can tell me that I owe him 25 cents. Not that I pay him, but he seems to have a special kind of hearing for cuss words that he doesn't have for instructions, requests, or warnings from his mother.

They are also fascinated with the idea that radio and TV beep out cuss words. For a while, Firstborn would speckle his speech with an occasional "beep" as if he were using foul language and being beeped by the network. This lead Lasborn to assume that the word "beep" was actually a cuss word of its own.

I thought he was over this misunderstanding until I heard him talking on the phone the other day. He was calling his best friend to invite him to go swimming today. All I heard was "Are you cussing at me?"

So I asked him what had happened. He said that his friend wasn't home and the answering machine had beeped at him, so he asked if it was cussing at him.

"So that was your message?" I asked.
"You mean it recorded that ?" He answered.

So now the neighbors have a recording of Lastborn saying, "Are you cussing at me?" and they have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

Several Poems (About Stuff)

This was the title of a poetry book Lasborn wrote this year. It came home with a bunch of end-of-year papers he wanted to burn. Luckily, I saved it.

I wish I was a floating nose
off someones face
shooting snot at my enemies
hardly


If I were an animal
I'd be a rock
If I were a car
I'd be a jeep
If I were a city
I'd be Delaware
If I were a river
I'd be the Huan river in Korea
If I were a pet
I'd be something with 56 heads, 72 eyes and 68 legs and arms
If I were food
I'd be chili
If I were a planet
I'd be Uranus
If I were a board game
I'd be Munchkin
If I were a building
I'd be the Sears Tower
If I were a famous person
I'd be Jon BonJovi
If I were a sport
I'd be sitting on my butt doing nothing


Munchkin
humorous, funny,
door busting, stealing, stabbing
You must have the Mace of Sharpness
fun

Garlic Scapes

This week's farmer's market find for the Iron Chef Project is garlic scapes. Our friend at the Hungry Toad offered me some last year and I loved them. This year, Lastborn picked them to experiment with along with a package of Kale that his dad will help him cook. Dad's got a way with Kale that mom just can't match.

I gave Lastborn a piece of raw scape to try and he found it way too spicy for him. So I chopped some to put on top of Firstborn's ramen noodle lunch (I will get him to eat his veg). Firstborn was very pleased with the garlicky spice, but Lastborn won't go near them raw.

We then chopped them up and sauteed them with mushrooms and olive oil. Then added some broth and at the last minute added some washed pea pods. Yum.

In fact, I got so many scapes, I've been adding them to lots of things. I think they would be particularly good in that chive dip we did last week for the last Iron Chef Project.

Sadly, scape season goes by too fast and we will probably have to wait 'till next year to try the pesto.

Proof of concept

So this spring, I built a water collection system to irrigate my new side garden. The garden runs down the hill along the back side of my house.

As illustrated in this picture, the collection system is simply a garbage can with a spigot at the bottom. It rests on two cinder blocks to hold it higher and to give room to place a watering can below the spigot.

At the top, I've installed another piece of gutter to redirect overflow into the existing rainwater runoff channel. In the winter, the bucket can be removed to the garage, and the downspout s-bend can be removed and replaced with a direct downspout into the runoff redirect.

Unfortunately, because our gutters are very clogged right now, it has taken me two months to fill up the bucket. We are having our gutters cleaned this week, so I decided to set up the soaker hoses I will use for the garden and open the spigot to test whether the full bucket will drive soaker hoses. My hope was that the pressure of the full bucket with the downward slope of the garden would be enough to drive the soaker hoses.

These pictures show the relationship of the collection bucket to the garden.

And here it is, the proof. Look at those little droplets on the hose and the puddle underneath. We have irrigation!!!

Teacher Gifts

Dear Mrs. J,

First, I would like to sincerely apologize for what you are about to see. I have read in several reliable publications, that teachers like receiving gifts that are made by their students. I don’t think those writers ever had Lastborn as a student though.



I have mentioned that Lastborn discovered cooking this year and that he got a book called the Everything Kids: Gross Cookbook. Well, he chose to bake cookies from that recipe book. He chose to bake Trolls Toes for you. They are a bit too graphic for my liking but they do taste good. If you don’t have the stomach to try these, I understand. Maybe you can bring them to the teacher’s lounge and share with the staff just what you have been through with Lastborn.



Thank you so much for all you have done for Lastborn this year. His time at W has done a lot for his confidence, and every year he seems to get better and better teachers. Enjoy your summer.


Casey and Lastborn

The Iron Chef Project

Every summer, I try to have a goal for me and the kids. Something we can look back on with pride, or at least good memories. The first summer, it was visiting places in Ohio that we had never seen.

Last year, it was about participating in camps.

For Lastborn, it will be the Iron Chef Project. This was Miss T's idea really, but Lastborn came up with the name and is very excited about the idea. We will attend our local farmer's market every Thursday and buy one item that is new to him - something he is not familiar with. Then we have to figure out how to cook and eat it.

We started last week and he picked out chives. I bought a chive plant that I was in need of anyway. I taught him how to make His Grandma's cream cheese and chive dip. He got to cut the chives up himself and stir them in with a little milk until the cream cheese was soft. Then we even found some soy cream cheese so that he can enjoy this treat more often. He loved it and carried it to school with crackers for snack.

I showed Lastborn all the herbs in my garden last week and let him smell and taste them. Now, when we are cooking, I can send him outside to cut me some fresh herbs when we need them.

So what will we find at the market next week?

Dancing on the edge of the spectrum

I know that the label won't change who he is. He's the same boy today as he was before we started down this path. I know this intellectually. I've been here before. But I can't help but feel like something has been taken away from him. Maybe it's because I don't have that sense of possibility and relief that I had when Firstborn was diagnosed.

Before Firstborn was diagnosed, I felt like the worst mother in the world because he couldn't play well in playgroups, wasn't socializing right, and just didn't seem to be the normal, happy child that everyone else had. The label was the solution. It answered my questions. It helped other adults understand that he wasn't a bad kid. It helped them understand how to work with him and what to expect from him.

For Lastborn, it's different. While he leaves other adults scratching their heads sometimes, it's not all the time (except for his classroom teachers). He doesn't have the meltdowns that his brother had. He's a seeker, not a defensive, so he finds his world much easier to take. I thought that would make his life easier. In fact, I've been looking for signs that he was typically developing since he was a baby. I remember watching him climb onto a swing at 2.5 and, after watching the other toddlers for a minute, just pump his little legs and get that swing going; no hours of coaching and encouraging by mom to get him to understand the body movements that would make him glide through the air. It wasn't the 4-year process that Firstborn went through. And so, for so long, I didn't need solutions or answers.

He was the only kid to run into preschool the first day, happy to be away from his mom at last and facing his new independent life just like big brother.

But that has all changed. He hates school. He struggles. He acts out in very small and subtle ways. His teachers and the staff don't really know the funny, interesting boy who chooses big words and loves puns. In first grade, he would come home and cry over almost anything. The teacher was convinced that he had ADHD and asked us to take him to a psychologist. I tried to explain to her that she was stressing him out, that he was very unhappy and he was not exhibiting any ADHD behaviors at home.

Then we moved to Ohio and things were so much better. Smaller classes, less pressure to pass an inappropriate test, more understanding of learning differences and scaling of work to the child's ability. He did great. He showed so much promise in so many areas, excelling in some. At the end of 2nd grade, he was showing signs of faltering in Math. I put him in Kumon for the summer and he did very well - daily 5 to 10 minute drills on his math facts - perfect. He caught up and felt like he was actually good at math. But by the end of 3rd grade, his teacher was worried again. Poor organizational skills, very poor handwriting, problems sitting still and attending in class, problems in math again, still can't talk to teachers, won't ask for help, difficulty connecting with peers, all of these problems were adding up to more than just slow development. So we went through the process of having him tested in the school. They tested everything; intelligence, behavior, achievement, motor skills. He came out "of concern" in many areas but none that could create a diagnosis. But by then, I had done some research into non-verbal learning differences (NVLD) and it seemed like the best fit for him. The staff agreed, but they weren't willing to say it was a clear diagnosis. So we decided to go for another year and see how he did.

He's not doing any better. He's slipping in math again, and having a hard time keeping up with the transitions in the classroom and the organizational skills needed for 4th grade. He has no friends in his class and is very reluctant to reach out to other kids. He's even a bit defensive and misreads positive encounters as negative ones.

The school asked us to bring him to a psychologist to see what could be done about his behavioral and emotional issues. I didn't know this would turn into an assessment. She did a behavioral assessment. It doesn't look like ADHD which makes me very happy. She looked at his scores from last spring's assessment and agreed with the staff that he was hard to pinpoint, but felt that the scores that were "of concern" were far more serious than the school had said. She heartily agreed with me that he has NVLD and wants him to visit with a specialist for a diagnosis.

We never got this far with Firstborn. The Massachusetts schools never supported us and in the end, he never needed a formal diagnosis. It would have been nice for him to have an IEP in the early years because I could have avoided some of the teacher conflicts we had and his self esteem would have lasted a bit longer, but in the end, he's fine.

Now, with Lastborn, I thought he would never need an IEP and he's ending up getting one.

Part of me is just wondering, again? I mean really. Again? Isn't it enough to go through this with one kid? Of the one-in-90 kids they are now saying are somewhere on the autistic spectrum, we have 2 out of two dancing on the edge.

Sigh.

I wonder what it would be like to raise a typically developing kid? Nah. Boring.

Introduction

I've been blogging at www.darndestthings.blogspot.com for years. But due to some glitches in company buy outs and email address changes, that account is listed under an email that I no longer own and I can't seem to change the account to this email. So, I will keep it up for archive, but move to this location for future posts.

For those of you who might be new to this blog, we are a family of four. I'm a stay-at-home mom (for now) with two young boys who I refer to in this blog as Firstborn and Lastborn. Firstborn's name is obvious. Lastborn earned that moniker because my original plan included 8 kids... Until I had Lastborn. I was sick for 9 whole months and then listened to him scream for 5months. At 5 months, he changed and started making up for all the difficulty he had given me, but I'm no fool. I decided God was trying to send a message in those 14 months, and I was not going to ignore it. He became the last child in our family and now I satisfy my mothering needs with raising these two humorous characters who provide me more than enough material about which to write on this blog.

My sons are complete opposites; one tall and thin, the other average and sturdier, one analytical, the other subject to whims and easily distracted, one neat and organized, the the other chaotic. This has all been God's way of keeping me on my toes. I should never think that what I did with one son will in any way apply to the other. My experiences with Firstborn are useless in the raising of Lastborn. Humility is a good thing? A sense of humor is necessary in this job.