Hey there, Ryan :)

It's FRIDAY! As O would say, "FINALLY"  After a little absence, I am once again linking up with Sunday over at Adventures in Extreme Parenthood for some good ol' Ryan Gosling awesomeness!

On the subject of Ryan, I watched the movie "Drive" he was in, and I have to be honest, it was a little unsettling.  Towards the end I kinda got what they were going for, but there were parts throughout, that I kept going, "Huh?" 

Anyways,  so this weekend I have decided that I am taking my boys up to my Grandmother's (their Great Grandmother's) and staying overnight.  Their first overnight anywhere, ever. And I will be completely, utterly, alone. (Greg has to work the overnight job this weekend so he can't help) 

I'm either insanely optimistic, or, completely insane.  I'm leaning toward insane, because that just feels right.

The reason behind this trip is because, I was thinking about things to do over the summer with the boys and I just kept hitting this wall of completely disregarding "x, y, and z" options because I would think "oh the boys can't do that because of their autism".  It's a very isolated life if you don't try anything, because, there is a slight possibility that something could, might, possibly, go wrong. 

Then I started having all these memory flashes, of all the good times I had at Grandmas, growing up.  The fun of swimming all day (she lives by a lake) and building sandcastles, and then having a campfire at night, and roasting marshmallows.  Then falling asleep to the sounds of tree frogs, owls, and loons, etc.  Waking up, and having homemade pancakes made by Grandma for breakfast, and then going off to explore the woods, take a long walk, or go for a boat ride, or a million other wonderful things.

 After that I got a little teary, and talking to Greg, saying how I wish the boys could have those same memories.  To  which Greg responded with something so simple, yet profound.  He said,

"Why can't they? You don't know what they can handle until you try it."

I knew I married that man for a reason. :) 

 He's right, how do we know what there capable of until we try it?  That's something I've come across in my work repeatedly that has been opening my eyes to how much I tend to hold the boys back.  (I work at a school that's population is primarily children on the autism spectrum) We do things with the kids at my work that honestly at times I think "this is never going to work" I have to say honestly, I have been pleasantly surprised, a fair amount of times.  I'm not going to lie and say it always goes smoothly and/or is successful but ya know what? It's not the end of the world either.  We just try it again in a different way. 

So that's what lead me to want to try the first overnight stay ever this weekend with the boys. It could be problematic, but I believe I have planned and packed for all foreseeable problems.  And ya know what?  It could also be amazing and the best thing we ever did. 

Just in case, though, I've got Ryan on the case to help things go smoothly. 

Sounds amazing Ryan, thanks.

Remember to click the SNRyan pic in the sidebar for more Ryan goodness!



Oh hey! Don't I know you from somewhere?

Hey there! I know it's been a looooong time since I posted last.  Too be honest, between working and the chaos at home lately, I've been exhausted and not feeling very humorous.  That would make for some pretty sucky blog posts, something along the lines of...

"still busy, still tired, still crazy"

And...scene.

(Pretty un-interesting, huh?)

Anyways, this morning was interesting.  I was driving along, had just merged onto the highway and was about 5 minutes into my 45 minute morning commute when....POP! 

 

Yep, my rear tire burst.  I had no idea that's what happened till I pulled over, I just knew that sound could NOT be good.  So I pulled over on to the shoulder, got out of my car and saw the rear tire completely flat.  Weird to say the least. 

 

(Fun fact: When you're on the side of the road, and the cars and 18 wheelers are flying by at 75+ mph, it's just a tad scary, especially when your car shakes every time they fly by. Not fun.)

So, just to make it even more fun, my spare tire? Also flat.  Oh boy, we're having a grand old time now!  Greg packed up the boys and came with the other car to get me, took one look at the tire, and promptly called the tow truck. 

(Side note; when Q recanted this story later to his teacher he said "Mommy was driving to *work name* and her tire went flat so me and Daddy came and we saved the day".  How stinkin' cute is he?!)

Thankfully the tow truck came fairly quickly and towed it to the local tire place.  But our little adventure didn't end there.  The tire shop didn't have our cars tire in stock so they have to order it! Yippie skippy people! Which means something that could of taken and hour, 2 tops, to fix, is going to take an entire day and a half. 

(*throws streamers* Woot! It's a party!)

There's just nothing like making simple things more complicated, is there?

Oh well, Q got to go to school late, and he had some Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast, so he was happy.  That's worth it, right?!

(Gratuitous birthday party, cupcake pic)

(Don't judge me, it works with this entry I swear!)

(Ok, well, maybe it doesn't, but OMG the cuteness!)



Oh Ryan! (# whatever)

So to say the last week and half have been pretty craptastic, would be a gigantic understatement.  There's been a major upheaval in O's current school situation and we are looking into a new placement for him in the fall.  Ya know what's weird about this whole situation, is that, once we came to the conclusion that O just couldn't stay in his current program any more, and that we had to find another place for him, fast, the one emotion that I've been feeling the most, is, relief.   Don't get me wrong, I am stressed that we have so little time to find him a new placement, but I am not constantly worried about him having a 'bad day', or getting a knot in my stomach any time my cell phone rings around 2:00 (that's the usual time we would get a call from O's teacher) or waiting nervously to see how miserable he's going to be when he gets off the bus. It's very freeing in a way.  I am just happy that he's happier, and for now, that's enough. 

Q's been having some issues at school these last 2 weeks that have the teachers "concerned" which has been, oh, so much fun to hear. Especially after having, pretty much nothing, but success all year.  I think honestly they forgot that he has PDD because of him being so cooperative ! Now that he's displaying some more 'typical' PDD behavior they are at a loss!  It's kind of funny in a way. Kind of.

Anyways, the boys birthday party is tomorrow (their birthday's are 4 days apart, so joint party.  It's a time saver :) ) so I plan on having nothing but fun for everyone involved, and hopefully forgetting all about these last few weeks.  Also we have a MAJOR IEP meeting about O on Tuesday, so I should have plenty to blog about after the party and the IEP, so more posts to come, yeah!  That leads me to this weeks RYAN GOSLING people!  I'm linking up with Sunday again over at Adventures in Extreme Parenthood so without further ado....

I'll be right with you Ryan!

Click the SN Ryan Gosling button on the sidebar to see even more awesome!

P.s. According to spellcheck, I mispelled "IEP" and "PDD". Huh...weird. :) 

So....

For those of you that read my blog each Friday, looking for Ryan Gosling goodness you may have noticed my absence this Friday. 

That is because we had a serious incident occur with my older son, O, that I just couldn't put a humorous spin on.  I am still trying to wrap my brain around what happened and still have a hard time evoking any emotions when thinking about the incident other than anger, and disappointment.

 Not in O mind you, but the adults that were charged with his care and well being.  Let's just say they failed.  What happened was SO far outside Owen's normal character, that I would of never fathomed it possible until last week. 

I am trying to process how to explain what happened while still respecting a certain level of privacy to O, so as to not be disrespectful to him, so please understand there will be a certain amount of vagueness in my description. 

This happened at his school. The school that has not been meeting his needs as of late and the same school that we have had SEVERAL meetings/discussions with trying to get them to adjust things and realize that what they are doing is not working.

(*side note* isn't that the very definition of insanity, to do the same thing over and over and expect different results?) 

Things reached a head this past Thursday, resulting in a 2 HOUR meltdown, which ended with O threatening to do some serious harm to himself.  I won't say how, or what exactly he did, but let me assure you this was a serious incident and all involved were very shaken up, albeit for different reasons. 

As a result of this terrible incident (along with a culmination of other issues) we are making some MAJOR changes with O's current schooling.  The school was less than thrilled about this. However, we have no other choice.  He has been regressing for a while, he's made no progress there, and the school even AGREED with us on that!  Yet we're supposed to leave him there cause "now we are going to make changes"  

SERIOUSLY?! WTF!! 

(*breathing, deep calming breaths*)

Anyways, ideally by Friday we will have the ball rolling as far as setting up the major changes, but knowing our luck lately, that seems unlikely.

To try and end this on a somewhat positive note, I will share with you a pic of the boys early birthday present. (Their birthdays are 4 days apart so we just do a joint birthday party every year, which is coming up soon)

Drumroll......

A BUNNY!  OMG the fluffiness!!

His name is Lucky and he's amazeballs!

P.s. I promise to have my sense of humor back by this Friday, for the next Ryan Gosling link up! :) 



Oh Ryan! (6)

So, it's been a LONG week here. First off it was the first week back after spring break, which takes some adjusting for kids and adults alike.  This adjustment resulted in some difficult behavior from both boys and me being VERY tired after having to re-adjust to my new working schedule (read that as having to get up at the butt-crack of dawn as opposed to closer to 7). 

The peak of this adjustment was this past Wednesday. I ended up with a doozy of a migraine towards the end of my work day and was VERY uncomfortable so that by the time I got home all I wanted to do was hide in my room under the covers and stuff cotton balls in my ears and down an ibuprofen cocktail until all the pain was gone and just a distant memory.

However, O had different ideas.

Today he decided to go bat shit crazy when Greg brought him with him to go pick up Q at school.  Q's school is only like 3 blocks from us and O gets home about 20 mins before Q's pick up time so plenty of time to walk to the school and get Q right?

Wrong!

O got off the bus in a horrendous mood because some other kids on the bus wouldn't let him look at their Pokemon cards. (Gawd I hate that show. I SO do not get the appeal) Greg asked him if he wanted to walk to Q's school and "talk it out" and O agreed. O's idea of talking it out was to yell VERY loudly completely rude and inappropriate phrases for the entire walk to the school.  Then when Greg was about a 1/2 block from the school O kept trying to take his hand out of Greg's hand. Greg said that he didn't have to hold O's hand as long as O promised to stay right next to him. O agreed, so Greg let go of his hand.

(Can you guess what happened next? I'll give you a hint, Greg's blood pressure was sky high!)

That's right everybody, O took this split-second opportunity to BOLT several yards away and up a driveway, where he darn near opened these people's front door!

Greg was pissed! When he finally caught him, O began turning his angry phrases in Greg's direction and let's just say some of the things he was yelling at the top of his lungs as Greg walked into Q's school were quite memorable. 

So when I got home with my hellacious migraine Greg wanted to unload about all that he just endured and I was trying to be polite and listen but I could barely see straight. So he sent me to bed, thankfully. Later when I felt better, I felt sorry for Greg having to deal with that. He hasn't ever had to deal with a public meltdown before so this was a pretty upsetting thing for him. Poor guy!

So since it's Friday and I'm linking up with the lovely and brilliant Sunday, over at Adventures in Extreme Parenthood I thought I would make a Ryan Gosling meme in honor of Greg. 

So, without further delay, here's Ryan!



Yeah boy!

So I just got done watching all the episodes of the awesome show "The Guild" on  Netflix and I LOVED it. If you haven't seen you should definitely watch it.  Just a great show to help you learn to embrace your flaws and realize your still full of awesomesauce.  I came across this music video featuring the cast of "The Guild" that I think pretty much sums up the whole series thus far as well as being amazing and I thought I would share it here. 

Enjoy!

Oh Ryan! (5)

Hey, hey, it's Friday!  You know what that means!

That's right people, it's time to link up with Sunday's Blog again! Time for more Ryan Gosling awesomeness.

Let me tell you how my week's been before I bestow upon you my Ran Gosling pic. 

First off it's been spring break for the boys so they've had this week off, however they both came down with an oh so wonderful, bubonic plague stomach virus the week prior so they have actually been home for just about 2 weeks! (ARGH!) O got over it fairly quickly just in time for the vacation, however Q's been fighting it off for a while, I still don't think we're quite in the clear. Poor little guy. Easter kinda sucks if you can't eat the candy!  

Anyways, as I'm sure most of you know that have more than 1 kiddo, if you keep them couped up together too long, LOTS of sibling warfare rivalry will take place. In my house "too long", amounts to, more than 2 days. Needless to say I've been breaking up a LOT of fights, complete with screaming matches afterwards.

FUN TIMES!!

One of the few things that they did agree on, and played blessedly quietly, was the Wii.  That little white box has proven to be a godsend this week.  This is great also because, O used to have this very intense fear of video games. Yes you read that right, he was terrified of video games.  Anytime we would turn on the Wii or his brother wanted to play the Nintendo DS, O would literally  run out of the room terrified, and refuse to come back until we reassured him 1,000 times, that the game was off.  I still have no idea the reason behind this fear, but it eventually lessened and overtime he started to see the fun of video games. 

Now, lest you think I am a lazy mom and just plop them in front of the game and walkaway, let me tell you I play with them too, and I play hard! So hard, that I actually injured myself! Yes ladies and gentlemen I did.  I was playing the "Wii sports" bowling game with the boys, and I dipped a little too low when I released the 'ball' and I pulled my hamstring!

*bows*

Thank you, yes I am that good.

So as a result I've been limping around for the last 2 days, because, (let me say it one more time for full effect) I pulled a hamstring, playing the bowling, Wii game. My husband still cracks up a couple of times a day at this sight, and too be honest I can't blame him, it's just too absurd.

But like I said, this was the one respite, from the CONSTANT bickering between the boys, and their incessant yelling so, I'll take it! 

And that brings me to this weeks Ryan Gosling pic.

Yes Ryan, let's do that, and maybe some other things. ;)

Be sure to check out the other Ryan pics by clicking ---> Adventures in Extreme Parenthood! or just click the SNRyan Gosling button in the side bar! (Go on, do it! )