Tidbits

~I started my new job last week. This is the first time I’ve worked outside the home as a mom, and I’ve been a bit nervous about managing it all. It’s a good change so far - I plan dinners for the week, set out clothes and pack lunches ahead of time! The husband actually got teary-eyed watching me finally get organized. I feel like I’ve been blessed with a great opportunity. It’s fun to use a “different” part of my brain again. Thankfully, I managed to get through my first week without any “potty” talk, but I find that all my conversations invariably lead back to my kids! No matter how I try to compartmentalize, I still seem to see everything through the Mommy lens… which leads me to that fact that…

~I solved a medical mystery! Hope’s asthma has been pretty bad lately. We started noticing that whenever she took a bath she’d have an asthma attack. Hope is a bubbly, happy girl who is usually too excited about life to complain about anything. But during her baths her lips would turn blue and she would panic and gasp and wail and beg for her medicine. Once I was alone with the girls in the tub, and I worried that I wouldn’t have enough time to get her to the hospital. It’s the only time her asthma has ever really frightened me. Well, I finally figured out that mold in our ooollllldddd bathroom must be triggering the attacks. She’s allergic to mold.
So then the question became do we remove the mold or just stop bathing her?
We stopped bathing her.
Just kidding.
But we won’t have to deal with the mold anymore because…

~We’re moving in a week! About 3 miles up the road. In all the sorting and purging and packing, it occurred to me that I had done nothing to prepare Rhema for the move. (She doesn’t seem to grasp social stories.) So while we were at Sears buying a new washer and dryer, I sat on the floor, pulled her into my lap and had a heart-to-heart with her. “Rhema,” I said. “We’re moving.”
In response, she picked her nose.
Then she sprinted off to make sure all the dryer doors in the store were closed.
Phew. That went well…

~Speaking of things going well, I got to see my J-girlz at the Doug Flutie Bowl last week – Jersey, Jess and Judith! (Jersey came all the way up from guess where?) Any time spent with these dear friends just does my heart good. How can I begin to explain the bond – the sisterhood - between us autism mamas? I think my friend Andrea says it best:

our invisible tattoos match.

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