Category: Jeremy

Guilty Pleasure

It was Xandra and Jeremy’s Sports Day today.

Xandra & Poojah

In the past we have been “those involved parents”. You know…..the ones helping out in the classroom, helping the teachers with photocopying or with crafts or field trips or at the concession stands at sports days or family fun nights.

You need someone to help out. WE ARE HERE TO SERVE.

This has always been our “way” of doing things. And then……

Then I lost Nathaniel and yet I still plowed on. Then we had the other 3 losses and I still plowed on. Then I got pregnant with Siah and still plowed on. Then my brother just about died in a crash with a semi-truck and I took a tiny break but still I plowed on. Are you sensing a theme here??? Then I had Siah and planned on plowing on, but I realized that I needed to take “sometime” to focus on just us…..and I did still end up heading back into the school to help out but during that time off something shifted.

Running HardI realized that my kids were important, and that I wanted to help out and be involved with them and their school, but WHY???

That became the BIG QUESTION for me.

See, I do think that if it’s possible, that it’s a good, and even a GREAT, idea to be somewhat involved in the school that your kids go to.

1. If you are involved then the teachers actually get to “know” you.
2. The “knowing” leads to relationship and SO MUCH BENEFIT comes from relationship.
3. If there are any problems with your child, it is so much easier to navigate those murkey waters from a position of relationship.
4. If your child needs extra help academically, the “relationship” that you have with the teachers means that you will get better treatment than those who are fringe parents….is this a “fair” thing, nope, but it is what it is…

Relationship is everything. So much in the “real world” is in “who you know”….it can make or break you.

BUT….I have found that finding the balance is SO important.

Am I there? No, in fact this past year has been a wicked brutal year for us and I have probably swung way to far to the other end of the spectrum and and am desperately hanging off the threads of the past few years of relationship to carry me through this year.

Jon and I got hired in town (Vancouver) in January of this year and we live out in the Fraser Valley and that means that typically 3-4 days a week we make the hour’s commute in and then again at the end of the day and we have just been basically trying to survive. All of this with one pre-teen (that right there is enough for a crisis all on it’s own) who is also in her first year of late French Immersion. One other pre-teen who’s moods can flail from one end of the spectrum to the other within the space of 5 minutes. A son with ADD/ADHD who is struggling with all that entails, and a baby. It’s been a bit of a wild ride the past 6 months. Add selling off a part of our company and still maintaining the other part of it….and yah, it’s rocked!!!!

Outta Control

One thing that has TOTALLY fallen off the radar is school volunteering.

We walked onto the school yard today and hearing the comments of “it’s been so long since we’ve seen you around here?” and “You’ve been so busy, eh?” and all the other little comments just nailed home to me how brutal it is to live under all that pressure.

It’s amazing how guilt sits like a cloud around the school.

Siah

We attended the Sports Day today. That’s it. We could have offered to help. We could have squeezed some blood out of that stone and given some more of our time and our selves and yet we chose not to.

We chose to focus only on our kids. We went. We cheered them on. We took pics. We bought them junk food from the concession stand to celebrate the day and then we left before it all finished.

It felt HORRIBLE and yet AMAZING.

Siah & Jon

I felt like we were letting the other parents down by not “doing our part”. I realize that if there are no volunteers then a lot of fun things won’t happen, but sometimes you just have to enjoy your kids without the pressure and responsibility of making it all happen for everyone else. And today…..was that day for us. And I determined that I was going to enjoy every minute that I was there. It was so nice to just “be there” for our kids.

I’m already feeling the pressure of having to start all over again and building relationship with the teachers and principals at the kids new school in September. But I’m hoping that I’ll be able to do it for good reasons and within boundaries that work for me and don’t lead me to feel like I’m giving everything that I have or being taken advantage of.

What was with today?

I was at the office today, and well….it wasn’t that it was a bad day – per se – it just wasn’t a good day.

Siah must have needed to pee every 10 minutes and he’d go, but half the time he had already started to go in his pants, and really, I think that the little dude is backed up and just holding it all in.

He still hadn’t “gone” as of bedtime tonight and so I wonder how much fun we are in for tomorrow.

He’s been doing so well, so today was totally unexpected, and slightly inexplicable.

Thankfully, we are home tomorrow and hopefully a slow, quiet day at home half naked will be just the thing he needs to get back on track….I mean seriously – Doesn’t that sound the like perfect way to spend your day?

Okay, maybe not or maybe?????

Anyway, I am really looking forward to tomorrow. I need a down day. I really like my Thursday’s. I don’t have to go anywhere and I can just pick up around the house (okay, not my favorite – I’ll admit) or I can just hang out and relax.

It’s such a necessary thing when our lives seem to be flying as fast as they have been.

Jeremy’s having a rough go of it. We have an appt. booked with the pediatrician for Friday. Fortunately it was made forever ago, and it couldn’t come at a better time. He’s had a really rough week. He’s not eating very much. He’s not sleeping well, and he’s so tired and looks HORRIBLE.

The dark circles under his eyes are brutal. And when we comes out of his room 2 hours after bedtime, crying his eyes out and saying that he’s so tired that he just wants to go to sleep….something has to happen.

He lost it tonight. Nothing was going right, and everything set off the tears. At one point, Jon asked him to rate his frustration level outta 10 – he said it was a 6 out of 10. then Jon asked him about his tired level….he rated that at a 9 out of 10. Poor baby!

I can’t wait until the Dr.s Appt on Friday. I don’t know what to do. It’s so hard to watch your sweet little boy hurt and to not know what to do to help.

I hate that.

Yes, I Did!

I managed to pound out 20 minutes on the eliptical.

Thanks for being the monkey on my back. There is nothing like posting that you are going to do something to keep you somewhat accountable.

Mind you, mentioning that I was going to try to post every day this month hasn’t realy helped me out that much. I know that I went away, but I really have no “good” excuse for yesterday….just an excuse!

We were gone all day until 10pm and then the first that I thought about posting was at 11:30pm when I was laying in my bed, under the covers, in the dark and the thought crossed my mind that if I were REALLY SERIOUS about posting everyday that I’d get up and type something.

I, immediately, put that thought out of my mind – rolled over, and went to sleep.

And here we are!

BUT……I’ve posted more this month than I have in the last 2 months put together and I figure that’s pretty good. Not that anyone’s keeping track or anything……

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Thanks for all the comments on Siah’s pics. I’ll give it a few more days and then figure out which one(s) seem to be the winners. So far, it seems to be the 2 that I like the best as well. YAH!

Since ya’ll are in such fine form with the opinion giving….I’ll ask for a few more thoughts from you all.

I took the pictures of both Jeremy and Xandra over the weekend.

I’m really looking forward to getting some of these actually printed and framed. I’m having so much fun taking pictures. I wish I had a few more people to take pictures of……

I think that what I like about taking pictures is being able to capture “who” someone is. The different sides of someone…..the happy or serious or mischevious side of someone.

This set that I took of Jeremy was probably the easiest set of him that I’ve ever taken. With him, it definately has to be “at the right time” otherwise you are in for a whole lot of frustration and a whole bunch of extremely cruddy pictures.

He took some pretty awesome pictures. This first set is definately worth looking at even if just for the entertainment value – just to see what I have to work with. Click on the picture to see the whole “Goofy Set”

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He is such a little goofball. I love him so SO much! These pictures will show off that quirky side of him…..just to let you know…he was actually “trying” to take good pics with some of these. It’s one of “those things” with ADD – the harder that someone tries to focus on something, the more difficult it is to actually accomplish.

You could see the difference in the photos as he started out “trying” really hard and then the switch when he actually started to relax and just have fun with me…..too funny.

Here are the “real” pictures.

Can you take a look at these and let me know which one(s) you like the best? Thanks so much!

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Again just click on the picture to see the whole set.

How We Do It, Up In Here….

On Saturday when we were the family cleaning machine, Jon was helping Jeremy to clean the Fridge.

Jeremy was responsible for washing the front, sides and top of the fridge. He managed to pick the pictures and magnets and all the other crap off the front and sides of the fridge. He washed it all down nicely. He needed a chair to reach the highest part, but he did it and he did a very good job.

He was a bit put off by the fact that he had to do the top of the fridge. Frankly, he had the right to be put off. It was more work to do the top of the fridge than it was to do the whole front and sides. There was so much crap up there…..bottles of vitamins, and medicine and bandaids and all sorts of other things.

We got a giant box and put everything from the top of the fridge inside it and then you oculd see just how gross the top of the fridge was. It had the whole greasy, dusty, nasty thing happening. The one where you need to scrape the crud off the surface and even then, it mostly just smears around and is so terribly hard to actually clean off.

At first, Jon lifted Jeremy up on his shoulders so that he could reach the top, and then I came into the kitchen to see this……

jer-fridge

And that…..that is how we do it, up in here!

Where are the Poop Flinging Monkey’s When You Need Them……

Last night……..OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH last night.

You only wish that you coulda had “HALF” the fun that we did last night.

So, last night Jon and I watched a movie that I think my littlest brother would like, BUT he’s probably already seen it. Chris?? You seen Nick & Nora’s Infinate Playlist, yet? The whole indie music scene is right up his alley. You should ask him about his cuh-ray-zee music collection – seriously insane, people, SERIOUSLY!

Anyhoo….we watched the movie (It was a little young for us – we are such geezers now), and started it early as we wanted to get to bed early cause we had an early start to the day today. Managed to make it to sleep by 11:30pm. Not early enough, by our standards…..

Anyway, in the middle of the night Jeremy comes into our room clutching his stomach and crying hysterically. It was one of those moments where you go from dead asleep to wide awake with a serious shot of adrenaline in .001 seconds. Not a nice way to wake up at all. He’s crying about how bad his stomach is hurting and how he needs to go to the hospital and how he can’t move or breathe or cry or anything, except that he’s writhing all over the place, breathing at about 1000 miles an hour and, like I said before, crying hysterically.

We’ve been down this road before and even took him to the hospital. We ended up with blood tests, and x-rays and all sorts of fun over a 4 hour period and in the end, the nice doctor even showed us the x-ray and mentioned that the poor kid just needed to “release” a little and he’d be fine.

So, we figured that this was the same situation.

And we were right…..well, if it wasn’t poop, then it was gas, but regardless – it was not worth a hospital visit.

And so,

1) 2 hours,
2) 3 supppositories (oh yah, baby…you try inserting one of those suckers into an 8 year old….not only that, but an 8 year old who is freaking out and screaming and doesn’t understand the concept of just holding “it” all together for 15 – 20 minutes and well……it took 3 tries to be able to wait long enough for the desired effect to take place.)
3) 3 large glasses of water
4) 4 trips to the toilet
5) 3 large belches and
6) 2 nasty farts

….all of that lead us to “the mother load”, which in turn lead us all into being able to go back to bed and to finally getting to sleep.

After all of that, it was only 3:30am…..Jeremy had come into us around 1:30am…we’d only been sleeping for 2 hours when he came in crying.

So, when the alarm went off at 5:45am, I cried. The End!

ps. It’s been a very tired day, today! To say the least……

Hey! How YOU Doing?

Alright, so it’s been an amazing week of barf, diarrhea, diarrhea, and more diarrhea.

And you, How’ve things been for you?

I bet my week trumps your week, no?

On top of all that “fun-ness”, I reluctantly kept both Xandra and Jeremy home from school as school policy states that “your child should be 24 hours diarrhea-free” before you send their germ-y goodness back to class.

Let me just say that I so appreciate the teachers. Jeremy’s teacher in particular, but Xandra is a whole fun ball of emotional energy in her own special way, as well.

Now, it’s not entirely fair in that I get Jeremy “med-free” and we dope him heavily before we send him off to lay siege on his classroom, to war, to school.

I must explain…..well, actually – I really don’t have to, but I want to….because if me and my situation can in any way help you to understand some child and their parent better or to help you to give just a little extra grace to “that child” in church or at the mall or heck, even in your own family, or even if you just walk away and say “THANK GOD THAT’S NOT ME HAVING TO DEAL WITH ALL THAT” I think I might understand how or why that poor mom looks like hell so frazzled, nope I won’t ask her to bake 4 dozen cookies to bring to the “troop” meeting tomorrow night…..then my work here is done.

At this point, I’m actually just giong to go ahead and see if I can use a world record amount of punctuation marks, quotation marks and such in this post……

I choose to joke and laugh about the situation that we are in, mostly because I like to. I like to find the humor in things and well, in our family, there is a lot of humor to be found.

I can either choose to be angry about what’s going on and get all controlled and then get even more angry when “it” (life) doesn’t fit into my perfect little controlled scheme OOOOOOOOOORRRRR, I can laugh, and just kinda “Flow with it”.

I will honestly admit that I’ve been WAY more of a angry controlled type person for a lot of my life….not that I’ve had tons to be angry about, but the whole cycle of FEAR leading into CONTROL, leading into CHAOS, which makes us ANGRY mostly because we are full of FEAR, which cycles us right back into CONTROL and well….you can see how the cycle keeps on going, eh?

I’ve changed (some) over the past 3-4 years and it’s not been without counselling, but it has definately been for the better and not for the worse.

Okay, Back to my most wonderful son…..

Life with Jeremy is SO MUCH STINKING WORK!

It’s so true. Yesterday, after 2 days of being at home “med-free” I dosed him up. He was absolutely “pinging” off of everything. I had yelled at him lovingly helped him to understand the error of his ways, many, many MANY times, and this was all before 9am. Can you see how the day was shaping up to be a really awesome day?

So I did. I gave him some Ritalin, and even though it took a bit to kick it – yesterday was a pretty pleasant day….sort of. See, there is a HUGE sliding scale of what “pleasant” means. In my world, if nothing gets majorly burnt, irrepairably destroyed, no one gets seriously hurt, and there are no major screaming tear filled melt downs – then I consider it pleasant.

Did you notice all those adjectives in front of those words….yah…that there is the kicker. On a normal day….at that stuff still happens, but if we can “fix” the situation then I consider it to all be succesful.

Man, I’m tired!

I’m sure this post must be winning some award for the longest, worst punctuated, most run on sentances and poor grammer, but really…this is just how it is. Life is messy. My life might be messier than some, and less messier than others. But….this is my life, and I’m okay with it. Tired, but okay.

Okay, so I gave Jeremy some Ritalin….that’s where we were, right, and like I said, the day was okay.

The thing is…..I wonder sometimes…..I wonder what J would be like if he didn’t have ADD/ADHD. Would he be like he was yesterday? He was more subdued than normal. He worked his butt off helping around the house. He cleaned the TV room, he set the table, he wante to do the after supper dishes, he vaccumed, he cleaned his own room (and it looked like a nuclear bomb went off in there before), he got his pyjamas on without being asked, he packed his bag for the next day, he brushed his teeth and he got into his bed to “try” to go to sleep…..and then at 10:30pm he came out crying because he had been trying so hard to go to sleep and he just couldn’t….and that broke my heart.

This kid doesn’t sleep. It’s awful. I wonder if half his problem isn’t that he’s just sleep deprived. I don’t know what to do about that…but that’s a tangent….

He did all that stuff……NORMALLY….he would have ignored that mess and those responsibilites and created the worlds largest human-made spider web in the front room with my most favorite and most expensive ball of wool, and then would have been reduced to a sobbing mess when I didn’t leave it there as a work of art for the rest of eternity.

What do I mean by a spider web….well, take a ball of wool or string or something and attach it to and around every surface in a room, weaving under and in and out a couple of hundred times……yah…it’s awesome….and hell, to clean up….it usually involves scissors, lots of bad words mumble under your breath, maybe a yell or two, and almost always sobbing…..OH MY GOODNESS THE SOBBING!

Really, honestly, i have no idea where I’m going with all of this….I’ve just had 3 days at home with my darlings (I haven’t even talked about the “special-ness” of Xandra) and today is the first day that they are back at school and I have a moment to breathe.

I love my kids. I love their creativity. I hate that Jeremy needs some extra help to be able to function well in the world. I hate being tired. I hate worrying about Siah….that one’s weighing on me right now, but it must be a post for another day. I……..

Well…I have a lot of other “I’s” that I could say, but……couldd I hear from you?

What do you find is the most troubling, stressful or difficult thing that you deal with in your life? Heck, it doesn’t even have to be the most difficult….just something difficult or stressful?

Help a girl out, eh? Let me know that I’m not alone stressing about things?

Hey! What’s up With You?

Well, actually – that should read “What’s Up With Me?”

Basically just take the past year and hit rewind and and then play again, and all that whining about being tired. Yah! That again.

Siah is cutting his molar’s and it’s about as fun as it sounds like it should be. We’re back to the up every hour thing, and it’s getting old.

I feel bad complaining about it, because I’m not actually complaining about the fact that Siah wakes up and that we go to get him (our choice – I know) It’s more just the “feeling tired” as a result of our choices.

I’m not ready to make him cry it out – although some nights I’m so darn close. I’m still in the “so thankful that he’s alive and here and with us” and sometimes it feels sureal……like the years of the immediate and intense pain from the loss(es) and grieveing couldn’t be seriously over.

I think that as much as I’d like to be able to post here every day or at least even just during the week….until Siah starts sleeping through, I figure there’ll be up swings of energy and down swings of tiredness.

How about you? Do you or did you let your kids cry it out or do/did you go to them when they wake/woke up in the night…..or do/did they just sleep in the bed with you?…..which kind of makes the other options moot then, doens’t it?

In other news, I have failed FAILED miserably at the 30 Days of Nothing.

The good aspect of the FAILING MISERABLY part of it is that – I have EVERY receipt from this month so far, and at the end of the month – I’m going to go through them all and figure out a “decent” or average grocery budget and then one month….”maybe January – it’s typically a tight month anyway – Hmmmmm, I’ll have to give that some more thought” I’ll actually do it with a specific number and all in CASH. I really think that would make a HUGE difference.

And now for some really funny news,

I bought the kids some plastic or foam or whatever material those craft pumpkins are made from. Yah! I bought some of those craft pumpkins for the kids. I thought it would be fun to cut them up and then to see see how the kids “craftiness” improves each year. It should be fun!

But….Jeremy had to name his.

He comes into my room this morning, and shows me his pumpkin that has only one eye cut out so far, and he informs me that his pumpkin’s name is “One Eyed Willy”.

Then he asks me what happened to Willy’s other eye and how come he only has just the one eye…..

Yah! Gotta love that kid!

But…kids are home fro+m school+++++++++9+- (Siah was helping me to type – he’s so helpful like that)

So, as I was saying, the kids are home form school, and I gotta go and figure out a snack, and also – DINNER….AAAAWWWWWKKKKK!

Mindless Blatherings

I really should have gone shopping this week – we are OUT of fresh fruit and veggies but I’ve been trying to stretch things a bit this week, and to use up some of our frozen or canned stuff and…..well….here we are. It’s Friday and I did spend – well dangit – I can’t find the reciept.

I’ll have to find the recipet and then I can update…it was approx $50. I bought a large block of Sheep Cheese.

There is a part of me that is feeling a little bit pressured to hide things like paying a large amount of money for cheese when that money could be someone else’s entire weeks budget for food.

At the same time, I’m not trying to live anyone else’s life. We have made some choices for our life (and health), and some other choices were made for us (allergies, intolerances, etc) and we have to live with (and within) our choices.

Yes, I do buy speciality cheese, but not all the time, and we ration it out. I won’t be apologetic for the choices that I choose to make. So….that’s that.

That’s the deal with being open about stuff, and then dealing with the reality that you make choices that are different than others, and then dealing with your preception of what others might be thinking based on your choices.

It all comes down to judgment doesn’t it?

It’s amazing how judgmental we can be, and I think that we expect the same kind of judgment to come to us that we dish out. I hate judgment. It sucks! I try hard to not judge, not that I’m always perfect at it, but I try.

Okay – I could get all deep here, but I was just trying to whip up an update about how we are doing and what’s going on, and I’m getting all sidetracked…

I blame it totally on the downstairs renters. They are totally blaring their music right now and all I can hear is the thump, thump, thump of the bass in whatever song they are listening to. It’s AWESOME!

They’ve had a party every night for the past week and a half and it’s getting old. We’ve asled them to be considerate of the fact hat we have a family living upstairs, and then….that night they are still going strong at 4am. IT ROCKS! In SO MANY WAYS!

So, I’m tired! I’m also wondering how this fall/winter/spring’s cold, wet, dark, rainy season is going to affect me. I can feel the tiredness already starting to hit. That sucks, too!

Alrighty, well, now that I’ve spread my love and cheeriness all over the Internet – I think that I’ll just be done now.

Don’t forget to check out the store and to ENTER THE GIVEAWAY! Click here to read about the details.

And seriously, if you’ve never commented here or are lurking and unsure about de-lurking….come on….I won’t bite. I promise! Well, maybe only a little bit and only if you ask me to.

Someone has to win, and it might as well be you. Right?

Only the Second Time

Man, We’ve been doing this parenting gig for over 12 years now and for only the second time in that 12 years we’ve had to call poison control.

I think that’s a pretty good track record. I mean, I’d love it if we hadn’t had to call them ever, but for how……….energetic, and inventive my children are….I think that’s a decent number. In fact, I’m surprised that we aren’t on a first name basis with the fine folks over at the Poison Control Call Center.

The last time we called was when Jeremy swallowed a penny….that was SO MUCH FUN…you know…..waiting for the penny to drop…..literally!

Fun time, people, FUN TIMES!

Well, last night was not nearly as exciting. Siah had tried to do the Houdini Maneuver out of his highchair….have I mentioned that he’s climbing or crawling up onto anything and everything – again with the FUN TIMES!….and so we put him down on the kitchen floor. He waddled over to the empty dishwasher and then 2 seconds later started gagging. A barfing baby is not fun, but when you realze that the soap from the dishwasher – which is a mixture of Borax and Washing Soda – didn’t disolve completely away and that there was a little bit left in the soap dispenser and then you realize that your kid ate some of it……

It’s one of those “eye rolling, go and call the poison control people and find out if we need to go and spend the entire night sitting in the disease filled ER and possibly picking up goodness knows what and how that in and of itself has to be WAY worse than the tiny bit of borax that the baby just injested” moments.

Fortunately, the nice Poison Control guy said that we were morons for feeding our child Borax and then asked if we would not bother them so that the really impotant calls could get through.

No, they didn’t say that, but they weren’t concerned and said that there was nothing that we needed to do – Siah would be all okay!

So, in my concern and because these people weren’t nearly concerned enough for my child’s heath and safety, I utlized my Google medical degree and found out that…..

NOTHING! It really was okay! I mean, i shouldn’t be feeding him Borax for a snack, but apparently the Poison Control Dude did know what he was talking about and I really don’t need to worry…..which I still did…..totally, right?

He’s up and happy this morning and I’m assuming all is well.

Moral of the story……well….I don’t know what the moral of the story is, but….we won’t be feeding the baby any Borax any time soon, eh?

Thank You

I just want to say thank you to all who have commented or e-mailed your support in regards to my store.

THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH! YOU ARE SO APPRECIATED!

I’ve bee neglecting my blog because…well….because I’ve got too many things on the go, and apparently this is one area that has been neglected.

I’m working on a really good balance, and I think that I shall be able to work everything out as long as I keep to that very important word – BALANCE!

I have a tendancy to get fixated on something and do it ot the exculsion of most all else, and when ever I do that….bad things happen. Not “bad things” literally, but I end up feeling overwhelmed and stressed, and I try to have it as my goal to walk life in balance, and to not be stressed. Sometimes I do better and some other times, not so much.

I have about 2 dozen new pieces to put up in the store, and Jon is working behind the scenes to get things all running smoothly, and so if you encounter any difficulties in the process, please just let us know and we’ll get it all sorted out. Things might change around or look slightly different or something, but should be all if not mostly sorted out by……” drum roll please” October 1st.

I will be having an “official” (how does that sound for important) launching of the store, on October 1st, and will be having a “BUY 2, GET A 3RD FOR FREE” sale. I hope that you will find something that you like for either yourself or for someone else in your life.

Now, I know that was a lot of “business news”, and again, I will be working on a balance between everything even here on the ol’ blog.

The family is doing well. I have pictures to show you, stories to laugh about with you, advice to get from you…the list goes on and on and on. Here is a quick picture from the weekend.

We went out for dinner with my Grandpa at 80’s Restaurant We’ve been going here since my youngest sister was born….a loooong time ago. It was so nice to see Grandpa, and to spend some time with him….we need to do that more often. I love that my kids are able to make memories with their Great-Grandparents. It’s not such a common thing that the Great-Grandparent generation is even alive any more. Any way…

Here is Grandpa and Jeremy….nice bunny ears, Papa!