Blog guilt defined

Noun; the act of deep remorse for not updating your blog more often due to life, taxes, clients and epic middle school ancient Egypt projects.

Grows quickly and exponentially and will soon end up bigger than a bread box.

The only known antidote is to stop the bleeding! Sit down and start writing, for goodness sake!

Early diagnosis is helpful but doesn't necessarily shorten the duration.

Healthy sprinkling of condolences and/or apologies often greeted with quizzical expression. Only the afflicted appears to be in discomfort.

The Lemonade Stand Blog Award

I got a pleasant surprise today and we could all use more of those, right?

A very nice lady with a pretty darn cool blog sent me an award! Yes, an AWARD! How fun is that?

She says I get to revel in the glory for a bit then pass it on to 10 blogs that I would like to nominate. Ten?! Ten blogs that I love and adore. Gladly.

I will revel then I will pass it on. As it should be. But first I just have a few words to say... ahem...

Tossing things out there into the blogosphere is fabulously fun. I didn't really know it would be when I first started. At the beginning it was painful. I would cry while I wrote; feeling exposed somehow as I hit the post button. This was writing therapeutically; a pressure release during those early "acceptance" days with Shea. I am thankful that I had it.

Those early days are dark for any parent, only connecting with other parents seemed to help. A lot. I love it that I can throw out my tales and find people who can relate. I love that it is so easy to say, "Hi there. We have a big thing in common." to someone across the country or across the world.

My blogging is way beyond just therapy now although still very helpful, it is the community that keeps me typing tidbits and treasure from my life.

Everyone has a story while friendships can happen anywhere and anytime. So with that thought I would like to introduce you to my nominees for the Lemonade Blog Award.

...drumroll...

Bluestem
I like that your posts are short and sweet but you always have something deeper to say; the quintessential "less is more". I wish I could hang out in your garden and we could do some "zen" weeding.

Fearless Folks...autism and beyond...
I can't make any nominations without including you. Somehow I feel like you are part of my family. I just love reading your frank, open, thoughtful and often hilarious perceptions on life. Your posts stick with me for days. I wish we could sit down and sip one of those fancy martinis you make.

Stopsignfarm
Because without my best buddy I would never have started to blog.

Gwendomama
Your honesty, poise, strength and fortitude while sharing the good, the bad and the ugly inspires and humbles me. I wish I could invite you for brunch and hug you and the kids very tight.

Tribal Hedgehogs
Because my incredibly beautiful, creative and funny daughter has made her own website and she could use a little pub.

Over the moon and back again
Because you were my first friend I made through my blog. It was so fun to actually talk on the phone in real time. I still love keeping track of what you are doing. I wish we could meet at the park so our boys could play.

Notes from the cookie jar
Because you were so friendly and supportive at the beginning. Your own story gave me so much hope in those dark early days. Plus your food porn shots make my tummy growl. Jeez, how do you do it? I wish we could meet over one or more of your cookies.

The Quirk Factor
Because you totally crack me up! Even in the face of the super scary, like loosing your house to fire, you kept it all together with grace. You are a force to be reckoned with. I wish I could take you shopping at my favorite thrift store, Granny's Attic.

Ends with 8741
Poet, philosopher, writer, parent. Where else would I get to hear about an Oprah sighting and get to see excellent rock sculptures all in the span of a week or so. You, my girl, are diverse and I love that about you. I wish you could show me the hot spots of Chicago.

Jon's mom
Because I liked how you were thinking big with Jon's Room. You inspired me to try and reach a broader audience. I wish we could meet for coffee and brainstorm.

And, that is my 10. So congratulations to us all.

Keep up the good work, each and every one of you.

Examiner.com: you are an expert

I just love this trend toward micro-news. You know, the little people report from the trenches so that the rest of us get to know what it is like.

Good news: now I am officially one of the little people.

If you haven't stumbled across it yet, Examiner.com is a relatively new national website designated into states/cities /locals. Each city/area has experts in...pretty much everything, from sports equipment, restaurant and food to Special Needs parenting.

We are still working on my title but I am going to be something like the Seattle Special Needs Parenting Examiners and I sure hope you come and visit me.

And, the thing is; you can do it too! They are actively recruiting new examiners in every city/state/location and you (excellent blogging mommys that visit me here) are an expert in your own right! Plus you can make money doing this!

So, check out your city/state/locale and the many different catagories and if it sounds good - Go for it! But, let them know I referred you, they will send me $50.

The process isn't super easy but they are looking for serious people. Once you have gone through the process and prove you are serious, they are very helpful and supportive.

Give it a shot, blogger moms. Let's share the knowledge!

5,000+!

When I started this blog last fall, I never could imagine who, if anyone, would read it.

Yeah, my friends, my mom, people who know me, know Shea, you know, the insiders. I knew they would read it. And, it has been a really wonderful way to keep those folks in the loop.

But, I get a real kick out of all the different people from all over the country and world who just happen along and visit. Who knows how you find it but you visit and I thank you for it.

My hit counter just went over 5,000. Sure, about 4,878 hits are probably me just refreshing my screen but those other ones are you.

Thank you for visiting this blog and leaving your comments. Did I mention how much I love comments? Well, I do. So, don't be shy, leave a trace of yourself!

I have found a lot of solace, inspiration and fun during these months blogging about all sorts of things and it is all because of you...the folks that read it.

Hugs and kisses from,

Shea's mom

This is why I blog about my kids...

...to make it easier to remember the little things; the day to day, small stuff of life. I write my blog so that I can share it with my kids someday when they care enough and so that I can relive it for myself. You know. Completely selfish reasons.

Thanks for sharing in it. Check out this wonderful essay. She says it so well.

Hat tip to gal pal, Judith, for sending it to me!

by Anna Quindlen

If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringlets and the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin.

ALL MY BABIES are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout.

One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.

I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did-Hall-of-Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?" (She insisted I included that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I included that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me.

I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

Gag order or my kid told me to shut up

I knew it would happen eventually. My oldest told me to stop blogging about her. So, here I am...trying not to blog about her.

She read a bunch of posts on my blog last night and was mad at me. Too much stuff about her. She is at that easily embarrassed age. She is right and I feel bad.

So, no more tid bits about her unless they are authorized.

I will miss it but she asked me and I need to honor her request.

Connections

One of the reasons I started this blog is to connect with people in an easy, fun way. Sure, it is a great way for family and friends to stay in touch and I love that. But, I wanted to connect with people like me who may feel or have felt the profound isolation and vulnerability of being a special parent. Nothing is lonelier than that.

I am always mightily touched and gratified when a little piece of magical connection happens. And, don't think I exaggerate; I do think of it as magic.

Thank you to all the people who leave little comments or visit my blog. Maybe you know exactly what it is like, maybe you are just starting out or maybe you are just curiously peaking from the edge. Frankly, it doesn't matter because I just don't feel as alone anymore and for that, I sincerely thank you.

I remember when it began to dawn on me that Shea had real challenges that he was not going to just "grow out of". Those were black days indeed. I had to get my brain around what being "special" really was and how I was going to look at it. Denial and avoidance don't work for very long as a strategy and the only real comfort I could find was hearing other "special" parents stories. Those parents understood. I could see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices; they knew exactly what I was going through.

And, what I was able to see was that these parents love their kids as much or more because of the struggle. Just like other parents, they try to see the world objectively to predict the pitfalls and soften the stumbles but even more so. Specials parents possess an almost herculean energy, drive and focus fueled by these frustrations and sorrows. In fact, I doubt there is anything a special parent can not do once they set their mind to it, except of course make their child different than who they are. Many special parents throw themselves into activism, research, art, writing which perhaps is the healthier side of the equation. Many special parents buckle under the strain, both financial and emotional and it is common for marriages and partnerships to dissolve.

It is up to each of us to find and adopt the path that will guide us during these rocky years. After a while, a body of experience builds up in each of us. Whether we believe we have wisdom to impart or advise to give, we do. Because part of this struggle is to somehow, some way not feel so alone.

That is what I want to do with my blog. I am no writer but if I can touch one person and make them feel like they are part of a bigger community of parents who all know what it is like to weep, fight and struggle for their child with special needs then I have succeeded.

So, cheers to you, reader! Thank you for helping me help someone who is helping yet another. This is what it is all about.

To blog or not to blog, that is the question

Where do the words come from? Do they spring fully formed from our heads? Is is slow, arduous or creatively constipated? Or do the words spill, wash then overflow?

For me, all of the above. I didn't really know what it was going to be like when I began my blog and I was mighty nervous when I first hit that "Publish Post" button. Since then, it has gotten easier, faster, more cathartic than I even thought it would.

But, let's remember, this is SELF publishing, stream of consciousness to the Nth degree. These posts never get run through an editors sieve and have the choppy intellectual jumps of a journal. This blog is a tribute to self absorbed focus; all about me and mine. One doesn't apologize for this, it just is that way.

I write about what is bothering me or what makes me happy. I write about stuff that strikes me as odd or just rattles around in my head for too long and needs to get out. I write about sad, scary feelings that are hard to express even to my GGF. And, I write about victory and triumph. In a word, it's a mixed bag and not always pretty.

Do I sometimes go too far with my opinion? Definately. Do I sometimes beat it to death? Perhaps. Do I take too much of my life and smear it liberally in my blog? I am afraid so.

I have always been a passionate, opinionated person. Old habits die hard. And, part of the attraction of blogging is the assumed anonymity. Sure, friends and family read my blog, bless their hearts. I expect they are the majority of the hit count. But I like to think about the people I will never know or meet who stumble upon my blog and stay to read a bit.

If I have offended or ticked off anyone, near or far, with my over the top rhetoric, I apologize. I am not always politically correct. For this I appreciate your understanding. But, I promise that I will always be real.