I wanted to start this blog many months before I actually did, nearly four years ago. A diary-keeper since childhood, it seemed only natural that I would keep up with the times and migrate it using modern technology. But I hesitated for a long time. Maybe it was because so many people had wonderfully written blogs that I read regularly, some of which have since turned into books. And I know I don't have the writing chops for that.
But then I realised there was no need to make my blog public. After all, it was going to be just an online diary, right? So here I am, chronicling what started as the life of an average mother and turned out to be the life of a mother of an extra-special child.
And now a few people occasionally read this blog. They are old friends and new, all very dear to my heart, and I value their comments and feelings of sympathy.
This the first February 29th since the blog's existence, so I wanted to mark it with a post. Happy Leap Year, dear readers (all five of you). May we all continue to make leaps - of friendship and faith - as the years go on.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Word Fun
Little A has been spelling a lot lately. For a while we packed away his letter tiles and magnets because he would simply arrange letters in alphabetical order.
When I brought the letters out again after a couple of months, he went right back to words, adding many new ones to his repertoire. "Letgo" or just "go" when he wants out, "orchesta" and its variations, with his musical instruments lined up in a row alongside, easy ones like "train", "noah", "ark", "zoo" and "jugle" with animals next to them. But there's one word that has me stumped every time, which he spells quite regularly as if just waiting for me to get it - "nogrmail."
Could it be that he sees me checking my email regularly? But why the "no" before that? Does he want me to play with him instead of checking my email? When he asks, if I'm not impossibly busy, I do, or at least take a break to play for a little while.
Verbally, he's mastered "ah" for up. Now we're on "baba" for borrow, "oh-peh" for open, and his first "complete" word - "ah-pah" for iPad.
The barrage of therapies goes on, with more hours added every week. Let's hope the improvement continues apace.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Both Ends of the Candle
I'm no stranger to work. By the time I was ten, I was regularly doing double duty - one of the top in my year at school despite company apprentice-level daily ballet class and rehearsals. At boarding school it was more of the same. University meant scheduling classes early so that I could make company class, rehearsals and evening performances.
When I hung up my pointe shoes to see what "normal" life felt like, I took on a fun yet tiring regular weekend job as an assistant wedding coordinator in addition to my nine-to-five weekday work. By 2003, I was three-timing - teaching the New York City Ballet workout twice a week in the evenings after work and doing weddings on weekends. As a young singleton, I enjoyed this productive work and the extra income. Big A and I spent enough time together in spite of it all.
By the time Little A came along, I traded all of this for full-time motherhood. But two years ago my mum opened her shop, and it all began again - this time I was working wife and mum.
Lately, with the exponential increase in Little A's therapy hours (and corresponding exponential increase in therapy fees), both Big A and I have had to take on any and every extra income opportunity to make ends meet. Our cost of living has doubled, so in addition to the new business he started last year, Big A's gone back to investing in the stock market and is looking into getting back into it, part-time.
I've taken on a couple of weddings, and am working double time getting more corporate accounts for my mum's business as we're attempting to get into the black this year. Naturally, there's been cost cutting on some fronts - no shopping for me beyond groceries, nor book buying beyond a small fixed amount per month. I've got to start packing lunches, or at least snacks, as the minimal amount I sometimes need to spend to stop from keeling over with hunger while Little A is at school still adds up.
There have been little treats though - coupon purchases for discounted meals, a subscription to a theatre company's season ticket. So the belt tightening hasn't been all gloom and doom. Plus there's Lent coming, when making sacrifices is the thing to do. As long as we keep our heads above water and our health intact, we'll be okay.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Joyride
Recently, Little A had his first ride in a Porsche. A car dealer friend of Big A's was showing it to him on the way home from the garage. Little A happened to come across them while going for his evening walk. He climbed into the car and refused to get out. When the big boys got into the front seats and revved up to go for a ride, his smile was brighter than I've ever seen it. He sat in his little bucket seat, grinning from ear to ear.
The boys went for a couple of spins around the block like it was a race track. Tires squealing, hard turns. They were in testosterone heaven. Little A had to be pulled out of the car when it was over, and he promptly walked down the road to where another red, shiny sports car was parked (and Audi R8, I think it was) and waiting patiently outside it in vain, in the hopes that the complete stranger who owned it might let him have another ride.
Our bedtime reading lately has been the story of Lightning McQueen and his tow truck buddy. I surmise Little A associated the red sports cars with this now favourite character, but perhaps he's just a typical car-obsessed boy.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Objects of Comfort
Children are resilient, everyone says. They bounce back from anything! Take Little A, who fell and fractured his skull in two places and didn't even need a bandage or stitches, just a few weeks of rest. The thing is, not all scars are visible from the outside.
After The Great Fall, Little A refused to go anywhere without his shoes on. They had to be on his feet at all times, even when he slept. (They are propped up on a chair or on the floor just off the bed). He would wake up if we tried to removed them in the night or mid-nap. Bathtime involved plenty of screaming, the fastest washes in history (shoes right next to the tub, in his line of sight at all times), and the shoes were back on his feet before they were barely dry, with the rest of him still dripping.
There was a time when we couldn't get Little A to wear shoes at all. He hated them, and took them off at every opportunity, leaving them on the floor in shopping centres and restaurants and running off barefoot. His classrooms and most homes we visited required leaving shoes at the door, so possibly he really didn't see any point in having to wear them.
We got him to accept them, finally, when my Mum bought him a very soft pair that made feet feel as though they were walking on pillows. Since then he's only wanted that pair, and we've gone up three sizes and several colours in the same style. We've been working on weaning him away and trying different pairs, but with limited success.
The aftermath of the Great Fall had them glued to his feet. We're not quite sure why - maybe because he fell at school without his shoes on and associated bare feet with being hurt. Maybe because he was made to stay overnight at the hospital and couldn't leave the room without his shoes on, and they were hidden away while was sedated and strapped to a hospital bed.
At any rate, the New Therapist and the New Shadow got him to wear slippers in the classroom. With a great deal of whining, crying and resistance, but they insisted, and thankfully after a few weeks of constant shoe wearing, he has now accepted that shoes are "only for wearing when we go outside." He's back to taking them off at home and in the classroom, but now keeps them on when we're at the mall or out and about. I hope he's over his post-fall trauma, and that there are no other scars to deal with.
After The Great Fall, Little A refused to go anywhere without his shoes on. They had to be on his feet at all times, even when he slept. (They are propped up on a chair or on the floor just off the bed). He would wake up if we tried to removed them in the night or mid-nap. Bathtime involved plenty of screaming, the fastest washes in history (shoes right next to the tub, in his line of sight at all times), and the shoes were back on his feet before they were barely dry, with the rest of him still dripping.
There was a time when we couldn't get Little A to wear shoes at all. He hated them, and took them off at every opportunity, leaving them on the floor in shopping centres and restaurants and running off barefoot. His classrooms and most homes we visited required leaving shoes at the door, so possibly he really didn't see any point in having to wear them.
We got him to accept them, finally, when my Mum bought him a very soft pair that made feet feel as though they were walking on pillows. Since then he's only wanted that pair, and we've gone up three sizes and several colours in the same style. We've been working on weaning him away and trying different pairs, but with limited success.
The aftermath of the Great Fall had them glued to his feet. We're not quite sure why - maybe because he fell at school without his shoes on and associated bare feet with being hurt. Maybe because he was made to stay overnight at the hospital and couldn't leave the room without his shoes on, and they were hidden away while was sedated and strapped to a hospital bed.
At any rate, the New Therapist and the New Shadow got him to wear slippers in the classroom. With a great deal of whining, crying and resistance, but they insisted, and thankfully after a few weeks of constant shoe wearing, he has now accepted that shoes are "only for wearing when we go outside." He's back to taking them off at home and in the classroom, but now keeps them on when we're at the mall or out and about. I hope he's over his post-fall trauma, and that there are no other scars to deal with.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Love, Hate
Two sides of the same coin. With a knife edge in between. What fine balance is required to keep from tipping from one side to another!
Children are funny that way. One day they love something, the next day they hate it. More so with autistic children, who tend to get fixated with certain routines and rituals.
Little A used to just allow me to put on any clothes (apart from scratchy ones like denim) on him without really caring what they looked like. He'd look at the pattern on his t-shirt in the mirror afterwards, but only to see what it was he was wearing that day.
A couple of months ago, he started to complain and take his clothes off when we dressed him for school, and then go into his drawers and find the ones he wanted to wear. So we now have certain t-shirts that are worn over and over again, and lately he has shown a preference for grey - grey shorts, grey shirts, grey underwear.
While I know all children go through this clothes-choosing stage, I do want to get the other, non-preferred ite,ms, in rotation as well so we're now operating on a "You pick your top, Mummy picks your bottoms" or vice-versa. Today will be day two. Fingers crossed.
Then there's the school issue. First Little A hated it. Screaming, crying, refusing to let me leave his side. Then he grew to love it - pushing me out the door as soon as he walked into the classroom and refusing to go home when I picked him up. But after the Great Fall and Christmas holidays and now with new Shadow Teachers, he hated it again.
The first week was a flashback to two years ago - I had to sit next to him in the classroom, he clutched my hand tightly in his own while the other one paged through the book or played with the toy I'd handed him. He would cry when I moved further away to stand first near, then at, then outside the door, inching slowly down the corridor. My heart broke all over again leaving him there.
Thankfully he has adjusted quickly. The New Shadows, at their exorbitant rate, costing more per hour than the Old Shadow did per day, have track records to justify their prices, and I have to admit that they seem, so far, to be working. Two weeks later, Little A was less needy of having me with him in the classroom, more ready to be left alone. Again, fingers crossed.
We've set a parent-teacher-therapist conference for the last day of January. I have a program outlined based on Little A's age and IEP. We're in the crucial stretch now, the last year before he goes to "big" school. And we've got a way to go yet to get him ready. My sole wish for 2012 is that we succeed.
Children are funny that way. One day they love something, the next day they hate it. More so with autistic children, who tend to get fixated with certain routines and rituals.
Little A used to just allow me to put on any clothes (apart from scratchy ones like denim) on him without really caring what they looked like. He'd look at the pattern on his t-shirt in the mirror afterwards, but only to see what it was he was wearing that day.
A couple of months ago, he started to complain and take his clothes off when we dressed him for school, and then go into his drawers and find the ones he wanted to wear. So we now have certain t-shirts that are worn over and over again, and lately he has shown a preference for grey - grey shorts, grey shirts, grey underwear.
While I know all children go through this clothes-choosing stage, I do want to get the other, non-preferred ite,ms, in rotation as well so we're now operating on a "You pick your top, Mummy picks your bottoms" or vice-versa. Today will be day two. Fingers crossed.
Then there's the school issue. First Little A hated it. Screaming, crying, refusing to let me leave his side. Then he grew to love it - pushing me out the door as soon as he walked into the classroom and refusing to go home when I picked him up. But after the Great Fall and Christmas holidays and now with new Shadow Teachers, he hated it again.
The first week was a flashback to two years ago - I had to sit next to him in the classroom, he clutched my hand tightly in his own while the other one paged through the book or played with the toy I'd handed him. He would cry when I moved further away to stand first near, then at, then outside the door, inching slowly down the corridor. My heart broke all over again leaving him there.
Thankfully he has adjusted quickly. The New Shadows, at their exorbitant rate, costing more per hour than the Old Shadow did per day, have track records to justify their prices, and I have to admit that they seem, so far, to be working. Two weeks later, Little A was less needy of having me with him in the classroom, more ready to be left alone. Again, fingers crossed.
We've set a parent-teacher-therapist conference for the last day of January. I have a program outlined based on Little A's age and IEP. We're in the crucial stretch now, the last year before he goes to "big" school. And we've got a way to go yet to get him ready. My sole wish for 2012 is that we succeed.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Another New Year
Little A spent about a week recovering from The Great Fall. He walked slowly, did not run or jump, sat down while watching tv (instead of jumping and bouncing as he usually does), and stayed in the school library while his classmates were in the romp area.
He went back to school the Monday after the fall, just in time for the class Christmas party and Nativity play. While the rest of the class had speaking roles, Little A just had a walk-on part as a shepherd, complete with rolled up and painted paper staff. He stood at his place and did some of the choreography, making us very proud.
By this time, he was feeling better. Walking became trotting, with the occasional gallop before he was stopped. Little bounces began, though he stayed off the trampoline at therapy and did not attempt full scale jumps (bed to floor, couch to floor) for another couple of weeks.
I was in full Christmas mode by this time - barely sleeping, in a gift-wrapping frenzy (both at home and at work), chasing down suppliers and frantically trying to squeeze in present finding and buying in between. My waking hours were spent typing up sales reports and balancing ledgers.
Before we knew it, the Big Days arrived. Christmas Eve. Traditional dinner and present opening at my parents' place with the entire extended family. Followed by Christmas Eve - another dinner with Big A's family. Two weeks of school holidays, during which time Little A enjoyed twice-daily long walks. And then a week when the Au Pair went home for her holidays. Family bonding time. A quiet New Year's Eve with my sister's family and my parents, watching fireworks from the windows.
Then it was time to begin the routine again - albeit with a few more changes besides the date. I asked Little A if he was ready to go back to school and every time was answered with definite shaking of his head. This meant trouble in early 2012. Cheers, all!
He went back to school the Monday after the fall, just in time for the class Christmas party and Nativity play. While the rest of the class had speaking roles, Little A just had a walk-on part as a shepherd, complete with rolled up and painted paper staff. He stood at his place and did some of the choreography, making us very proud.
By this time, he was feeling better. Walking became trotting, with the occasional gallop before he was stopped. Little bounces began, though he stayed off the trampoline at therapy and did not attempt full scale jumps (bed to floor, couch to floor) for another couple of weeks.
I was in full Christmas mode by this time - barely sleeping, in a gift-wrapping frenzy (both at home and at work), chasing down suppliers and frantically trying to squeeze in present finding and buying in between. My waking hours were spent typing up sales reports and balancing ledgers.
Before we knew it, the Big Days arrived. Christmas Eve. Traditional dinner and present opening at my parents' place with the entire extended family. Followed by Christmas Eve - another dinner with Big A's family. Two weeks of school holidays, during which time Little A enjoyed twice-daily long walks. And then a week when the Au Pair went home for her holidays. Family bonding time. A quiet New Year's Eve with my sister's family and my parents, watching fireworks from the windows.
Then it was time to begin the routine again - albeit with a few more changes besides the date. I asked Little A if he was ready to go back to school and every time was answered with definite shaking of his head. This meant trouble in early 2012. Cheers, all!
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