Girls..

My boy really is growing up. In the past week or so he's started saying a bunch of new words like cracker, and ding dong. And the newest one as of yesterday while at our baby group is "girl". He was grabbing at another baby's skirt while she tried to crawl away, and later he was chasing another girl baby. I told him that was a girl and he began repeating it. It now seems to be his favourite word. Which, coupled with the new sound he started making this morning is actually quite amusing. I grabbed him from his crib and brought him to our bed. I told him to give his daddy a kiss good morning and he started making the kissy lip smacking sound. Now he says girl and makes the kissy sound. He's not even two yet.. ay yi yi.

And we've started playing a game on the bed, where he stands up holding the wall and then lets go and just stands on his own for a bit. He's doing it a lot and has even started to do it on the floor. It's very exciting for us, he might eventually walk on his own! I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high. Also his other new skill is drinking juice from a juice box. So far it's less messy than drinking from a cup so I'm all for it. He has some apple juice once in a while, but he's still mostly drinking water and milk. We're working on using a spoon, but he still would rather scoop the food out with his fingers.

I'm excited and nervous about camping this weekend. C tried to get Skyler to sleep on the air matress with him on his bedroom floor. That didn't work out so well. Skyler wanted nothing to do with laying down on the air mattress. He was too busy playing of course. I'm hoping he'll sleep on it when we're camping because he'll be so tired out from doing things all day, and there won't be much to do in the tent aside from sleep. *crossing my fingers*

This week feels like it's gone on forever and a day and it still isn't over. I just want the weekend already, and I know C is feeling it more than anyone since he starts holidays tomorrow. And after all the insanity that happened at his work yesterday I think he's more than done for a while. He actually had a lady come into the store (they sell coffee, and so they have a sink by the coffee machines to fill and empty the machines) and she took off her shirt and started washing herself at the sink! She wasn't wearing a bra, nothing. Just standing there with her tatas and everything hanging out, having a little bird bath at their sink! C told her she had to put her shirt back on, and she went nuts. She threatened to kill him, saying she's bigger than he is, and she could take him on and whatever. He ended up having to call the police and he banned her from the store. They didn't even show up, the lady left and then decided to come back a couple hours later. He called the police again, and he was pretty mad about it. Craziness.

New Updates

Hey, thank you teacher for pointing out on my last blog what's going on with the design thing. I really appreciate it!

Wow these last couple days have been packed with news. Sunday we went to my mom's as per usual. My mom and I dug out some of her old tea cups and saucers. She has a collection of them and we're looking to sell them. (It's not like matching sets though, mostly odds and ends, but it looks like some pieces may be worth something). Last night after my mom's C and I worked out our plans for this weekend. He starts his week long holiday this Friday, so we're seeing the little girl I used to take care of sometime this weekend I hope. Saturday we're driving to another city in our province for their Icelandic festival in which some of our friends are historic viking re-enactors. (It's very cool) And then Sunday we've booked a campsite, and we're going camping Sunday and Monday with my little brother (and of course Skyler). I'm so excited, I haven't been camping in a long time. We're going to go hiking and canoeing too. I'm just worried that Skyler might not want to sleep in the tent..

Then today I got a message from a girl I worked with at the centre. She told me to check my email for a message from the big boss. I realized they had my old email address. Anyway, turns out I'm not at the same centre (which I figured). I've been offered a position at a school that is about the same distance away. My new position is inclusion worker from 8:30am to 1pm with a little girl who has a visual impairment and is non-verbal. I couldn't be more excited. She's just starting kindergarten. I can't wait to meet her and get to know her. I think inclusion work will be perfect for me, as well as working with a child who has the same type of impairment as my own child. There's even a possibility that I'll be working with my son's OT at times, if she's still working with this child.

So I'm off to try and figure out this blog design thing, I hope you all are well!

Yeah, I Don't Know

I know, my blog looks weird now. Not sure what happened, but the template I was using before is no longer hosted by photobucket or something like that so it stopped working. I just quickly chose something different last night when I noticed what happened and since I'm still not quite awake yet I'm not going to mess with it too much yet. I'm not sure why I'm up so early, I'm still really tired and Skyler's not even awake yet. It seems every morning I wake up super early and sneeze a hundred times before I can go back to sleep, and this morning I still haven't gone back to sleep yet. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know what's going on with the weird background. I'm going to try to go back to sleep now.

Got Milk?

Thanks for the encouragement everyone, it helps a lot. I've also found some new blogs recently about parents dealing with bigger issues than Skyler's and I remember to be grateful that his problems are not as bad as they could be. While I know at the same time there are people thinking "I have it bad but at least my kid isn't blind!" this makes me laugh, in a good way. If we can make some people feel less bad about whatever problems they have well that's good. I imagine that I could be sitting across from someone else whose kid has different special needs and both of us could be thinking "well, at least my child doesn't have her child's needs." I think this is simply because we grow accustomed to what we have to deal with every day. And yes, some people have more things to deal with in a day.

Moving on, today I went to Baby & Me. It's the same group I started to go to when I was 8 weeks pregnant with Skyler. You can keep going up until your baby is a year old and then you have to find another group, but since they don't have childcare yet, and Skyler isn't as mobile as most toddlers his age the group co-ordinator (who knows us well) said she'd make an exception. I had to reregister and fill out the forms for the little whatsit and its due date. In the beginning of the group we all sit in a circle and introduce ourselves and talk about our due date/babies. Since most of the people are new since the last time I went I was straight forward. I told them about the little whatsit, and then I said "You may notice my son's eyes cross, that's because he's legally blind." I did this up front right away before anyone had a chance to question/stare/point & gossip.

I got the questions after everyone had settled down and was started in on the snacks. Luckily since I had been upfront people weren't afraid to ask questions in a respectful manner. And it saved me time having to explain it to people one at a time as they showed interest. I think it helped that I was direct, matter-of-fact and I don't have a "poor baby" attitude about it so they didn't seem to show that either. It was nice to go back to a group with other moms, and this time Skyler showed a bit of interest in the other babies. He was really well behaved as usual. And the best part of all, I got milk coupons. I can't have "normal" milk because I'm lactose intolerant, and the milk I buy has the lactose broken down already but it's about $5 for a two litre. So milk coupons = free milk = awesome.

So that's what's new with us. I hope you are doing well.

20 Months

Tomorrow Skyler will be 20 months old. I'm excited, I can't believe he's going to be two in four months. That seems crazy. And he's still not walking on his own. I'm trying to be positive about it. It seems like he's heading towards it, but then, nothing ever happens he just keeps crawling and using the tables. And we keep getting asked (by family no less) "Is he walking yet??" It's starting to make me feel like I'm a bad parent. We've been working on the same exercises, the same activities suggested by the PT and the OT for months, and still nothing. It feels like I'm just not doing enough to help him trust himself to walk.

We have OT again tomorrow, I'm hoping to bring up the issue, again and see if there's anything new we can try. She has faith that he'll walk on his own soon. She doesn't want to bring in a walker or anything like that because he might become dependent on that and he seems to be so close to walking on his own. So I guess I just sit here, try to remind myself that he will do things in his own time on his own schedule and that's just the way it has to be. But sometimes, it's hard being the parent. I know I'm more upset about it than he is. He gets where he's going eventually even without walking so he doesn't seem to care much. I'm sure if I didn't have people breathing down my neck about when he's going to be walking I wouldn't care so much either. I'm just tired of explaining to people that he has no depth perception. They just keep asking anyway. Oh well, what can you do.

Guest Post

I was asked to do a guest post over on BLOOM, a blog that I've been following for a while. It's a wonderful site and the webmaster/author has a child with special needs herself. This is the post I wrote here. It's about our decision to have another child after having Skyler who (obviously) has special needs.

As for me, today I am trying to work up some energy and maybe I'll take Skyler to the wading pool close by for a bit or something. He hasn't quite been himself the last few days, I think he has a start of a cold or he's having a bad reaction to mosquito bites. On Saturday he just slept all day basically, woke up to eat breakfast, lunch, and then dinner, but aside from that was sleeping the day away. Then yesterday he was himself in the morning but when he woke up from his nap he was miserable and screaming and crying at everything which is not like him at all. I had planned on going to my mom's in the afternoon when C went to work so I almost called her and said we couldn't go. But in the end I decided I would rather have some support if he was in such a bad mood than be sitting at home with him alone while he screamed.

Turned out he was much happier at grama's house. As soon as he got there he stopped the crying/screaming bit and happily made himself busy exploring and playing with the cats. He also showed some love to grama by calling her name, pointing at her and giving her a kiss! (We'll just not mention all the hair pulling and yelling "AGH!" he did at her while he was there okay?). My mom and I talked about Christmas time and how Skyler will be two. It's pretty insane to think he's not going to be my little baby for much longer, he already thinks he's a toddler (and I guess he is..) and I'm sure the Christmas tree is going to be of much interest to him this year, with it's glittery ornaments, shiny lights and his ability to crawl super fast and pull to standing..


And as for the mystery in my tummy, it's making me quite sleepy and sometimes nauseous still. I'm starting to get a bit antsy about going back to work in September to be honest. I'm wondering if it's such a good idea to be working with children while .... you know, assuming I am still which I hope I am. I love my job don't get me wrong, it's just that schools and daycares are where you pick up the most illnesses.. Sigh, not sure what to do here, but I'm going to think on it. Maybe I'll do some meditation about it, that seems to help me. I hope you all are doing well.

Wading Pool Fun

I took Skyler to my nana's today for lunch. She made us delicious homemade mince and tatties. It's a simple Scottish dish, but it's my favourite comfort food so I was delighted. As was Skyler, he stuffed his face with fist after fist of ground beef, mashed potatoes and peas. We had walked to my nan's and it was a nice 26 degrees celcius outside (so a bit warm, not sure what that is in farenheit 90 something I think?) and I was feeling the heat. It's 4.2 km away from me, not sure what that is in miles, but it's a fair walk. It's a good thing she has air conditioning. We stayed and chatted for a bit until Skyler started to get tired then we headed back into the heat for a walk so he could take a nap in the stroller.From my nan's we walked a bit and then went to a nearby park with a wading pool.

I was excited about taking Skyler to the wading pool for the first time this year. We had taken him last year but he was so little that he didn't really do anything there. This time he was interested and engaged. I was a bit frazzled from walking so long in the heat and I wasn't quite thinking when I changed him into his swim diaper and trunks and just plopped him into the water. He was pretty mad at me, and I don't blame him. I picked him up and put him on my lap and we sat that way for a while until he was ready to dip his toes in. Then he wanted to stand, and was content like that for a while, standing in the water, kicking it and holding onto my legs just barely.

It was then that I heard a girl next to us talking to her friend "Look at his eyes!" I heard this a few times as the girls talked to each other, pointing at my baby. I must say normally the younger ones don't bother me much and I can handle it easily. Today though I guess the heat had gotten to me and the girls were older, about 9 or so (I'm used to the kinder/grade 1 crowd). I found myself saying very bluntly over the sound of the rushing water "He's blind." Their parents were nowhere to be seen. The girl who had been pointing simply said "Oh." then she turned back to her friend and I turned back to my baby and I heard her say to her friend "Oh I feel so bad for him!" a few times. I basically rolled my eyes to myself and muttered that he was fine.

They wandered back into the pool and went swimming. A little while later the girl came back and now she had some actual questions about whether or not he could see anything at all, and she told he me was cute. I admit that then I softened. I really don't mind when kids come and ask questions. It was the staring, pointing and talking about him that got to me. I was glad to answer her questions and she brought a little girl (who looked about two) to come and sit by us and was much nicer, telling the little girl to look at the cute baby. That I didn't mind. I also had another odd experience today when some guy rode past me on a bike and said "Hello mama. Beautiful." as he went by. Ew. Totally creepy.


After a little while of sitting there at the edge of the pool, C got off work (he's working days today and tomorrow) at about 4 and came to meet us at the park since it's right by his work. He even brought us some food and the picnic blanket. Skyler got much more interested in the water when daddy showed up and I took out the camera to take some pictures of him wading for the first time and playing with the water. All in all it was a lovely Friday with my family by the pool.

He Likes That

Quick update on things: the appt went well, they took five vials of blood. And they retested for me and confirmed. We scheduled the next one for the end of Aug.

I Like That

Still here, and it seems to be still here so far too. It's only been like a day, but hey, every day adds up. I'm feeling tired, sometimes slightly nauseous, and ravenously hungry. I've been eating like a pig. I made an appt with the NP for tomorrow morning. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Skyler has been entertaining everyone with his most favourite sentence. Every morning I wake up to a chorus of "I like that, I like that, I like that. Yeah, yeah. . .yeah yeah yeah" and the "yeah"s are sung. He has made it into a song. It's pretty adorable. All day long as he's playing with toys "I like that!" as he's putting his shorts on his head to wear as a hat "I like that!" and his personal favourite every time I sneeze or blow my nose (which is unfortunately frequent) he giggles and says "I like that!". It's kind of funny to have a small person "liking" every time you sneeze. It's a good thing he's not on facebook or he'd be liking everyone's status and their comments too. He's practiced saying it so much that he's got it down almost perfect now.

If my camera hadn't broke on the last of school I would take a video of him saying it for you cause it's so funny and cute. I'll have to use C's camera.

Oh and I wanted to tell you guys about the phones that C got us. He is a technogeek and always wanting to spend money unnecessarily on things I usually don't think we need. Well he wanted a wireless phone set for our home phone that cost $100 (on sale from $160). At first I thought this is absurd, we already have working phones. But he pointed out that they were from the year 2000, and he'd make sure I got to buy something frivolous too. (And we won $100 on a lottery ticket like a week later so that was cool) Anyway I said fine whatever get your silly phones.

So we brought them home and he charged them up. So let me tell you a bit about them. There are four phones and a main base, and 3 other smaller bases (one for each phone). He mounted them around the apartment so we have a phone in each bedroom etc. Anyway you can program it, so all the numbers in the main phone show up in all the phones, it has an answering machine, and a bunch of other features that are kind of neat (including a bunch of alarms that say "it's time for dinner" "it's time for lunch", "it's time for bed" etc. Kind of creepy and awesome at the same time and I'll tell you why in a minute).

My favourite feature of all, one that C didn't even realize it had is that the main base actually tells you out loud who is calling. If the number is programmed into your phone with a name the main base will say "Call from mom." after each ring until you answer the phone or ignore the call. If the number is not programmed into your phone it will say "Call from 555-7891" and it says each number clearly so you can listen to see if you recognize it or not. Now why is this even remotely interesting you ask? Because we have a blind child of course. As he gets older he may eventually want to use the phone, and having a phone that automatically tells you who is calling, so that you don't have to look at the screen is fantastic! He can hear right away if it's grandma calling or whoever and he can decide if he wants to answer the phone.

It also has an option to block numbers. Annoying telemarketer calling you at all hours? Block their number! Everytime they call it will give them a busy signal and then disconnect on them. Fortunately we don't have any stalkers but we do get calls from time to time from a number that comes up as "000-000-0000" which is always some sort of telemarketer. So that's useful as well. But also the alarm feature that tells you when it's dinner time/bed time/whatever I could see that being useful for independent living for someone who is blind or even someone with other special needs. Overall I'm glad we spent the $100 on these phones, and the way I think of it is each handset cost $25, well worth it in my opinion if it's going to be helpful for Skyler. I'll just write them off as "assistive technology" because really they are! Hmm I wonder if my nana could use them as she's 82 and is now legally blind..

New Beginnings Indeed

I'm hesitant to announce it on here.. but there may be something I just found out this morning.. something in the very early stages. I don't want to jinx it, but I believe that whatever will be will be.. So here's hoping it sticks.

Be The Change

In light of an event that recently happened in my personal life I have been reminded that we should be the change we want to see in others. And I've decided that I want to challenge myself to do at least one random act of kindness or good-deed each day. I know that I'm usually polite, and helpful to everyone I encounter, but I want to do more. I want to make sure that I am setting a good example for my child. He needs to learn that it is the right thing to do to help people out even if it just means stopping to hold the door for someone or offering to walk an elderly person to their car. (I've done both those things of course). I'm afraid with all the people in the world who seem to only care for themselves and laugh at the misfortune of others that my son might get the wrong idea.

I know he's still quite young, but it's never a bad thing to start early. I want to show others too, even adults, that it's still a good thing to treat people nicely and to offer help when it looks like someone could use it. On Canada day I saw a little girl crying on the street, surrounded by many people just walking by, she seemed to be all alone so I stopped and asked if she was lost. Her dad/caregiver turned around (he was at least 5-6 feet away) and put his hand out for her at this point, but I was left feeling uneasy nonetheless. It seems the little girl was having a fit I guess, and the caregiver was walking away, with his back turned to her, and there was a street full of people! It was a street festival (meaning tons of people, loud music, etc.) She was small, no more than 3 I'd say, he could have easily carried her. However he may have had his reasons for leaving her behind sitting on the pavement crying.. I just don't think I could do that as a parent personally. In a large crowd of people I want him by my side at all times.

Anyway, what kind of random good deeds have you done? Or what kind of good deeds have others done for you?

Overprotected

I was reading a post on another blog yesterday, it was by a parent of a child with special needs. It was talking about being an overprotective parent. I was reading this and wondering, am I overprotective?

I like to think the answer is no and yes. When it comes to the things that typical kids do that may get my son hurt (think anything with movement involved) I think no, I don't want to be someone who will stop him and tell him 'no you can't do that because you're blind'. I want him to have a tricycle, I want him to play soccer (if he wants to) and do all those things that typical kids do that might cause him to fall down or run into things or whatever. Those bruises, scrapes, cuts, and owwies are going to be a part of his life and I don't think you can wrap your child in bubble wrap and make sure they don't get hurt because it's just going to take away their childhood and they'll never know how to take risks. Of course when it comes to things that are just too dangerous and could cause serious injury well then yeah I will put my foot down.

And then on the other hand, am I overprotective of him when it comes to other people? I hope so. What I mean is when it comes to leaving my child with someone I don't know I'm very wary. You could tell me they have all the childcare training in the world and I wouldn't be comfortable leaving him with them. I have to get to know the person, I have to sit with them for a while, see how they interact with my son and other children. I have to know what their attitude is. And I have to see that they know how to interact with someone who is blind, and that they know what to do when he gets sick or if he starts to seize. I have to trust that that person will call me immediately and ask me what to do, even if they have the training. So yes, in that sense I think I am overprotective and I'm okay with that.

How about you? Are you overprotective of your little one?

Btw: Happy Canada Day! It was yesterday, but still :P