Slow Down, Gym Shoe!

Recently Heard Around My House!

Our family decided to go for a walk, one night after dark, to enjoy the spring weather. I was walking one of the dogs on a leash. I was walking in the parkway, and the dog's leash was stretched across the sidewalk as she explored someone's front yard.

Little Bear came walking up behind us. I was afraid she wouldn't see the leash in the dark and would trip over it, so I said, "Watch out for the leash!" I lifted the leash up just in time, over her head.

Little Bear turned and looked at me, amazed, saying, "I walked right through it!"

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Little Bear, Rafael and Pufferfish were playing in the playroom when I overheard this...

Little Bear: "Pretend this doll is my baby, and this doll can be your baby."

Rafael: "But I thought we were pretending to be teenagers!"

Little Bear: "We still are! We're teenaged parents!"

Scary, huh?

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Rafael has been having a tough time in school lately. So I wasn't too surprised when, this morning after I asked him, "Are you ready for school?" his reply was, "School is a strong word!"

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Pufferfish was upset one day because she wanted to climb into the front seat of my car.

Me: "Someday when you get big, you'll be able to sit in the front seat!"

Pufferfish: "Yes, and when you get little, you will sit in my car seat!"

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Kids are too funny, right?

Commercial Break: Online Education

The following is a sponsored post! Enjoy!

Most of you probably know that I am going to school to become a special education teacher. You may not realize that I have been going to school for about six years now! The reason it has been taking me so long is because every time I switched schools, some of my classes didn't transfer, and each school had their own particular requirements and prerequisites. So I was forever hearing, "You need this class, but first of you'll have to take this class, and they only offer it this certain semester, so you'll have to do absolutely nothing this semester." Plus I was going part time for most of the time, so I could work. Some people might be able to go to school full time and work part time, but I couldn't manage it without getting overwhelmed. I need a whole lot of "down" time to stay in good spirits!

At any rate, I am almost finished with school, but only if I really push hard. I wish I could just take some classes online. An  online education program would be perfect for me, because I could study whenever I could find the time, instead of being obligated to show up to certain classes at certain times. I could even get a job in the evenings, so I could actually make some money, and do my studying when the kids are sleeping or playing. In fact, getting an online degree would be a great idea for any adults whose work and family lives make it difficult to attend a traditional college.

I'll probably continue going to my traditional school to get my special education degree, since I'm this far along... but maybe when I finish with my bachelors degree, I'll look into online masters degree programs!

I Am Good News

I sometimes babysit for other families, during evenings and weekends, to make extra money. That extra money is my saving grace most of the time! Lately I've been babysitting for an awesome family with two little girls who are 5 and 2. I'll call them Miranda and Eloise Jones. The 5-year-old, Miranda, has Aspergers and ADHD. (Does that sound familiar?)

Mr. and Mrs. Jones know that I have ADHD and Aspergers Syndrome. I told them when I first met Mrs. Jones, when I was "interviewing" to babysit for them. I get along very well with the Jones's. When I get there, and before I go home at the end, we spend literally hours just sitting and talking, about their kids and about life in general.

The last time I babysat for them, Mr. Jones was asking me a lot of questions about my personal experiences with Aspergers Syndrome. He wanted to know if I felt like things were harder for me than for other people. I told him that I have a hard time in social situations, and that I have a lot of anxiety. I told him about my sensory issues, like how loud noises hurt my ears, and how when I was a kid I used to love to walk in the stones along the side of the road because I loved the sound of the crunching, and how I used to spread glue on my desk at school because I craved the feeling of scraping it off with my scissors, and stuff like that. Mr. Jones said he was relieved. I think he was seeing me as a functioning adult and hoping that Miranda will also become a functioning adult.

Looking back on it, I wish I had thought to tell them that, if Miranda is anything like me, she will be able to do anything at all, but at her own pace and in her own way. I didn't learn to drive until I was 21, for instance. Even now, driving is hard for me sometimes. But I do it! I have to come up with survival skills to get through ordinary situations in life. with things like work, I have learned to compensate for my shortcomings by just trying to do the best I can at what I can do. For instance, when I had my first job at age 15 in a fast food restaurant, the experience was a total failure. But my second job was at a K-Mart, when I was 17. I learned to work the cash register very well, by rote. I had trouble whenever new problems came up, like an item without a price or a person's credit card that wouldn't go through, and I was also certain that I didn't want to be promoted any higher than cashier. But my strengths were that I was a fairly quick cashier, and I was extremely friendly and polite. I made sure to give each customer a big smile and a greeting. I was always smiling at that job. Customers could be as rude as they wanted, and I would just smile and be polite and friendly. I actually got lots of compliments on this, and people even told my supervisor how sweet and friendly I was. So when I was slow to learn new things or panicked when small problems occurred, people forgave me for that.

I still have problems with certain things. I have trouble organizing my life. I cannot, for the life of me, keep my bank account from overdrafting. When something happens, like I get into a car accident, I need a lot of help to know how to handle it. But one thing that bothers me is that people in my life, like my parents and Diana, feel it is an all-or-nothing situation. They feel like I should either be completely competent and independent, or I need to have someone to supervise me in every situation. My parents get mad at me because they say I resist their help half the time, and the other half of the the time I am upset if they won't help me. What I wish I could say to family members of people with Aspergers... or any people with special needs, for that matter... is that sometimes I need help and sometimes I don't. Sometimes you may think I can't handle something, when I am certain I can... and if I feel like I can do it, please give me a chance! Sometimes I will be paralyzed by a situation and I will need your help. Please don't do it for me, but guide me through it so that next time I might be able to try it alone. And sometimes there may be things that you are sure I can do, but that I feel like I can't... so give me a gentle push! Let me be as independent as I can be, and let me find my own ways of doing things... but please know that I still might need help some of the time. And if I do need help with something, please let me keep my dignity as an adult, and let me keep my independence in the areas that I'm doing well in.

Maybe next time I see the Jones's, I'll remember to tell them all of that!

Commercial Break: Car Repairs!

One of the biggest pains in my butt is my car. I love my little car... it was given to me by my grandparents, and is in better shape than any other car I've owned... but its old, and I'm not very good at keeping up it's maintenance. Just the other day, I was talking to my mom on the phone, and she suggested that my car might need a new battery pretty soon. Ugh... if its not one thing, its another! Every time I feel like I have some money saved up, my car seems to need something!

I found a website that makes the car repairs issue a lot easier! Its called Repairpal.com, and you can find all the information you want about car repairs, including price estimates of repairs to specific makes and models of cars, reviews of local car repair businesses, and much more.

For instance, imagine you live in San Francisco, and you find out that your Honda Accord needs a new timing belt.  First of all,if you'd like, you can read all about what atiming beltis, what it does, why it might need to be repaired, etc. You can also read questions and answers about timing belt problems that other people have submitted, or submit your own questions! Then, you can type in the make, model and year of your car, find out how much you might expect a newtiming belt to cost, and search for a San Francisco auto repair shop that can do the work for you. The star ratings and customer reviews will help you find a shop that you can trust with your car! 

I'm definitely going to use this site whenever I have any problems with my car... and believe me, I have bad luck with cars! I hope this site comes in handy for you, too!

Who Would Join Me On This?

A couple years ago I used to read a blog by a foster parent, who wrote about her daily adventures. Around the time when I first started reading, she suddenly got a placement of three children between the ages of 2 and 8. She desperately needed things like a crib, bedding, car seats, etc... and she didn't have any money... and although I guess it is possible that the foster care agency may have eventually reimbursed her for these things, at the time she didn't have enough cash to get everything she needed for the kids. A lot of blog readers came through and either donated money or purchased things for her that she could pick up at her local Wal-Mart. I've heard of several different stories like this, where fellow bloggers helped out people in crisis. So I was thinking, it would be cool to sort of organize something, like a Bloggers Emergency Fund of some sort!

I was planning it all out yesterday while I was supposed to be paying attention in my US Politics class. Here is what I came up with...

• Anyone who is interested in being a part of it could give me their email address and blog address, so they could be on my sidebar (I'll probably make a separate blog for this venture if I really do it) and so they could be on an email list to be contacted whenever there is a collection being taken.
• If you get contacted and you want to donate a few bucks or participate in some other way, you just do it, and you can also sign a Mr. Linky thing on the blog that will show how many people are participating.
• It would be mostly for bloggers that are having pressing emergency needs. For instance, a blogger's house has burned down and they need XYZ, or a blogger becomes seriously ill and needs XYZ. It would be best if they needed something specific, such as money to pay an electricity bill, or money to buy a specific crib from a store, or whatever.
• The reason it is for bloggers is because there is more trust there. If you can go to someone's blog and read about the past year of their life and about their kids and everything, then you'll feel better helping out with money when the person desperately needs money to refill their son's asthma medication or something. Whereas if it is just some random person emailing us and saying, "Please help," you can't be as sure!
• It can also extend to non-bloggers if a blogger recommends them, for instance if you have a neighbor or a friend or someone who needs help.

Here's an example scenario...

Petra is a blogger who writes about life as a single mother to five-year-old Jason, who has speech delays and goes to a special preschool program and to speech therapy each week. Lately Petra has written that she's having some financial problems making ends meet because her insurance isn't paying as much of Jason's speech therapy, and because Jason had pneumonia last month and she had to take a week off of work to stay home with him. Then one day Petra writes that her car has broken down and needs a new... Hmm I dunno, what breaks down in a car? A starter? That sounds bad, right? She has barely any cash in her account right now, she can't drive, so she's been paying a cab to take her to work and to take Jason to school and therapy, but its costing an arm and a leg, and she might have to take another few days off of work, and she's getting DESPERATE!!!

Another blogger, who we'll call Jayne, emails me through my new relief fund blog, telling me about Petra.

I put an email out to everyone who has signed up to be contacted, asking them if they can throw something in the hat to help Petra. People can also forward the emails, write about it in their blogs, etc. Whoever decides to help can sign the Mr. Linky on my blog. Most likely people would be making PayPal donations to Jayne, although if Jayne doesn't want to take that responsibility I could do it. Quickly we raise $250 to send to Petra so she can get her car fixed.

And here's another idea... what if we could go even further, by contacting a few reputable car repair places near where Petra lives, and offering them a certain amount of blog posts and links in exchange for a discount for Petra's car repair? We could say, "You'll have 50 people blogging about you, using your name, the name of your company, the name of your town, and the fact that you're helping a blogger out." In this case lets say a repair shop offers to take off the cost of labor, leaving Petra with an extra $100 to offset the cost of all of those taxi rides!

Does it sound beautiful? Or am I just still crazy from being unmedicated!

The Cup IS Half Full!

To amuse Pufferfish when we're in the car or standing in line or whatever, and to help her practice the sounds of whatever letter we're learning this week, I made up a sort of game where I'll ask her things like, "Which one has an 'm' sound? Mud or Dirt? Daddy or Mommy? Dog or cat?" Usually Pufferfish chooses the right word.

So yesterday I was surprised when I asked her, "Which one has an 'm' sound? Cup or mug?" and she replied, "Cup!"

"Cuh-cuh-cup! Does that have an mmmmmmm sound?" I asked her.

"Yes," replied Pufferfish, "because its filled with mmmmmmmilk!"

Commercial Break: Could You Use a $6,500 Tax Credit?

The following is a sponsored post, which I think any of my readers who buy new homes!

Today I discovered a website that says that there is a $6,500 Tax Credit  available to some people who buy new homes this year. You may be eligible for this if:

• You are buying your first home.
• You are buying a home, and you haven't owned a home in the past three years.
• You have lived in a home for five years and you are ready to move on.

 I'm pretty sure this covers a lot of people right now. Maybe you're living in an apartment or a small house, and you've been dreaming of finding a home where each of your kids could have a bedroom, or maybe you're hoping for a playroom, or just a bigger backyard, or a better neighborhood. This may be the big chance you've been waiting for!

The only bad news is, you're sort of running out of time right now, because a written binding contract has to be in effect by April 30, in order for you to get the tax credit. (If you get the binding contract written by then, you'll have until June 30 to actually close on the purchase.

There is an income limit on this: $125,000 for singles, $225,000 for married couples.

I hope this info helps some of my readers! There is also a video you can watch for more information. 

Good luck!

To Be Aspie Or Not To Be?

A lady was recently telling me that some people felt that ADHD is on the autism spectrum. That was interesting to me, because although my official diagnosis is severe ADHD, before I got that diagnosis I felt that I had Aspergers Syndrome. I got diagnosed with ADHD when I went in for an Aspergers Syndrome evaluation.

The doctor who tested me thought I couldn't have Aspergers because I had enjoyed playing pretend when I was little and I enjoyed reading fiction and stuff like that, and because I do like being around people. (Some say that people with autism get attached to things, instead of people. I don't really think this is true. Every child with autism that I have ever met has definitely been very attached to his or her family members and close friends! I think that for people with autism, forming attachments can be hard, not because they don't want to be friends with people, but because others look at their unusual mannerisms, communication difficulties, etc, and keep their distance.)

Its also worth noting that, if someone asked me, "DO you like to be around people?" I would say YES because I do want to belong. I like going to the bar with Jimmy and Diana, and I used to love our family parties at Tigerlily's parents' house, but I have a lot of trouble participating. I don't do things like walk around and mingle. I will sit and watch a band play, but I hate to sing or dance along! I will play darts but only if I can play for fun, because all I do is wildly chcuk the dart at the board and hope for the best. I can most often be seen sitting and watching everything. I want to be there to be around people and to feel like I have friends... but I am often left behind or ignored because I am "no fun."

I also know that I do get very attached to things.When I was a kid I would get extremely upset when my mom tried to get rid of my outgrown shoes, clothes, toys, etc, because I just couldn't part with those special things that I loved! And I get very quickly attached to animals. (I don't think of animals as things, but some people would count animals as things, I guess!)

Anyway. So I was bored today and took a few quizzes online regarding Aspergers Syndrome.

On this one I got a score of 34, where anything over 32 would usually mean autism or aspergers, and anything over 34 being "extreme."

And here are my results for this very interesting one:

Your Aspie score: 166 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 42 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie
Your MBTI type: ISFJ

(that one I sort of felt was reading my mind with some of the questions!!!)

Another thing I noticed was that, on the Aspie quizzes, some of the things I got high scores for were things that I also got high scores on when I was evaluated for ADHD. But the aspie quiz included other questions, which I got high scores on, that were not included when I did ADHD evaluations.

So what do you think? I know some people have kids with autism spectrum disorders, and others of you may have ADHD or autism spectrum disorders yourself. DO I qualify as an Aspie?

 

Tot School Studies The Works Of Laura Numeroff!

Welcome to yet another week of Tot School! This week was a pretty good week, I have to admit... even though I never did scrape together the money to actually bake the cookies I was hoping to bake with Pufferfish! Plus, it was kind of a light week again, since I was still feeling sick myself, from having  a sinus infection and having run out of my narcies!

We still did plenty of learning and had plenty of fun!

We first read the book, If You Give A Pig A Pancake. I whipped together some pancake themed activities!
I cut out pancakes from tan Fun Foam (the company who makes that stuff should be sponsoring this blog, because of all the things I use it for, don't you think?) and Pufferfish played with them in her play kitchen. She served them up to everyone. I also gave her a real pancake flipper to play with, and we tried carrying the pancakes on it, and tried flipping them up in the air and catching them. (They were a little too light though and would float away from us like paper!)

Then, I cut out more pancakes from brown construction paper, and we marble painted them... in a frying pan! We pretended that the paint was butter and different flavors of syrup, and as Pufferfish wiggled the frying pan around to cook the pancakes, the marbles rolled around and made designs on the paper! They turned out very cute.

That day happened to be Free Pancakes Day At IHOP, so after school I took Pufferfish and Rafael out for pancakes. (Little Bear was sick and stayed home with Jimmy.) Pufferfish got to decorate her pancakes with actual different colors of syrup (maple, strawberry and blueberry) just like she had in our art project!

Another day, we read If You Give A Cat A Cupcake. Pufferfish made a cupcake out of Fun Foam! She used paint as frosting, but I let her glue on actual sprinkles. She also got to eat a whole lot of the sprinkles, which tickled her little sugar-addicted funny bone!

But the most learning of all took place around If You Give A Mouse A Cookie! I made a magnet board set to go with the book, which meant Pufferfish wanted to read the story about fifty million times!

Because the letter M was our letter of the week (which we've totally been slacking off on lately) we made an M mouse. This mouse is totally freaky, isn't he? He's some sort of alien mouse with tons of eyes all over his body!

 

We did a cookie counting activity using some small, round sticky magnets I found at Wal-Mart. I printed out a sheet with six circles on it, with a number on each circle.  glued the magnet circles to pieces of brown construction paper. We put the paper on a cookie sheet, and Pufferfish's job was to count out the correct number of "chocolate chips" to put on each cookie! (She also did manage to score some real cookies, even though they weren't chocolate chip!)

Finally, I put together a letter M coloring book for Pufferfish, using clip art images that went with "M" words from the books we had read. I didn't take pictures of the book, but it had pictures of things like a mouse, milk, a mailbox, music, etc. Reading all of the "M" words helped Pufferfish get the idea that the letter M makes an "mmmmm" sound. I think I am going to print out similar coloring books for each of our letters of the week, using words from our theme of the week!

Anyway, that was our Tot School week! Stay tuned for next week... we'll be celebrating Dr. Seuss!

By the way, I scanned some pictures from Hop On Pop to make a rhyming book with Pufferfish. If you'd like to use the pics, feel free! You can download the document I made here.

I also made a sheet of pictures to make an I Will Eat It/I Will Not Eat It chart with Pufferfish, after we read Green Eggs And Ham. I included a few pictures of foods I know she likes (Mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, kim) and a few things I don't know if she'd eat (cooked carrots, green eggs and ham) as well as a few non-food items I am curious about where she'd put them (she has definitely eaten playdough before and she likes to suck on pennies for soem reason) You could easily make your owns sheet like this, but if you want to use my pics you can download it here! Just cut out the pics and paste them on paper with your munchkin!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Rafael's Disappearing Act

One day recently, Rafael was explaining to me how he lost the small "UglyDoll" I had bought for him at the toy store a few days earlier. "One minute I was holding it, and then, whoosh! It was gone!" he complained.

I told him, I sure knew that feeling! I guess it goes with the ADHD territory. You let your attention wander for one second, and suddenly you've lost something! (Remember my infamous money clip?)

So. Yesterday I actually lost Rafael!

I took them to the mall (which just happens to be the biggest mall in the state of Illinois, and one of the biggest malls in the USA!) for a kids club event they were having there. The event involved a woman playing a guitar and singing silly songs while the children danced. Most of the kids there were preschoolers, but Little Bear and Rafael had the day off of school, so they were among the oldest of the audience members. Little Bear obediently took Pufferfish by the hand and went to join the other kids while I signed us into the club and got our gift bags, but Rafael hung back. He was either too cool for this type of thing, or too shy to go dance and have fun with Little Bear and Pufferfish.

"You can sit down over there on the steps if you want," I said, offering Rafael a way to watch the musician without having to sit on the floor with all of the other kids.

I got my camera out of my jacket, and snapped a picture of Little Bear and Pufferfish dancing. Although now they weren't really dancing... Little Bear had realized she was the oldest one there, and was starting to put on a sulky face, while Pufferfish was realizing that I wasn't right next to her, and was looking around for me.

I snapped the picture just as Little Bear spotted me. She grabbed Pufferfish and came marching towards me, whining, "Pufferfish wants you!"

"Pufferfish, I'm right here! I can't go in front with the kids, because I'm a grown up and I'm too tall," I told the clinging Pufferfish. "Go dance with your sister and make it fun for her," I implored the pouting Little Bear.

"But where's Rafael?" asked Little Bear.

"He's right... uh..." Okay, where was Rafael? I scanned the crowds frantically, but I didn't see him. "Hmmm, I dunno. Can you just take the baby and dance with her while I look?" I asked.

I walked around the room over and over, searching for Rafael with one eye while keeping another eye on the girls. I couldn't find him. I darted over to the play area a few yards away, and looked for him among the slides and tunnels. No Rafael.

I tried to stay calm. I had lost children before. I had never lost one of these children before, but I had once lost an eleven-year-old boy with Bipolar Disorder and developmental delays who I was caring for. That had been at a smaller mall, and it was a little different because the boy had gotten angry with me and actually ran away, jumping onto an elevator before I could stop him. That time, I had hurried into a cell phone store and asked them to call security. The security guards had fanned out across the mall, and broadcast descriptions of the boy to all mall employees, and within minutes my frustrated little dude had been found talking to a janitor. I was sure, in a mall this huge, the security guards would have an expert way of finding a little kid quickly.

So I went and grabbed the girls, and went to the near by customer service desk to ask them to call security. After a while a sleepy security guard joined us, and "helped" by walking around and around the play area with us, half-heartedly looking for Rafael.

If you've ever lost a kid for even a few minutes in a store, you know the feeling. Your heart stops, and your brain flies ahead of you, imagining every possible scenario that could be happening. He had been right there with me one minute, and then, whoosh, he was gone! How could he have just disappeared? He was not a toddler... it would have been hard for someone to have grabbed him and ran off, without being noticed. And he knew better than to go willingly with a stranger... didn't he? I had talked to the kids about that. He would remember that, right? Right? Where was he? I was carrying Pufferfish in one arm now, holding Little Bear's hand in the other, afraid to let either one of them out of my sight now that the world was such an uncertain place.

"He's seven years old! He's old enough to know not to wander off," I kept saying. "I just don't think he would have gone off without us!"

Finally I thought to ask one of the people running the children's event, "Have you seen that little boy who was with me when I signed in?"

The ladies hadn't seen him, but they quickly started walking around and helping me look for him.

Within minutes, one of the ladies came over to me, a grinning Rafael in tow.

And then it was over, just as quickly as it had started. Rafael was safe! We were all laughing! I wanted to hug him and shake him all at once! "Rafael, where were you?" I demanded.

"I was sitting right over there by the wall," he told me. He showed me where he'd been sitting, on the floor against the wall, behind a group of parents with strollers. "I wasn't lost! I could see you!"

"If you could see me looking for you, why didn't you come get me?" I pointed out.

Rafael shrugged. "I didn't know you were looking for me. I just thought, `Who is Nicki looking for?`"

Ugh, of course!

Here is a picture I snapped of Rafael afterwards, showing me where he'd been sitting against a wall, blocked from my view.

And here are a few pics of Pufferfish, who finally managed to go and dance and have fun!

 

When the kids were younger, and when Tigerlily used to come with us places, I would write my cellphone number on strips of bright blue painter's tape and stick it to their backs. I haven't done that in a long time, because these days its usually just me and Pufferfish out in the world. and its a lot easier to keep track of one kid than four... and because I thought Little Bear and Rafael were too big to need my phone number on their backs! But I've threatened to go back to doing that... and it may be a good idea!