13/31 - Jersey #4

I swear I have real posts in my head but it seems to be a struggle to apply fingers to keypad lately.  It's a quiet weekend here - laundry, soccer, reading... maybe I'll trying to add writing to that list tomorrow, before we dive back into the chaos of our work weeks.  Here are some soccer pictures to tide you over.

Soccer may not be The Boy's thing.  He played in kindergarten and successfully avoided the ball all season, until scoring one magic winning goal in the last game of the year.  We were bad parents though, and instead of building on that momentum, we skipped indoor (winter) soccer and then skipped 1st grade soccer altogether (we missed the cut off, he didn't seem to care enough for us to beg our way onto a team, we were too busy to push it).  But he wanted to try again this year in 2nd grade so here we are, every weekend and Thursday night.  Except it's been social hour for him, not a sport, and he's perfectly happy sitting on the bench, goofing off with his buddies.  You know how cute it is when the preschoolers pick daisies and roll in the grass during games?  Not so cute when it's your 7 year old and all his teammates are playing hard around him.  For the record, he wasn't actually picking daisies but he was definitely in a fog - more than one ball went *swoosh* right by him without a reaction.

Stretching?  Yoga?  Victory holla'?  I'll never tell.  

Matt & I discussed this ad nauseum because he's not normally a spacey kid and it was so pronounced during games it was painful to watch.  We tried yelling (Yes! Those parents!) but he'd look over at us and wave.  We tried biting our fists to muffle the screaming but then he just kept happily daydreaming.  Maybe he hated soccer after all?  Maybe he was confused?  Scared of the ball?  Maybe performance anxiety was causing him to shut down?  Then Matt had the BRILLIANT idea of taping some professional soccer games.  I really wish I could take credit for this because watching the grown ups play made something click and all of sudden my kid is hustling after the ball and engaged.  Even the coach commented on it.

Action shot! 

We're not signing him for inter-state tournament play anytime soon and he's still the kid with the most bench time (& today we had to talk to him about not lying down on the bench while benched.  Gah!), but we have progress!  and growth!  We also now have the brilliant realization that my son is a visual learner, just like his mommy and his sister.  

What does this have to do with Down syndrome and 31 for 21 you ask?  Ummmm....

Well, since this is now four paragraphs long, I'm going to pass it off as a post:
Parenting any child can be hard.  I've said this before & I will continue to repeat it.  Your kid will not excel at everything and every individual has their own quirks and their own learning styles.  Sometimes you have to thrash around a bit to figure it out, no matter the chromosomal count.

 Also:  The Girl sat fairly quietly during most of the game today (could I get one more modifier in there? She has not been so agreeable in the past).  But during half time I let her run and she booked it across the field.  I heard her brother laughing a bit, "Hey, that's my sister!"  So much affection, right there.  What an awesome kid to call out to his pesky little sister in front of all the boys.

EVERYTHING!

Have I told you all that I love you lately?  I do.  I love this space, and your spaces, and that my whining last night about some seriously first world problems is met with sympathy & pats on the head, not the eye rolling it probably deserved.  And, as these things often do, the moment passed and today I am filled with Yes, I can too do EVERYTHING.  All Half the laundry is folded, I ran(!), I'm here - about to gift you with some hyper adorable pictures, AND I got that work thing done today, that I'd been avoiding for weeks, that I'd lugged home for the weekend and then (obviously) felt guilty about not doing.  I swear it was like a giant evil eye glaring at me from the kitchen counter all weekend.  Never, never, never bring work home.

 Yes, sort of like this evil eye.  

[I did not get a chance to read YOUR lovely posts, fold the other half of the laundry or spend any time with the kids who were already in bed when I got home.  And I only got 6 hours of sleep, which might account for the giddy tone here.]

Miscellanea from last week ~
IEP meeting update:  I didn't want everyone's guard up and I didn't really know what I was asking for, so I requested an "information gathering meeting," to talk about The Girl's communication in class.  The Girl's teacher, who at first meet just seemed too young and waaaayyy too well put together to be spending her day with preschoolers really impressed me (proving once again my first reactions are always wrong).  She showed me some of the matching/selecting activities they do, that she can do without ASL, and it sounds like she really is trying to pick up some signs.  The SLP's office is between the two pre-K classes so she (apparently) pops her head in during circle time or at the activity tables and demonstrates the sign of the hour or something.  We talked about iPads and assistive speech apps and they're going to try out some of the iPad programs to see what works before we sink a bunch of money into something.  No one thought signing AND using a speech app was a bad idea, even though the one speaker at the NDSC conference said we should stick with one system...?  Facebook was all for "multi-modalities".  I dunno.  I can make the argument either way - we'll try it out and see how it goes.

Yup, just keep pressing buttons to see what happens.

Oh, and I brought cookies.  They never eat during these meetings which I suppose is the professional thing to do, to not smear crumbs and chocolate all over the official IEP document, but I hope they dug in later.  Somebody better enjoy them since I spent a whole seven minutes in the store picking them out.

Did someone say cookies?    

Also, since I am mom of the year, I completely forgot to ask about PROMPT training and apraxia.  Since this was just a "chat" we're going to have a formal IEP meeting in a month to touch base again, so we'll cover it then.  I still want to observe the classroom at some point too, though the logistics of that might drown me.

Did I mention The Girl is the proud new owner of an iPad?  Shortly after this post, my SIL ran into a mom and her daughter, who has Ds, and she was raving about their iPad and Proloquo2go.  My super-awesome SIL then plotted with my other super-awesome SIL and my super-awesome MIL and they all combined funds to gift The Girl with a very early, exceedingly generous Christmas present.  WOW, right?  I am terrified I'm going to break it.  I'm terrified she's going to break it.  I had also gone to dinner at SIL's home the night before they gave it to us and completely forgot to bring anything, not even a bottle of wine - I am a HUGE schmuck.

Ha!  Mommy said "Schmuck!"

And, last, right after the IEP meeting last Monday we drove for an hour into town to get labs done at the Children's Hospital.  We've had them done closer to home before but it would have been easier to lop off a finger and hold the bleeding stump over a bowl, for all the trauma and random useless needle pokes inflicted on the poor girl.  At Childrens we were in & out with only a single tear shed.  Results came back today & we're good!.

The pout.  Practicing for next year's labs. 

Actually this was right before The Boy's 8:30am soccer game and we had the unmitigated GALL to go thru McD's drive thru for coffee without getting her anything.  MEANEST PARENTS E.V.E.R. 

Overly (?) Idle Thoughts

I am having a really hard time lately with this work/life balance myth.  There are a gazillion articles floating around about how You Can Have It All!  or Don't Even Try!  Be happy with what have!  Neither of these theories, however, get the laundry done, my miles run, my sadly neglected blog written, much less my children snuggled, read to, homework-ed, potty trained, therapized, or taken out for a bike ride.  Never mind the fact that I should be spending at least 25% more time at work than what I'm currently logging, and stuff there, as they say, ain't getting done.

Totally unrelated soccer pictures to follow.

And before you awesome women out there tell me to take time for myself, I do.  Matt & I had date night last night and I spent today in my bathrobe, catching up with my reader.  The kids played happily & it was a lovely, much needed, relaxing day.  But the work I brought home wasn't worked and the laundry is now padding the walls around me.  Something is always neglected.

Something like remembering to call the school when we tweaked switched around our days and telling them we weren't going to pick her & that The Girl should go back to daycare on the bus (no, she wasn't left standing - but it was a last minute freak save).  Or remembering to make her follow up appointment with the ENT that we are months overdue for, garnering that shitty parent alert! in the scheduling nurse's voice.  Or remembering we'd talked about getting The Boy's eyes checked... two months ago.

Matt and I were talking about tweaking our schedules yet again, but this is the 54th time we've had the conversation and we have not yet managed to fix the problem that is there are only 2 adults and 24 hours in a day.  I went out to lunch with a friend on Friday and rambled on about the relative merits of 4x10 or 5x8 work weeks only to suddenly realize we I had said the exact same things a couple months earlier in the exact same restaurant.  She's a patient friend.

And neither of our kids are those over-scheduled bits of precociousness you hear about who learned Mandarin by age 4 and the cello by 5.  The Girl gets 1 hour private speech therapy a week and The Boy has a 3-4 month run of soccer, which is 1 hour Thursdays + one weekend game.  I'd actually really like to find the time (& money!) to try dance, piano, more speech therapy, some OT, swim lessons, maybe karate... and Mandarin (Really! How useful would that be?  Or Spanish.  Or both!).  Maybe not all at once though.

Then there was a discussion on FB involving all these parents don't believe in or feel they need private therapy.  That debate aside, I was actually left feeling just inadequate.  Ridiculous, I know, because if we're being brutally honest, even if I were a full time stay at home mom, I would not be stringing beads and sorting sensory color chips into egg cartons with my girl - I'm more the snuggle/park/book mom.  But then I felt guilty I don't have the TIME to - maybe if I weren't trying to cram the relaxing and the laundry and the park into one short weekend, I might end up thinking painting egg cartons is an awesome way to spend an hour?

I'm just going to press 'publish' on this for the hell of it, since what's the point of having a blog if you can't kvetch every now & then?  Yes, I know we're all doing the best we can.  *I* am doing the best I can.  And this is such a first world problem since I AM employed and we are all, for the moment, healthy.  Some of my friends are not.  In the face of hardship, other's and my own, where is my serenity & gratitude?  Maybe it's not so much more time I need, as acceptance.  The problem is that re-reading that Be happy with what have! article probably won't fix everything.  Maybe yoga?  Oh!  If only I had time to take yoga!

Score!

OMG HE SCORED A GOAL!

BY HIMSELF!

DURING GAMETIME!

While we have both enjoyed social hour, any actual playing has been done with a safe two yard buffer betwixt him and the ball.  I had planned to give up my fellow soccer moms next year and meet new parents at karate, or piano.  But there was a two minute period in Saturday's game where he actually made contact with the ball and, perhaps emboldened by this experience, when presented with a wide expanse of grass today, he seized his opportunity, dribbled halfway across the field, and SCORED.  Last game of the season no less.  We're like a Disney movie around here (cue mirthless laughter).

Carpe diem my young friend, carpe diem. 

And for the record, since you all know his daddy, yes,

he scored for the appropriate team in the appropriate goal. 

The very special moment captured:

 What's all the fuss about?

Miss Independent, unaffected by her brother's celebrity.

Soccer Practice

The girl spent the ENTIRE time running up and down the side walk and trying to get into the parking lot to check the air pressure in everyone's tires, so this is the only shot of the boy.

Checking out the landscaping, just like her mommy.

This is the photo I am MOST proud of -

That's my baby, climbing down the step curb by herself,

just like a big girl.

Saturday - More Soccer

They Scored!

Busy celebrating!

Sorry, been busy celebrating working

First soccer game of the year!

Determination!

Fancy footwork

Sportmanship?

"I'm coming after YOU buddy!"

Coach:  Where's the goal?

If you look close, someone's arm is not like the others

If I just stand here & look cute, no one will notice that.

Not quite Andrew Wyeth

Christina?  Anyone?  I'm such a geek.

Christina, front view

Moving on... less than engaged at practice: