Catching Negative Thoughts

Yesterday I had the privilege to attend a seminar for Parents and Educators of children with Special Needs. I thought it would be helpful as we make decisions for James' future education, like if he should go to Kindergarten in the fall or do another year of preschool. The keynote speaker, Jennifer Krummins, was truly phenomenal. I felt like we could have spent a whole week together, with her giving me advice and encouragement, and it still would not have been enough. Among the many useful topics she discussed about raising a special needs child was concerning negative thoughts that parents think which hinder their ability to help their child. It really stayed with me, as it is a huge problem that I have, and since it is my thoughts and not something I often say aloud, I don't hear positive reinforcement to counter-act it. Jennifer advised writing down the negative thoughts that go through my mind, then listing thoughts that contradict them to help change the recording I keep playing in my head. So here goes:
1. This is my fault.
2. Why is this happening to me/us?
3. I don't know what I am doing.
4. I am a bad mom and shouldn't be allowed to make decisions for my child.
5. There is no place for my child in his school, at church, in public.
6. My son will never have friends, other kids will be mean to him, I can't protect him.

Unfortunately, some of these messages have been reinforced by other people, either by judgmental attitudes that I encounter or directly speaking them to me. My husband (best husband ever, remember?) tells me to ignore these people, but he doesn't seem to understand how they are just echoing thoughts I already have, which then gives those thoughts credibility. He tries to help think positively, but its easier to believe the bad ones. Some things that Chris says:
1. I'm a good mom.
2. We make good decisions about what is best for James, and we know best how to help him.
3. Its not possible to separate James and all the wonderful things about him from his delays, why would we want to?
4. Intervention has helped James already, and he will only continue to share more and more of himself with us as he becomes able.
And this weekend, I was told
5. Parenting a child like James is a privilege, not a problem. The challenges that arise from raising a child with special needs is an opportunity to grow, not a thorn with which to contend.

A woman I spoke with during a break told me that as my son's mother, I am doing what is best for him, and I just need to trust my instincts. I promptly burst into tears and had to walk away, because I couldn't even hear her words as encouragement, it felt like a slap to all my self-criticism and self-doubt. Maybe someday I will be able to offer words like that to another mom who needs to hear someone say something nice about her or her child, but right now I am still so raw and shell-shocked that I can't even imagine being that collected.

Yesterday was a really emotional day for me. It made me confront the things I try so hard to pretend don't bother me.

The Best Husband Ever

I met my husband when we were both 17 years old, so young and foolish in hindsight. At the time, I had a mental list of the attributes that I thought would make a perfect husband, and I was also convinced that I would never meet a man to fulfill them. When Chris and I were first dating, he only possessed a few characteristics from my list, enough to get my attention and make me want to spend time with him; now I'm happy to say that he has grown into a wonderful man and amazing husband. I think many women (not all, we need different things from our spouses) would be really lucky to be married to this man, but I can happily say that he is all mine.  Here are ten of the reasons why:

10. He kills the bugs. And does many other really gross things that I simply cannot stomach.
9. He's handsome. This is near the bottom of the list, because looks aren't everything, but it helps to like what you see when you wake up next to the same person every day.
8. He believes in me. I never thought I would need anyone else to help with my self-esteem, but he gives me confidence when I start to doubt myself.
7. He communicates well. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus...but we've learned to tell each other the things that keep us on the same page.
6. He's funny. This is the first thing I noticed about him. Chris makes me laugh every day, and it really helps get through the stressful moments in life.
5. He's a great father. I knew he would be! He loves his kids and does so much to share himself with them, teaching them how to be wonderful people.
4. He's thoughtful. Every single person on earth is capable of being inconsiderate. So it means alot when Chris covers my weaknesses with his strengths, and helps me without being asked.
3. He has the same values that I do. I cannot stress enough how important this is to make a marriage last. We start with the same foundation about how we see the world and our places in it.
2. He is his own person. After the big stuff is the same, its nice to have differences in tastes and interests. It exposes both of us to new ideas, and gives us our own space to be individuals.
1. He challenges me. The most important thing for me, the characteristic I never thought I would find, is someone that I respect who makes me explore different things and question the status quo. I love having long talks about ideas (though with three kids to chase after, those don't happen as often as I'd like).

I consider myself very lucky to have found at such a young age, a man who completes me and complements me so well. There is no one I would rather spend my life with, whether it is during an ice storm when we lose power or a beautiful sunny day at the beach. Our marriage vows are more true today than the day we first spoke them :)

On Turning 30

Big moments in my life always cause weeks of introspection, looking back and then looking ahead and then back again. Is this where I want to be? who I want to be? and now turning 30 is no exception. I have literally been thinking about this day for the last 6 months. The conclusion is that I am happy to be getting older. I'm proud of who I am today, and the direction my life has taken. I'm glad that living means moving forward. And so these are the things I wrote in a notebook while I waited for James to get done with school, with Winston begging me to let him go down the slide and baby sleeping in his carseat.



A snapshot of me at age 20:
I'm looking pretty good in those size 6 jeans. On my days off, I can (and often do) sleep for 14 straight hours. When it rains, I go to Borders and spend the afternoon reading. When I go out with my friends, we go to the movies, go dancing, sit at restaurants for hours, but everything is decided a moment before it happens. I think I've moved out of my parent's house FOR GOOD, but it will actually take a few tries to stick. I think that my future career will be the greatest accomplishment of my life. I have just finished college and I have the world all figured out.

10 years later, I look at that young woman and sigh. She has NO IDEA.

She wants to see the world, and will become a flight attendant to accomplish her goal. She will see the Pacific Ocean. She will spend a week in Europe with her mother and it will meet her expectations and disappoint her at the same time. Because she thinks that someday she will live abroad, or quite frankly, anywhere but here, but everything that she wants will be in that little city in Ohio.
She doesn't know that the boy she is dating will become her husband in just a few years. That they will buy a house in Canton and fill it with children. That creating a family is something that she's actually good at. She can barely lift a 30 pound box, but one day she will carry a 50 pound child in one arm and a 30 pound child in the other when their strength gives out.
She will learn real love and real patience, not through some cosmic gift, but through painful and persistent trial and error. She will be more content and more confident when she turns 30 than she can even imagine being at 20.

I can't help but quote the Brad Paisley song that plays at the end of "Cars", and not just because I've seen it every day for the last four weeks: "Sometimes when you lose your way, its really just as well. That's when you find yourself."

Downton Abbey

When I started blogging, it was because I couldn't sleep at night (hence the name "Insomni-Mommy"). Then I got a job working the early mornings, spent my days with two hyper boys, and couldn't fall asleep fast enough at night. Occasionally something would keep me up, like when I read Twilight and The Hunger Games, and the suspense was too much to take! Now I have 3 children, and no longer work outside the house because its way too much anyway. So the stakes have gotten much higher to keep me up at night. And I was totally shocked that the Masterpiece Classic show Downton Abbey would fit the bill. I heard about the show from facebook friends and then on the Golden Globes (which I primarily watched in disappointment that Ricky Gervais was not as snarky as the previous year). It showed up on Netflix Watch Instantly, and I put it in the queue, thinking it would work well to help me unwind after a long day of child-raising. So not the case! Within the first five minutes of the first episode, I was sitting up in bed, completely rapt to the action on screen. When the episode ended, I described it as a cliffhanger to my disbelieving husband. And I was hooked. I watched both seasons in the course of about a week, staying up until 3 am (what am I, 19?) and devoured every moment of restrained passion and delineated social position. I think what this show has going for it are the beautiful location, costuming, all that visual stuff that makes you totally wish you lived in a Yorkshire manor in 1912, and the themes of class and generation, not to mention Dame Maggie Smith, who could be the new Girl Next Door and make me watch that ridiculous show. I love her line about how young people are so much more likely to see things as not set in stone, and it resonates with how I'm feeling now that I'm about to be 30. I am no longer completely that person who sees the world as open and full of possibilities. Some doors have closed, and some traditions make sense to me. I think that is one of the real hallmarks of growing older. And Downton Abbey does a fabulous job of illustrating that point in every episode, by the reactions given to a situation by the Dowager Lady Grantham, Lord and Lady Grantham, and their daughters. Particularly in the early part of the 1900's when so much was changing, and the world was becoming the one we are familiar with today. I also thought during the first episode, how much it reminded me of Gosford Park. A little IMDB search showed that the show's creator also wrote that amazing movie, as well as The Young Victoria, which is possibly one of the most romantic movies EVER! So I was an insomniac for a week, now I am a lovelorn American desperate for news about season 3, and horrified that I have to wait until 2013 to see any new episodes!

September 11

In September 1901, an angry young man from Cleveland shot and killed President William McKinley during a public engagement in Buffalo, New York. There was a word used for men who sought to disrupt a government they deemed evil by causing chaos and murder: anarchist. A hundred years later, angry young men from the Middle East boarded four different airplanes in the United States and crashed them into the two towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. We found a different word: terrorist. Its been ten years since that day, a day when "the world stopped turning", when Americans experienced an attack on native soil that took the lives, not of soldiers entering battle, but of citizens, mothers and fathers going to work, then later, fire fighters and EMS workers, running into buildings that would fall to the ground to try to save lives. Its difficult for me to think about September 11th, to remember all the lives lost, and all the lives that have been lost since in our War of Terror. Especially when I still feel terrified, still afraid of an angry person who feels like there's nothing left to lose, and gives his life in a final act of terror. Most days here in quiet Canton, Ohio, there's no worry that someone will use us as an example to terrify the rest of the nation; that's what large cities like New York, Washington, DC, or even Cleveland have to fear. Also, since I'm not involved in the sale or use of crystal meth, I don't feel like my life is in immediate danger from our local criminal element. But I do worry about air travel, vacationing somewhere that an "underwear bomber" could target, or traveling overseas. Its scary to feel like my country of origin could make me the victim of terror, and I'm petrified of something happening to my children. Its not like this is a new problem that we've invented in the 21st century; murder, terror, assassination seem like key elements of human history. This weekend, I'm sad for the loved ones we have lost, and I'm sad for the innocence I lost ten years ago. I'm praying for peace.

Happy Birthday James!

March 30, 2007: I woke after only 2 hours of sleep, got a shower and did my hair. Then Chris and I got in our car and drove to Mercy Hospital to become parents for the first time. I was excited and nervous, I remember rubbing my belly in the shower and asking my baby if he was ready to meet us. We got checked in and had all the c-section preliminaries done, and were joined throughout the process by my mom and dad and my mother-in-law, who gave me great advice about which route to take to numb my body. Right as I was being wheeled down to the OR, my sister came in with a tray of goodies, which I couldn't eat yet, but gave me a kiss and a good luck wish. Once everything was in place on the operating table, the doctor started the procedure, and I wondered if I would know when they pulled my baby out. Not to worry, there was no pain but tremendous pressure on my abdomen, and then suddenly my little boy's cries filled the room, and they held him over the fluid splattered curtain to show me James. He was tiny, covered in waxy vernix and amniotic fluid, and squirming and crying at the "cold" room and bright lights. They told me his feet were pressed against his ears when they opened me up, and he had little Spock ears for a week, until they finally curled under. He was 6lbs 15oz and 18 inches long. I had expected that he would be bigger, since I was at full-term, but he soon outgrew the tiny preemie clothes he wore that first week, and then continued to grow and need new sizes every few months! He also latched on for breastfeeding right away, and was a wonderful eater from the start. He's not such a big fan of trying new foods these days (unless it comes in a bright shiny wrapper) but he always has a healthy appetite.

Becoming a mom changed my life. It has taken me in directions that I never could have seen, and never thought I would do well. During my pregnancy, I kept saying that we wouldn't have any more kids, because the experience felt terrible, but looking at James' tiny face and pursed lips in my hospital room made me want to do it all over again. Things I would never want to forget: the feeling of him leaving my body, the closeness we experienced during breastfeeding, the first time I heard him laugh, then the first time he laughed at something on tv (an episode of Pink Panther), feeling pressure from his arm and realizing that he was hugging me back, every time he fell asleep in my arms and let me cuddle him (including this past weekend), watching him learn to walk, feed himself, dress himself, talk, use the Wii, the dvd player, the iPhone, the computer, light switches, doors, a flashlight, the way he would rub my pregnant belly and kiss his future brother, the way he smiles, the way he laughs when he's being tickled or sees something really funny, the first time he counted to ten and when he learned the alphabet. In just 4 short years we have experienced all of those things, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for my special boy. I love you James!

Becoming Foster Parents

This coming week marks a new experience for our family. Chris and I will begin our Foster Home licensing classes and what promises to be a long process of paperwork. We are excited that our family will be able to grow this way, and ultimately hope to give a forever home to at least one of our foster kids. At the same time, this is a completely different way to become parents than how we have done it in the past, and I'm nervous not only about the experience, but also about how people will react to our situation. The friends and family we've talked with have so far been very encouraging and supportive, and for that I am so grateful. I am also so glad to have a new friend who has gone through the foster and adoption process with our local Children Services, to use as a resource and possibly a cheerleader when things get tough.

I'll be learning about how the system works and what to expect over the next four weekends, but what lies behind me is a long path of inspiration and experiences that have gotten us here. I recently tried to think back on all the ways that foster care has popped up in my life, and why I have been called to do it. One strong memory was reading "White Oleander" by Janet Finch. I think I picked it up because it made Oprah's book club, but it was a beautifully-written account of the ugliness of human nature, with a young woman in foster care at the story's center. When I finished the book, I remember thinking that there has to be someone good to be a foster parent, not someone who will sleep with a teenage girl, or lock up her cupboards and starve the children in her home, and I wanted to be that person. Another experience was getting to know a little boy named Joshua, who was in foster care when I met him, and was later adopted by the family he lived with. My mom signed up to take Joshua out and give his family a free afternoon on the weekends, and he soon became a regular fixture at our church and in our home. I was a teenager and loved spending time with this precocious and affectionate kid. Certainly, Joshua had issues associated with being in foster care, being neglected by his birth parents, and generally at-risk in a society that preys on children without an advocate. Again, I wanted to be able to protect him and care for him in a way that would help him reach his full potential. Over and over, foster care seems to pop up in my life, as though someone has used an orange highlighter to bring it to my attention. And every time, I want to be a part of it.

The next piece of the story involves my family; certainly I want to do many things, but I need my family to willingly participate with me. So how to get my husband on board with my plan? I started with prayer, which you can scoff at if you want, but it has been hard at work in my life, and made a difference. So I prayed that my husband would be open to fostering children with me, if that was what I was supposed to do. In the meantime, we started a family of our own: two blond-haired, blue-eyed boys with amazing smiles and independence to spare. I became a stay-at-home mom to save money and keep them close to me while they are still willing to sit on my lap and cuddle with me on a cold day. Finally, this past September, our church offered an opportunity to spend a weekend at a nearby Children's home and volunteer at a carnival to raise money, then visit with the children who live there. A little persistence got my husband to agree to go, and our kids stayed with the grandparents while we were gone overnight. The trip was life-changing. Chris and I spent the first morning helping set up the carnival, then ran a few game booths and had a chance to socialize with all the different people who came to the event, including the staff at the Children's Home. That night, we went to the "houses" on the property and played board games and colored with some of the children who live there. The ages we met were early elementary school, and so likeable and excited to spend time with us. We left the next day and spent our car ride home talking about what we had seen and done. That was when Chris shared that the time he spent with a kid named Michael had filled his heart with the desire to give a home to a kid that needed it. We finished the morning at church, where the sermon focused on following through when you are called to do something good that seems scary or uncertain. And that was when we requested paperwork to begin the licensing process.

So sometime in the next 6-18 months, we'll be placed with a child who needs a temporary family. And maybe that will turn into an opportunity to adopt, or maybe we'll be able to send that child back to his or her birth family and open our home again. I can't wait!