Monday–no sleep, cough, sore throat

Tuesday–cough, sore throat (so bad I couldn’t even get toast down), sneezing, throwing up all night

Wednesday–exhausted from throwing up all last night, sore throat (wondering if I have strep) so bad it hurts to swallow at all

If things don’t improve soon, I implore someone to please shoot me.  If I were a dog or a horse you wouldn’t make me suffer like this.  In three days I have lost 3 pounds, but that will come back once I get well (if I ever get well).  There are no upsides to this illness.  I am just miserable.

Okay, done whining now.

A little background.  He had so many ear infections as an infant that his doctor refused to treat, because you know they hate to hand out antibiotics, that he ended up with a major hearing loss.  We changed doctors at 9 months because I was tired of going over two weeks to hear that he had a “cold”.  What kid has a cold for 5 months?  The new doctor treated him with antibiotics immediately.  It took two weeks, but we began to see a healthier kid.  But the following month he was sick again.  And again the following month.  Three ear infections three months in a row.  That was enough for our new doctor to say it was time to go to the ear, nose, and throat doctor.

I couldn’t agree more.  I knew there were major problems with his ears, the signs were all there.  He didn’t or couldn’t talk.  He’d been trying to walk since 8 months old with no success.  He fell constantly and even at a year old it wasn’t getting any better.  He didn’t turn his head when we talked to him. 

The specialist decided he needed tubes in his ears.  So at 13 months old, he had his first surgery.  Three days later, he was running.  He looked at us when we talked.  It was a miracle.  By the time he was four he’d had the tubes back out and his tonsils out as well.  He hardly ever gets sick now.  But he was delayed…in some ways, he’s still delayed.  He was saying only three words by 18 months.  His attention span lasted seconds and is only a few minutes even now.

This leads me to the problem of today.  While volunteering at his school for his library time, his teacher mentions to me that he’s not getting his work done.  He’s constantly off task and stares off into space.  He doesn’t typically disrupt the class with antics, but the consistently trying to get his attention eats up much of class time I’m sure.

At the recommendation of his preschool we had him to Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital to be tested for Autism and other behavioral issues.  They did not feel he was autistic, but that we would probably see a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD before he was 10.  I vowed at that time that I would not medicate him.  I like my son the way he is.  He has a charming personality as well as being intelligent and creative.  Now I have to wonder if that is the right decision.

He’s not completing his work.  His memory is amazing, but his writing skills are below age and grade level.  He can spell his sight words and read them from written pages.  Colors, shapes, letter recognition, patterns and matching were all easy skills for him to learn.  And yet, easy or not, he’s not finishing his worksheets.  He refuses  to color and when he does do it he scribbles.

I know if I take him in they will want to medicate him.  I just don’t know what to do.

The past two years she has done as much geometry as she has addition and subtraction.  I taught her how to count by twos, fives, and tens.  But they have so focused on getting kids ready to take that damn federal PSSA test that they have forgotten to teach these kids the basics.  It’s no wonder she was crying.  Her homework tonight gave her a total number of two items and the difference between those two items.  For example…Billy had 42 trucks.  There were 6 more blue trucks than green trucks.  How many of each truck are there?  To you and I, this is nothing.  But to my 3rd grader you might as well have been speaking Chinese.  Algebra?  Really?  3rd grade?  Come on.

They wanted her to make a guess of two number with a difference of 6 and then see if she got close to 42.  She hasn’t learned a thing about estimation yet.  She’s making guesses of 12 and 18 and then banging her head off the table because she’s only getting up to 30.  And that was after I’d explained what they wanted over and over again.

What did I do?  I taught her algebra.  I didn’t get into A – B = X, but close enough.  But I taught her a simple equation and lo and behold she got it.  I told her take the total and subtract the difference.  Take that number and split it in half (because they haven’t touched division and are only through the twos in multiplication).  That number is the answer to your lower item.  Then take that number and add the difference back on and you have your higher item.  Check your math by adding those two numbers together to get your total.  A lot of steps I know, but we know that 17 + 17 = 34.

I could see the light go on in her head.  Her face lit up and she was asking me for more problems.  Suddenly my child was doing algebra like it was the ABC’s.  What happened to teaching kids the basics?  The government happened of course.  She was working with fractions in 1st grade.  Can she tell you exactly what a fraction is, what it means, or how it works?  Nope.  But she knows that 1/2 is a fraction.  She hasn’t retained any of it because they work on for a week or two and move onto something else.  It hasn’t come up again.  We had a problem with borrowing last week.  She couldn’t remember how to borrow or carry over.  Why?  She’s a smart kid, she should know this.  Because they worked on it for a week in 2nd grade and moved on to something else.  Forget reviews.  I guess if you don’t get it and retain it the first time you’re screwed because once they’re done with something they move on.  They aren’t teaching kids, they’re teaching subjects.  doesn’t matter if  kids learn it or not, so long as they learn it long enough to do well on the PSSA test.  They can forget all about it them and it becomes the next teacher’s problem when they start preparing for that damn test.

I used to think people were crazy for wanting to home school their kids.  Now I’m not so sure.  At least if I were teaching her, I’d know she was really learning.  Of course, I might end up killing her because if there is crying in homework I can’t begin to imagine how much crying there would be in teaching her.

Anyway, the post talks about parents posting embarrassing or hurtful things about their children for the world to see.  And the consequences when at some point the children find and read these things.  The writer talks specifically about “bathtub” pictures, which all parents think are adorable, and saying things like I can’t wait to get a break from my kid or how boring it is being a stay at home mom.  She talks personally about her own experience with a Christmas letter her mother wrote.

I understand how much it hurts when you feel like your parents are putting you down and criticizing endlessly.  I had a bad experience myself when I was an adolescent and my  mother made a comment about how having a child at 15 ruined her life.  Of course, my heart still bleeds when I think that my mother didn’t want me and I ruined her life.  At 32 I know my mother was talking about her own mistakes, but geeze words like that can kill the confidence of a kid.

Now all of that being said, do I think you shouldn’t post cutsie pictures of your kid?  No.  Do I think you shouldn’t find others in similar situations to vent your anxieties, worries, fears, and gripes?  Hell no!  I think getting these things out makes us better parents.  It is a proven fact that “group” therapy works because when you realize you’re not alone, suddenly your problems are not so big.

My kids know I love them and put them first in almost everything.  They also know when mom has reached the end of her rope and needs a break.  They are learning, as much as kids can, that grown ups need time to themselves so that they can appreciate being parents and be better parents at that.

Now I won’t say that there aren’t parents who take it too far.  Sometimes people forget that kids hear and hurt just like everyone else.  My mother was wrong for saying what she was feeling the way she said it.  She was wrong for saying it anywhere I might hear.  Was she wrong for the way she felt?  I don’t think so.  The fact is, she was a 15-year-old mother and she wasn’t ready for it.  She had to quit school and marry a man who beat the hell out of her.  Did she resent me?  At this point in my life, I can say honestly I don’t think she did.  Was she a bad mother?  Well she had her moments.  But if at 24 when I became a mother I found it overwhelming, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her at 15.  She didn’t always put me first, I don’t think she knew how.

So, if you feel the need to vent (I know I do at times), make sure you do it with the thought that maybe someday your kids are going to hear or read it.  Temper the words with love.  No matter how frustrated I get with my kids, my life would be incomplete without them.

Shopping therapy can be so tiring.  I tried on at least 7 dresses today.  I’m soooo tired.    I’m having a hard time even organizing my thoughts coherently.  Will write more later…

Evie has lived with the IPCA (International Paranormal Containment Agency) since she was eight years old.  A special power makes her invaluable to them, but she really just longs to be normal.  Chasing down vampires, werewolves, and whatever else pops up would be a lot better if she could just go to high school.

Then, everything changes.  A boy breaks into to the IPCA Center and paranormals everywhere are dropping dead.  Evie finds herself in the middle of a mystery and crushing on a “criminal.”

The best thing about this book, besides the great story, great characters, and all around great writing is that Evie is 16 going on…wait for it, wait for it…17.  I never get the feeling that she is 30 in a 16-year-old body.  She wants to be a teenager, just a plain old normal teenager.  With everything that she has seen and experienced, it would have been easy to make her jaded.  But, she isn’t.  I felt myself slip back into my own past when someone of her experiences had me reminiscing my own teenage years.  Definitely one for the bookshelf and one I hope to share with my daughter when she’s a little older.

I noticed some slight withdrawal symptoms around day four as well.  I started getting flu-like symptoms (now I really do have a cold, but I think the symptoms were exacerbated by minor withdrawal), I wanted to sleep and yet I felt very restless at the same time, anxiety was washing over me in waves that threatened to drown me.  I ended up taking half a nerve pill to take the edge off.  I was worried it would just put me to sleep, but it didn’t and it did seem to help me regain some balance.  I don’t have many of those left either though so that’s going to be a use in emergency situations only deal.

From the looks of it, it’s going to be at least two months before I get any medication.  Pray for me.  Hell forget me and pray for my family that I don’t make them as crazy as I’m bound to be before this is all over.

So far, I’m not having episodes.  I dread the thought of PMS though.  That seems to be when I go through the most.  I have felt my irritation levels rise a few times, but I’ve been able to control it.  No outbursts.  I think the depression will be the hardest to control when, and I say when not if, when it hits me.  Depression has always been crippling to me.

Pray for me.  I think I’m going to need it.