My son, the ring bearer.

My friend L. is getting married in October and I am very happy for her.  Her fiance is a wonderful man and I know they will be happy forever.  L. wants to have a moderately sized wedding, and she wants to have a full wedding party including a ring bearer and a flower girl.

L. is a spiritual aunt to my little guy and he loves her.  We will actually be signing paperwork soon that in the event me and my husband were to pass away, L. would become his guardian.  She has been close to him since he was born.  Before the wedding was announced L. said my son would be her ring bearer.  I got a little nervous because he didn't start walking until last December so I thought for a while he might need a wagon.  Now the wedding date has been announced, L. and I spent a little time hanging out and looked at suits and tuxedos and discussed her wedding colors.  I am so excited my son will get to be a part of her special day.

I am nervous though because of the developmental delays.  He does not respond to verbal instructions.  Also, he lives in his own little world. He might not want to walk down the aisle, but wander around the venue.  He might not want to give up the rings when the time comes.  He also gets bored with objects easily and when he does, he throws them over his shoulder and walks away. All I can see is my son getting distracted, tossing the rings, and me crying and apologizing like crazy on my hands and knees scrambling to find their rings.  L. is going to have him walk with a 10 year old flower girl so she can instruct him down the aisle.  We also will be doing ring bearer practice at home.  I have asked L. if we can have him carry plastic rings so if he throws them it won't matter.  I am very much looking forward to all of this for him, and he is incredibly photogenic so he is going to look great in her wedding photos.  Also L. and her fiance know that my son has some limitations so I know they won't get upset.  I think this is just my overthinking and everything will be fine and go smooth.

Does anyone have any tips for us?

June 4, 2015 PT/EI plus something exciting for my son.

This visit was supposed to be at the park, but me and my son had a rough morning. He discovered his nose and has been enjoying picking it.  When I woke up, his face was covered in caked up blood and he was having trouble breathing, like he was congested.  After I cleaned him up, I discovered he had given himself a nosebleed, and a bad one at that.  By the time we were done sitting together, it was about twenty minutes before the PT visit was going to start and I realized he hadn't eaten breakfast yet. So we had the visit at home.

It was supposed to be just PT with T., but A. the EI service coordinator called and said she had a cancellation and asked if she could come by as well. I told her that it would be fine for her to come by.

When T. and A. showed up, I had some cool news. My son has started saying "go car" a lot. Like all the time. More words are a good thing even if only the speaker understands them.  My son has also started climbing!  He uses me to climb on to the back of the couch to perch up there and look out the window. He worked with T. to climb from the floor to an ottoman to the couch  and then up the back.  I was standing behind T. just being quiet and watching them when my son got very nervous and started looking anxiously behind him.  He has become more aware of his surroundings which is also good development.  When he finally saw me, he calmed down.

He was very apprehensious of A. and T. this week for some reason. He usually hugs A. and smiles at her, this visit he screamed and cried.  He is getting his molars in and he grew about five inches last week, no lie he had a major growth spurt, so we were thinking he was just in pain.

T. said not to keep the ottoman static, but to move it from one side of the couch to the other so my son can practice climbing on both sides, using both legs.

We discussed potty training again, but a little more seriously this time. My son does not like to dirty a diaper he already soiled. He will hold his bladder until you change the diaper.  Also, he has started taking his diaper off more.  We discussed how this could be hard because he is non-verbal.  The hints they gave me was to give him a plastic "bubble" book that can be washed off to look at on the potty and then he will eventually relax and go.  Also, T. said to take a picture of his potty and put it somewhere visible in the living room/his bedroom/the kitchen, just somewhere visible, and when it is time to go on the potty to tap the picture and say "Time to go to the bathroom." Eventually he will make an association and should be able to point to the picture of his potty when he needs to go.

The other thing we discussed was my son joining a play group for non-verbal children aged two to five or four at the Sensation Station. (http://sensationstationus.com/).  The playgroup will do sensory play and use musical instruments.  T. and A. are both pretty excited about this. The playgroup will run for 8 weeks and I think it will greatly benefit my son.  I should be meeting with the director of Sensation Station June 9 , and I will definitely blog about it.  A. filled out a disclosure agreement so she can reach out to the Sensation Station to help chart my son's growth.

That was pretty much it this week, but there has been some progress so like always, I am looking forward to next week's therapy.  It continues to help both me and my son.

First Occupational Therapy Visit 04/13/15

     Mom fail, I completely forgot OT was coming yesterday. We went for a nice long walk, ate a late lunch and then my friend called. I was putting him down for a nap and chatting with my friend when someone knocked on the door. It was A. the Early Intervention coordinator. I was kinda surprised and let her in and then she said C. the COTA was on her way and should be here shortly.

    While A. and I were waiting for C., we discussed my son's weekend. Friday we went to the park with a friend and her daughter who is roughly six month older than my son.  He engaged in some parallel play but was far more interested in the wood chips on the ground than the little girl.  We did try the slide, but he wanted to lay down, not sit so I went down with him. He was laughing his head off.  We tried the swings but it got bad fast so we stopped that.  Saturday he went to the park with my husband while I scanned 173 old photos for a family tree project. He just wanted to walk around mostly.  Sunday, we went to the park as a family. He loved the slide, but the swing he is now deathly afraid of.


    When C. arrived, we discussed my son's history with A.  My son walked around, picking up a toy, looked at it, tossed it, repeatedly.  We have the Fisher Price Stride to Ride Puppy and my son played with that and one of those wooden activity cubes.  He also played with this A's help.
     (image from ebay)

A. read him The Very Hungry Caterpillar about four times.  My son loves turning pages and after each reading he would just sit and turn the pages.

    C. and I discussed my son's sleeping habits.  C. suggested giving him milk before bed as opposed to at supper which I meant to try last night, but fell asleep my self and messed up his night time routine. (I have been not feeling well at all for the last two weeks.)  C. also suggested writing down my son's schedule and scheduling in two snacks a day.

    We also discussed the sensory issues my son has. I discussed the terror inducing swing experience of this weekend. C. suggested taking my son to the park and having him help me push and empty swing to get used to how it works.  She also said taking a toy and putting it in the swing and showing him nothing bad happened to it.  She also suggested us sitting together on a regular swing and slowly working up to swinging together.  We also discussed bath time. My son shrieks in terror while having a bath. I am not using hyperbole. It is not the whiny cry kids use when they don't like something, it is full on blood curling shrieking and howling.  He clutches at you when you try to bath him and he tries to angle every part of his body out of the water.  She asked what temperature bath he gets and if we adjust it. We have tried everything from freezing to lukewarm baths.   She asked if we adjust the depth of the water. We have tried from a tiny puddle up to enough to float boats around the tub in an effort to make him play in the bath. It didn't work. She suggested not filling the tub prior putting him the water. She said put him in an empty tub and then put the faucet on. She also suggested showering with him, or turning the shower on when he is taking a bath. I will try all her suggestions and write about how things go.

   We also discussed me playing hand over hand with him, which I already do.  We discussed our weekend with his cousins and she suggested I play with the kids to try to engage my son. I told her I did that. I got on the floor and played with the toys with the kids to show my son how much fun it was, but he walked away.  I told her we do hand over hand play with all his toys but when he is done playing with something, he is done.  I showed her a sensory box we have:

She likes this because everything has a different texture. She suggested mixing up what is in it. Adding tissues and scarves for example.  I am going to do this several times a week. I will add/subtract items.  On her way out she saw this puzzle in a stack of toys I want to get rid of

She said this is a good sensory puzzle.  Instead of getting rid of it, we will keep it now.


   All in all this was a great visit,  I think working with C. is going to help us a lot.

Since there is no writing prompt on weekends, here is what we did today.

http://www.valleybreeze.com/2014-07-23/cumberland-lincoln-area/monastery-trails-are-treasure-heart-town#.VSBs2fnF8wM

    I grew up in Cumberland, RI and do not live that far from there now. One of my favorite things to do was to walk on the grounds of the Cumberland Library. The library now sits on the former site of a monastery that burned down in 1950. The town converted the ruins to house a playground, and walking trails.

    When I was younger there were horses and one of the walking trails had "exercise stations". Sadly, the horses are gone and most of the exercise stations have disappeared.

    There is a bit of history in the woods as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Men%27s_Misery
I do have to say I know nothing about this war. I do have a very exciting looking scholarly tome that talks in depth about the war, but I haven't gotten to it in my reading pile yet.

     When I was younger, my mother used to take me and my brothers there in the summer and we were allowed one VHS movie each week. This was such a treat. I am eight and ten years older than my brothers and most of the movies we owned were "baby" movies. Of course, I was not allowed to rent say "Hellraiser" but this afforded me the opportunity to see movies that I would enjoy more than say watching "101 Dalmatians" for the 5555th time.  ("101 Dalmatians" is a fine film. But when you are 12 and you have watched it so many times you realize that Pongo has about four more spots than Perdita and you can recite the whole movie because you watched it 4 times a day for the past five years, it grates on you.)

     When my husband and I started dating, I took him walking on some on the longer trails. Now, it is a solo experience. I used to take my dog, but she had to have back surgery and can no longer do the trails.  I love walking for hours deep into the woods. It is so incredibly peaceful. You actually can walk out to a point where you cannot hear cars or see houses. It is so therapeutic to leave your phone behind and just walk with your water bottle and enjoy clean air.  I cannot wait to take my son out on some of the shorter trails this summer.  You can see rabbits and turtles, which for a kid who lives in the city, are pretty exotic. I have never seen deer, but you can hear animals running away from you as you walk and I imagine deer are watching us.

     This is where we went today. I was hoping we could actually walk, but there is a storm brewing off Cape Cod that made it quite windy in Cumberland today.

     Instead we went to the Cumberland Library. Well, first we went to the Friends of the Library Bookstore. We got quite a good haul.

Some of the books are for me. Wilkie Collins and Agatha Christie are for me to pour over and relish. I figured he can "grow into" The Little Prince, Bridge to Terabithia and Trumpet of the Swan. The Golden Fleece is to fuel his imagination. The Paddington book of course, is for now. No book is over a dollar and they have quite a good selection of books.

     Walking around the library was more of a chore than it should have been. He decided after the bookstore that we were kinda done.  I knew that I wanted to read some Kate Morton books so I took all they had. We went to the children's section where I selected, Is Your Momma a Llama, Daddy Kisses, and What's Wrong Little Pookie (I love you, Sandra Boynton). My son was going to get a DVD, although the library still has a healthy selection of VHS tapes, I want to restrict use on my VCR. I don't know if I can still buy head cleaner for it.  At the moment I tried to shepherd him over to the movies, he spotted some table toys for kids. He thought grabbing Lego bricks and hurtling them to the floor was a fun activity so we had to cut our visit short.

    We actually go to the library a lot. We try to go every three weeks because that is how long you can take out books for.  I like that in the winter it is a safe, quiet place that my son can walk around.  We just haven't been to the Cumberland Library in a while because it was a nasty winter and we have libraries closer to the house. Do you take your children to the library?

Being Multiracial and having a Multiracial Child

I fully understand the rules involved with sharing on the Internet.  Most of you I will never meet and therefore you have no idea about any facet of my life.  If I don't share it, it stays my secret. 

Writing is cathartic to me, it always has been. I started writing my short stories at age 4. My mother found them and tried to do creative writing exercises with me. She would tell me who I had to add and what the characters were going to suddenly decide to do. Or she would find an article in the paper or the Reader's Digest and make me either write a report or expound upon the article.  I am writing this blog as a follow-up to those dreaded exercises.  I have to get the stories in my head out and journaling is not working any longer. Because I need to do this cathartic exercise for myself,  and not for anyone else, I will be as honest as I can be. The more I write, the better I will become.

This entry will be difficult to write because it is so personal. 

Being mixed race is not new to my generation. My family roots in America can be traced to slavery.  I had an ancestor who was a slave of a man whose last name was Page. She ended up having his child. He in turn left her money and land. My family lived in the land as recently as my Grandfather.  My family had another slave who ran away to the Blackfoot Indian tribe. He had a child with an Indian woman. It is not truly multiracial but my Grandfather's parents were from two different regions of Italy.  My Grandfather's mother was from Northern Italy and was so fair they called her the Dane (this was the turn of the 1900s, life was different. ) My Grandfather's father was from Sicily.  This caused a disruption because this was just not done, and the immigrated to America.  My Grandfather was a soldier in World War 2 and was billited at my Great-aunt's house in London.  My Welsh grandmother fell in love with the tall, dark, and handsome Italian American.  He looked like Tyrone Power.

As you can see, my family is pretty open minded. 

My parents dealt with direct opposition,  not from family,  but from the world around them. They were married in the early 70s and the culture of America was not what it is now. They got either flat out denied apartments or evicted. They stayed together long enough to have a child.

I never thought about race really as a child. The first time it even entered my thoughts was when my step-father's mother bought all her granddaughters Barbie dolls. I don't remember my exact thoughts when I opened the gift, but I am pretty sure "Cool! A new Barbie" was the extent of it. She pulled me and my mother into another room and started to apologize that the store didn't have any black Barbies, would this one be ok? I literally had no idea what was going on. A Barbie is a Barbie. My mother was quiet for a moment then said it was fine.

That was the turning point. The damage was done.  Pretty much growing up with a family that looked like a photo negative of my complexion led to many "Are you adopted?" inquires.



I moved to North Carolina when I was 17 to go to Job Corps. Not my proudest achievement, I must admit.  The ratio of African American students to non-African American students was incredibly disproportionate.  I felt I surely had to fit in, I was color coded after all. Being from New England, I am pretty friendly, but not really outgoing. I am pretty guarded against strangers. Something about not seeing the sun for seven months a year makes us shy up here. I didn't fit in because the other students thought I was "stuck up" because I wasn't as outgoing as they were. If only they knew I have pretty bad anxiety.

I eventually came back up here to the frozen tundra. Almost immediately, I met a really cute guy and we started dating.  He was a former skin head, but for a black person I was pretty cool. We did not last.

My biggest issue up here is one that is heavily cliched by the media.  I am not going to rob your store. To the cashier at Homegoods, the heist is not your $3.99 glasses that you accused me of price tag switching on. To the cashier at Bath and Body Works, thank you, I no longer shop at the chain because of you. I do not plan on going to jail for scented hand sanitizer, there was no need to trail me around the store and randomly jump at me from behind displays. To every store ever, please stop following me around the store asking every 10 seconds if I need your help. No, I don't. I know my sizes, I know what I like and if you give me room to breath, I will make a purchase. I went shopping once with my younger brother and he started laughing after the 30th time in five minutes I was asked if I needed "help". He wanted to know why that was happening as he had never seen it before.  Either I have the money on me, or I am browsing.

I now have a child who I love dearly. Because of my mixed heritage, and his father being Puerto Rican, my son is significantly lighter skinned than me.  There is no reason to come up to us and ask me who his mother is. There is no reason for the Pediatrician to ask if I "watch" him.  It bothers me that my son will have to face the same trials I do and did. People assume my 64 year old mother is his mom because they are both olive skinned. When I get asked his ethnicity, I laugh a bit because he is everything. I hope with his generation, we can do away with some of the negativity regarding racial backgrounds in this country.


I have made my own "culture". I don't really like rap, well I like party rap. I actually really like Tori Amos and Regina Spektor. I like alternative, and 80's hits. I read, too. Mostly Dickens, not too many modern authors although I really like Jacqueline Winspear. I like antiques as well. Probably my favorite guilty pleasures are Royal Dalton and anything stamped occupied Japan. It bothers me when people assume I know what a Lil' Wayne is or Beyonce's new song. Pop music doesn't really appeal to me either. I am just not hip like that. I am really comfortable with who I am and the things I like. I don't think of myself as black, I think of myself mostly as just being me. If you get anything out of this, its mostly don't assume. Family comes in many different combinations, always has, always will.  People's likes are not based upon their backgrounds.  If you are curious, ask but don't ask insulting questions......You will find most people would rather clarify if they don't feel insulted or ashamed.

I'm back!

Holy cow. It has been way, way too long.

Sorry for the long absence.

So just to bring everything up to speed, here's what happened. I was working at a job that is about two hours from my house. I pretty much only was home for six hours a day. Last June, I quit my job due to daycare being crazy expensive. Since then, my son has been seeing a physical therapist, a nutritionist, and Early Intervention.  Turns out my son has low muscle tone, and developmental delays. We have also had ear infections, flus, vomiting viruses and many other sicknesses.

I don't plan on taking such a long absence again.

I actually want to jump right into things.

So I want to change the focus of the blog a teeny, tiny bit.  I want to start sharing what its like having a child with developmental delays and talk about his therapy as we go through this.  I still want to talk about other parent things, and pop culture things, but I really need an outlet to discuss what is going on.

What prompted all of this was at his 3 month checkup he could not hold his head up very high. He could hold it up, but not high.  At his six month checkup he wasn't rolling and he had a hard time sitting up.  We had an Early Intervention evaluation, and he scored pretty high so no services were sought.  At eight months, he could not hold his own bottle, and he wasn't  crawling.  The pediatrician sent us back to Early Intervention.  At 10 months he could finally hold his own bottle.  After several months of hard work, at 15 months he started to crawl.  I cried. He laughed and looked at me like I was nuts and crawled like a pro for the rest of the day. Shortly after this, he started Physical Therapy. After much more hard work, at 21 months, he stood up and walked. And walked and walked. I was speechless. Now we approaching the two year mark and he is not talking so we are going to start speech therapy shortly.  We have seen a neurologist who also recommended Occupational Therapy.

It is very frustrating because I never know what is working, and what is not. I never know what is getting through to him, and what is just frustrating him.  He would scream like he was being tortured when I was trying to get him in the crawling position, but when he was ready, he just took off.  The walking was the same. He would sometimes walk if I held his hand or hands, but he would scream and cry. I thought for a while he was in physical pain because of this. I would not take him on long walks either, just from the living room to the changing table or from the living room to the high chair. Then, one day at my mother's house, he stopped playing with his toys, stood up, and walked the length of her house.

Another specific challenge I would like to share is the transition to sippy cups.  This was another stage that would make me weep. We owned a great variety of sippy cups to help ease the transition. We also did not even attempt to transition until crawling started.  When you first gave him the cup, he would scream. This evolved to screaming and then throwing the cup. This is how we lost our first sippy cup. RIP Munchkin sippy cup.  Eventually, he would raise the cup to his mouth, but would let the liquid within pour down his face and chest requiring a complete outfit change. Finally at 21 months, we somehow put it all together. He drank from the cup! This is where frustrating comes in.  I know its hard to transition,but having a kid with developmental delays means we don't like change. It takes hard work to see progress and its normally many months in coming.

I will continue to talk about this ongoing. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. Or if you are going through the same thing, or went through the same thing, I would like to hear about it, if you want to share.



To change topics...........I recently saw Frozen.
Just a quick rant, I do not boycott or dislike Disney.  I do however feel that they were on the right track with Old Yeller and Bambi. Sometimes bad things happen. This is life.  I really like fairy tales and The Little Mermaid, though sad actually has a point. You can't force people to like you and don't change who you are to achieve that end.  I have not seen the animated Disney version, but I hear it does not end with Ariel becoming sea foam. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a very dark gothic novel that explores love, lust, desire, envy, and greed. It has a very touching ending after a thrilling climax. Once again, I have not seen the animated version, but I hear that Esmeralda and the Hunchback are not found with skeletons entwined in the catacombs years later. I have not seen an animated Disney movie in a very long time but I heard Frozen was the one to watch.

I like how this is not a typical "one day my prince will come story". Of course its there and its actually sad to me how "ordinary" Anna needs a husband that badly.  Being ordinary is extraordinary! There is nothing like the adventures one can have on one's own, especially at 18. I like how its about family relationships, reminiscent of Pixar's Brave.

However, it felt rushed. It is not a short movie, but I felt that the story was almost forced. The musical numbers are not spread out, they are mushed together in the first half of the story. I felt it would have been a lot more enjoyable if it had focused more on animation and story.


While I am reviewing things, I would like to briefly review Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.

Ready Player One is like if someone scooped up all of pop culture from the late 70's to the early 90's and made a video game out of it, and then played that video game in a dystopian future. Literally that is the what the book is.  I highly recommend this book to everyone everywhere.

The Thirteenth Tale is a wonderful story crafted by a master storyteller. The protagonist works in her father's bookstore and is asked to write the truth about a reclusive author.  The book takes place in England but does not specify the year or decade in which it takes place. This gives the book a very timeless feel. This book I recommend to people who enjoy stories. It is a ghost  story without a ghost. It is a love story between twins. I loved this book.

Before I go for the day...........I wanted to share a recipe.

My son is a toddler and I try very hard to make him eat nutritious foods. I am a SAHM now and I really don't want every lunch to be peanut butter.

In an effort to shake things up a bit, yesterday I opened up a can of black beans, sauteed  a quarter of a yellow onion, cut up four celery stalks, diced a tomato, added some frozen chicken stock (recipe and tips coming soon), added powdered garlic, and tossed in some cheddar cheese and heated it all up on the stove. I squeezed fresh lime over the soup and my son was laughing and smiling while eating it. It was cheap and easy to make.


I promise it won't take two years for me to write again because this is fun :) I hope to be back early next week.