Where to start, where to start... I think this will ramble with my thoughts.

A month ago I moved my home computer up to 'Holly's Old Room'. I still haven't reconnected the audio cable, but the webcam is now functional! Last night Holly sat on my lap to wave at Poppy. Though she was confused and looked around the room to see where Poppy might be hiding!

So if you have Yahoo Messenger, and maybe even MSN Live? and you'd like to 'see' the kids - let me know. I know it works with Yahoo... I'm working on what else I use that might support it. I might even venture into Skype... but without my audio cable connected (it's lying on the desk right in front of the machine - you'd think I could get around to doing this so I have sound? ) - we'll see what happens!

We had a great weekend. It was a really nice Fall weekend, with pleasant weather. Kyle had a Den meeting on Friday, then the boys had their Space Derby on Saturday, and we attended the Boy Scouts' pancake breakfast on Sunday. Sunday also included a Family Target Run and general grocery shopping for me. I made a Lemon Herb Chicken Ring for dinner too :) The grownups and Holly loved it - the boys weren't interested. Which is more the norm lately. Totally not interested in new foods. But I keep putting them in front of them! Sometimes they try them. The rule is that they have to try it. Really try it. Unfortunately, I can make them try it, but I can't really make them give it a chance if you know what I mean? When they are convinced they are going to hate it, they usually do. Every once in a while they surprise me and eat more... but if asked they'll tell you they didn't like it. Hmph!

Looks like watermelon is finally, really out of season. They were down to three mini watermelons yesterday. And when I cut open the one I got today it was 90% overripe. Argh. Very dissappointing. Especially since that's what the boys take for lunch. Fruit and a yogurt. It's what they want AND it gets a bunch of fruit servings in them. Today I sent watermelon, cucumber, carrot, celery and yogurt :o) which is actually more veggies than fruit. Not sure if they will touch the celery, and the carrot depends on their mood. We'll see...

The new barn I thought we were going to start riding at isn't working out. They can't seem to complete their scheduling - every time I talk to them I get 'we're working on it' - an the last time I left a message they never returned my call. Since it's been since June that Ky has been on a horse I restarted the search last week. I found what will hopefully be the new barn! They are responsive and have great information. They have individual and group lessons. The prices are better. They are only a 15 minute drive (probably less). I'm bringing Ky by tomorrow to look around, pet some horses, see how the place feels. They I'll sign him up for 'by the month' - which is a great deal if you are doing weekly lessons. Then I'll splurge and ride once in a while. Might even get Ryan there on occasion if he so desires. We'll see what the options are as we get into it.

Ky has been more emotional lately, and there's been a resurgence of self image/confidence problems... "I'm an idiot" - though not frequent. This had all dramatically improved when he started riding, so I'm trying to see if this is the key.

I officially started Christmas shopping! I made the very first gift purchase on Sunday :o) It felt good. Usually I've started long before now - and we pace it out over 4 or 5 months. So we'll have a compressed buying season this year ;o)

Work is crazy at the moment... we're trying to get a release out the door among the 753 distractions that hit us daily. But we'll get there!

Oh! So Steve got me a gift certificate to a local spa last Christmas. About 2 weeks ago I finally used it. I went for a Full Body 1 hour Massage. The best part? Lying there for an hour with absolutely nothing to think about. The massage was great too, but hurt - which I expected because of the problems I've had with my shoulder/neck/back. But she got the pain to go away! I was sore from the massage for a few days - but the old pain was gone. I really, really, have to work harder on strengthening my upper body. To the gym must get!!!

So those are my thoughts this Monday Morning - have a great week!

I don't forget my own birthday.

It's not that I forget other people's birthdays. I KNOW what day they fall on. They are numbers after all and that is how my brain works. I remember numbers. I'll remember phone numbers from my childhood and then wonder -whose was that? Was that Cathy's? Michelle's? Darnit! Do I need to call it and see if someone answers? But that's a tangent. So I remember birthdays. I do NOT, however, always remember what day we are currently on in the calendar. Not sure why it happens but I totally lose track of the calendar. I'll be thinking - Steve's Mom's birthday is in - x - days. Gotta send a card. And then the next thing I know I'm thinking "hey - Steve's Mom's birthday is in March - what day are we on? Oh crap - it was 4 days ago!". So if I've 'forgotten' your birthday - know that it's not you or your birthday I have forgotten. It's my state of being that is in a jumble. And it's been like this for a long, long time.

At any rate - yesterday was my birthday. And apparently I can no longer wear black. According to Stacey London Black after 35 just makes you look round. And since I heard this from Stacey London, it must be true, right? Liz and I figure we heard her say *after* 35 - so it doesn't hit until you're 36. Which is what I now am. Yikes. Where has the time gone? (of course Steve's going to be 40 - so I always feel better remembering that).

Then there was the conversation with Paul and Liz during Girls' weekend (why was Paul part of Girls weekend? why would it be any other way ? )
Paul commenting on a friend he's made on facebook:
P: "he's 50! That's 15 years older than us."
me: "Not YOU!!!"
(Paul is just shy of a year younger than Steve - I won't out him here - but you all can do math I assume?)

It was entertaining... :o)

So back to my birthday. It was yesterday as I've said. I worked. I came home. Me and the boys went to the chiropractor. We had Thai takeout for dinner (yay!) and there was chocolate ice cream cake. And flowers. Yay!

And Steve got me a new HD 12megapixel camera for my birthday. Woohooo! And an 8gb memory card to go with it. I'm playing with it to see what I can do and maybe I can do a little better with this one than the last. I did perfectly fine with the last one - but never managed to get good quality 8x10's out of it. That's my goal - I need to replace most professional photo sessions. I'm hoping for a nice weekend some time soon for a fun outing with the camera. Worst case it gets a great run during our cruise. Which of course I've mentioned. 2 weeks from tomorrow we'll be packed up and at Mom's house. We all can't wait!

Today I had Kyle's follow up for Mono visit. And I squeezed Ryan in too. Ryan has swollen glands and a red throat. Not tired but then Ryan doesn't ever get sick the way other people do. So the Dr agreed and felt we should screen for mono (throat culture was negative) - we're waiting for the results. Since Kyle was there to tell Ryan all about the needle they use to take blood out of your arm, the waiting for the blood test was worse than the procedure itself. Once again I am impressed with how well they deal with children. Once the needle was in he calmed down. Not completely relaxed - he definitely wanted it done, but a majority of the fear was gone. We'll probably know tomorrow. Not that it makes much difference. Ky was given the OK to go back to being his crazy old active self - YAY! He was really feeling the lack of activity (and so was I!)

Mom and Dad cancelled their trip up - again. Besides Ryan's new illness, Holly came home with a fever at lunch time. So we'll just wait and see them when we leave for the cruise. Now we have another open weekend with no big plans. Sounds like a weekend for working on the new room to me!

Hope you have a fabulous weekend :o)

Where to start?

I guess I'll ramble and see where it takes me :o)

Friday we had another visit with Ky's psychiatrist. And I was able to tag on 5 minutes at the end to discuss Ryan and his anti-school behavior. Dr doesn't see Asperger's with Ky at all - says it's off the mark. He's doing great socially. When I mention my Dad and that I think Kyle is 'asperger-y' he mentions the 'social scale'. Something I've talked with others about before. That finding all of these disorders may not be anything more (in some cases - certainly not all) than labeling different areas of strength and weakness. In fact Ky's psychologist had started off 2 years back now with 'or he may just be an engineer' :o) So bottom line - we're probably dropping the Asperger's diagnosis. ADHD? Maybe, but he's still holding off on that - he wants more data first. Overall, he thinks Kyle is SUPER smart (which we knew but hey - we're kinda biased!) and doing well. Encouraged extra reading support at home to help with that. We're all still kinda stumped about the not getting work done at school - but I may finally be getting some ideas going here.

So with Ryan he agrees that it sounds behavioural at this point. Since I have to check back in about Kyle in a few weeks anyway, we'll touch base about Ryan at that point too and see if we need to have him seen for further evaluation - but at the moment we're holding off. In the Ryan area - we've started a sticker chart at home (for a new WebKin!!) he gets a sticker for getting stars at school - and a sticker for getting on the bus without an issue. He's now gotten on the bus all by himself, with a smile even - FOUR days in a row. Hopefully, this doesn't jinx that. If you remember, most of the time we had to actually carry him on and deposit him in the seat, crying (reports are that the crying stops before they reach the next bus stop - or we wouldn't have continued that method - always helpful to have Big Brother on the same bus!). So in addition to the stickers, I'm going to be picking him up at dismissal time once a week. We'll spend a little be of time one on one, then I'll do some work from home. LOVE that I have the flexibility to do that! That starts this week - and will hopefully add to the momentum. Of course the last time I picked him up early, he was then MAD the next day when I didn't. So this has the possibility of backfiring, but now that I know of the potential we can at least warn him of what's happening in the morning before he leaves for school.

Winter lessons started this week! Kyle is taking Snowboarding lessons! For those that have been reading - you'll remember that Uncle Dougie bought him a snowboard a few years back and we finally got him a lesson at the end of last season. This year we signed up for the 6 week plan through the town's recreation department. We have a 'local' hill - about 20 minutes away. Weee!



Along with this, Ryan is trying out skiing for the first time. He's been very excited about it. Just before Christmas we went to be fitted for boots - which he thought was FABULOUS! He had a great time and did well though he's mad that they didn't teach him to turn. We told him he needs to learn to stop first!

Here are afew pics of him:







As we've mentioned, we've had a lot of snow here. A bunch of storms all together along with low temps made for lots of snow (and ice dams too!). We got Holly out to play in it along with finally building a snowman with Ry:







Mushrooms for eyes - is that original? Mr. Snowman fell over that night - to which Ryan declared "he must have been doing what Snowmen do at night!"

Finally, I managed to get a shot of holly that shows her teeth - you may have to squint:



Don't you just love her Just Bathed Look ? :o)

And after way too long, I made it back to a chiropractor last week. This morning was my first adjustment and it was SO wonderful! The knot in my neck which I knew was because I needed an adjustment is so much better now! Now I just have to keep going! My xrays tell a story allright - but I'll let that stay with them. let's just say that I saw most of what he was going to tell me right there on the films. But it's not the worst and I should respond well :o) we shall see. Some of the things he mentioned to me related to other things that I hadn't brought up - like sinuses and exhaustion. Hmmm - be interesting to see if I end up less tired and with less allergies after a bit.

What I really wanted help with was my headaches/migraines and carpal tunnel. Apparently my CTS isn't true CTS but something called Double Crush. The injury starts at the spine and causes tingling/numbness/pain in the hands and arms - similar to CTS (and in fact can coexist with CTS - which is where the Double comes from - crushing the nerve both in the wrist and at the spine). When I had originally gone to my primary about the hand pain he didn't think it was CTS - because the wrong fingers were tingly/numb. The rheumatologist is the one that declared it CTS - and he wanted to go straight to cortisone shots in my wrists for it!!! (yikes!) so hopefully, a few adjustments will show improvement there. We shall see.

Oh! One more thing (I think I've now edited this post 3 times!) - with the sneaky veggies plan... I made ketchup last week. Yes MADE ketchup - I figure if it worked it was a great plan - they eat a LOT of the red stuff. So homemade has carrot puree in it along with tomato puree, a little salt and vinegar and garlic. And allspice? And I added some suger because it wasn't as sweet tasting as the kind in the bottle which is the kind with LOTs of HIGH sugar, and some more Not quite as high Sugar! (High fructose corn syrup AND corn syrup!). The making was funny. Steve came by and asked how it tasted. OK I said, but I don't usually eat it by itself so I can't tell if it's close enough :o) he brought over the bottle and squirted some on my finger for me :o) The big test? The boys LOVE it! All by itself this is a pretty big win. Tonight I was pretty lazy and just threw some squash into some canned ravioli (I know it's just horrible for them, but at least they got some meat and some squash in them!).

My brother had given us a gift certificate to Best Buy - so Steve picked up a small food 'chopper' - which seems like a food processor to me - and it works much better than the blender! We may be putting the blender away for now - this seems to work well. And it's small enough to reside in the place the blender lives currently :o)

Now maybe I'll try peanut butter!

Wow what a week. PChef shows Monday and Friday, Ky's first Cub Scout (Tiger Scouts!) meeting Friday - Steve had to take all three kids - weeee! And a Stamping show at the daycare center that I'd said I'd go to. Oh and a Technical Symposium in Cambridge on Tuesday. Obviously I made all the WRONG sacrifices to the Traffic Gods on Monday night because it took me over TWO HOURS to drive the 27 miles in!!! Ugh!

So I was ready for the weekend. Really. Really. Ready. Except that it didn't stop there. Saturday brought the MFA's New Baby Brunch (weee! babies!) and then we went to Target to pick up a present for Chloe's party today. And I completely blanked on Ky's social skills group starting yesterday. Oops. We'll make it next week. Today the boys started off with Sunday School. I was going to just pick them up and skip service after, but they were singing in Service. Oops. So I stayed until they sang, then snuck out. Ryan didn't want to sing, so he stayed with me. But I am OHSoProud of Kyle. First - I was alone with them. And Ryan was acting up. He really wanted to sing Jingle Bells, Batman Smells. Now, I understand the humor in this. Honest I do. But there is a time and a place for songs like this - and it is NOT during our church service. So after I asked him the third time to stop, I told Kyle he was on his own for a minute and walked Ryan out to the fellowship area to discuss it with him. He understood I was mad. Really mad. And I didn't even raise my voice :o) We went back in and there were no more issues. But here I have to mention how nice it was - really, really nice - that I was able to leave Kyle in the pew on his own. ON HIS OWN!!! While I deal with my other child, who is supposedly NT (neuro-typical for those not immersed in the ASD world). Yay! Even just last year I'm not sure I could have done that. So while it's frustrating as can be to be dealing with the mischief that has crept into Ryan in the last - oh eighteen months or so - I can step back and look at what we've gained in Kyle. Wow. He's done so much all around it's just fabulous!!! And he knew it too :o) And he did a great job singing in front of the whole church too! (and me without a camera - I didn't know they were singing, remember?)

OK ... so after we snuck out of church, Ky had his riding lesson, where Jocelyn continued to ooh and ah about how he catches on so quickly (yay!) and then we had Chloe's party at OneStopFun. There's a toddler area. Holly's not a toddler, but she had fun licking all the balls from the ball crawl (yuck!). When the moved into the gym part, I put Holly down and she crawled immediately. I grabbed the cam - and she stopped! I turned to talk PChef with some folks who saw the catalog and she immediately started up again! Of course the camera was off, and she sat back up. NO ONE IS GOING TO BELIEVE ME!!!! :O)



So tomorrow it's back to work! And I have my monthly PC meeting. Tuesday is the Den Leaders' meeting for Cub Scouts. What's that? Why is that mentioned?? OOOooooh - Amy called Saturday and declared that she and Corinna were chatting at soccer and they decided I should be Den Mom (still not sure why Corinna gets a vote when she has 3 GIRLS!!!). So after some deal making and me making Amy pinky swear that she'd be my assistant and I'd lean on her heavily (she's a leader for her older son's Webolus den) I agreed. Friday is a professional day at the elementary school, and the following monday the school AND the daycare are closed for Columbus Day. Busy, busy, busy around here for sure!

So I'm going to bed now. If you see me this week... hand me a cup of coffee :-)