Just a Little Longer

My 4 year old son is a big baby.  He is 46 inches tall and weighs nearly 50 pounds.  With his broad shoulders, big hands, and long legs, he looks like a 7 year old.  Yet he is a sweet, timid, and sensative little guy.  You could even say he is a bit immature.  He stays close to his family and likes to have lots of physical contact.  He likes to be rocked, for at least a minute or two, before bed.  He doesn't like to sleep in a room by himself.  I get up a little earlier on the days that I go to school because he needs to sit on my lap for at least 15  minutes every morning.  If he doesn't, his day just doesn't go as well.

My 18 year old daughter was much the same.  She was tall for her age.  She was also sensative and a bit immature.  I recall that she still played with dolls by herself at 12 and with the kids she babysat for at 14.  She too was a lap-sitter every morning.

She was home last week for fall break.  She blew in to town on Wednesday, but went to her old dance class before coming home.  We talked a bit that night and went out shopping on Thursday morning.  Then she was off for a hair cut.  She returned home only to visit on the phone for an hour and followed that up by visiting her old mime team.  She granted me two more hours of talk Thursday night.  On Friday, she headed back to school as she had a busy social weekend planned. 

Her schedule was fine with me.  It is the natural order of things for the kids to grow up and extend their boundries.  Still, I think that I will rock Thomas just a little longer this week.  4 isn't all that old.

Term Paper/ Final Project/ Transfer Freakout

I'm glad to have this free zone to freak out in.  I have noticed that it is much easier to express myself when I don't have to worry about spelling, grammar, and flow.  After reading some of my past entries, it is clear that I never condider the afore mentioned virtues.

There are only 7 weeks left in the semester and, while I am so very glad, I am also feeling so very overwhelmed.  4 of my classes have a stupid term paper/project due at the end of the semester.  (Yes, I do realize that I sound like a highschool freshman and not a college sophomore.  I just don't care!) 

Did I mention that I feel highly unqualified to write a paragraph about ethics much less a whole term paper?  It does not appear to matter how much time I spend on my ethics exams.  (Oh yeah, an ethics exam is two questions worth 50 points each.  They are posted 1 week in advance which would help most people.  Too bad for me, I am the consumate procrastinator.)  I spent 2 hours on the first one and 5 hours on the second one.  I manged to raise my grade by 2 points for my troubles.  Both times, I ran out of time on the second question.  Hmm...maybe that's why we are supposed to use an outline.  I really hate to follow the rules.  Anyway, ethics wants a 6 page paper.  I'm off to a great start.  I read the many pages of instructions and printed them also.

English might be ok.  At least I am familiar with my subject matter.  But...it is a revision type thing.  I hate revising.  But....my first one was pretty lame.  I have plenty of room for improvement. 

History won't be too bad.  I do understand what I am doing and the research is fairly interesting.  It is also not worth a whole lot of points and my grade is good in there.

I am crocheting for Chemistry.  No, really I am CROCHETING!!!  We have to a do a periodic table square and I have Neon.  So, I am crocheting a neon colored square and pasting my information on it.  I really can do that.  It might even be fun.

Then there is the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Algebra.  No, there's no term paper in there.  There is just a cumulative final worth a gazillion points.  Oh yeah, I also have to take a make-up test to replace either my horrible first test grade or the test grade from the test I anticipate flunking this Wednesday.  I see myself taking Algebra again next semester.  You know what?  I didn't have to take Algebra for my major.  I took it because I thought I might want to have a Batchelor's of something someday.  Now what I have is a drop in my perfect 4.0 average.  I really hate that.

Not only must I worry over papers and projects, but I need to decide what I am doing next year.  I am not going to go into nursing anymore.  I think that I want to do something with Human Services or case management.  This will mean transferring to Friends.  I need to visit Friends to decide what else I need to take next semester.  I also need to decide if I should graduate from Butler this spring. 

Too many decisions.

Levi is Crawling

My 8 year old son is crawling.  Actually, he is doing a kind of army man creepy-crawl.  It might not sound like much to most, but for Levi it is far more than he was ever supposed to do.

Levi was a victim of child abuse at 3 weeks of age.  He was never supposed to do anything but vegetate. 

We adopted him at age two without a lot of expectations.  According to every book that I read on his condition, cerebral palsy, he would not learn any new skills after age 6.  That is, we could maintain what we achieved by age 6, but we would not see any new achievements.

Boy were the books wrong!  We started seeing him feed himself last summer.  Now, he can feed himself a meal.  It's messy, but it's nutrition. 

He has always rolled or flipped to where he wants to go.  Last spring, I began "catching" him creeping one creep ahead.  It was seldom and random.  Today, I put a dearly loved toy, that had been refreshed with new batteries, about 2 foot away from him.  He creeped 3 creeps to get to it.  Mean mom that I am, I promptly moved the toy out of his reach again.  This time he moved 2 creeps.  He was clearly tired after that.  Pulling a 48 inch, 40 lb body around with 1 and 1/2 arms is really hard.  He's going to need to practice a lot to get strong.

We are going to give him every opportunity to practice.

An Alexander Kind of Day

Those of you who have children know what this means.  For those of you who don't, I can only say that I have had a terrible-no good-very bad day and that I think I will move to Australia.

I have been either truly sick or just plain out of sorts for the last three weeks.  As a result, my house, my kids, and my school are messy, out of sorts and behind; in that order.  Today, it all came to a head.

I had a research paper that I needed to have  in today by 11:55.  Of course with my current life, I was not as prepared as I would like to be for it.  Because I was not prepared, I kept putting it off.  I finally got down to business this afternoon at 2:00.  While I had worked on it and did have a great deal done, there was still plenty to do.  By 8:00, I had decided not only to not complete the paper, but to alsodrop English.  As a matter of fact, while I was at it, I might as well drop out of the rest of my courses.  After about an hour of grumbling around, I reasoned to myself that it would be better to make a B or a C for my courses than to drop them and get F's.  I then reasoned that if I turned in any form of a paper and received even an F that 50 points were better than nothing.  I dragged myself back to the computer and completed my paper.  I must say that, when I was done, it didn't look all that bad.  I did notice that I had a great deal of difficulty with my citations.  I wonder if  that had anything to do with fluffing out on the citation assignment?

This morning I tackled the house.  In particular, I cleaned out the fridge and made menues.  I had to do this as I had already went over the checkbook and decided that groceries are no where in my near future.  (For those of you who are concerned, we keep a fairly well stocked pantry and we won't be going hungry.  I just won't get to eat what I want to.)  It took me all morning to inventory my pantry and freezer, decide what needed to be used first and to make out the menus.  One point for me!!

My kids remain out of sorts.  They knew fall break was this week and they had fall break today.  They are quite offended that I did not plan well enough to have fall break with them.  They are even more offended that we must put up a dog kennel tomorrow.  I hope that sleeping in tomorrow will cure them of some of their angst.  I hope even more that it works for mine.

I Love Teenagers

I have heard a lot of negative things about teenagers in the last couple of weeks and it is truly beginning to annoy me.  Any other stereotyping and arbitrary grouping would be called predjudice, but it appears to be socially acceptable to make negative remarks about teens.  I currently have 4 teens and I find them to be interesting, entertaining, and an asset in my life.

My teens are 13, 15, nearly 16, and 18.  Three are still at home with me and the oldest is off at college.  I can't imagine how my life would be without them.

Everyday, they ask me questions that demonstrate where they are maturity wise.  I gain a lot of insight into their thought processes.  Currently, the 18 year old is pondering beginning a dating relationship.  She has always been too busy to date and has never really met anyone that she found that interesting.  Now she has met someone and she is still very busy.  It is very interesting to watch her try to find a place to stand that she feels comfortable with.

The 15 and 16 year olds are freshmen.  They have never been interested in school and thought of college as a form of torture.  Now that they are a little older and their sister has gone off to college, they are very interested in college.  They have also become much more interested in both their schoolwork and their "talent" activities.  Our rule has always been that you must produce at least half of your tuition in order for us to pay the other half.  They can do that by academic or performance scholarships or by earning the money.  It is very interesting to see them try to decide how to get the money with the least amount of effort.  I have been treated to a lot of piano and voice practice lately.

The 13 year old has just figured out that he would like to have a social life and that he can only have a social life if he does all his schoolwork well and completes all his chores correctly.  It has just dawned on him that while I am required to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate him, I am not required to allow him to have fun nor am I required to pay for said fun.  It is very interesting to see him try to figure out how to balance his need to rebel against his desire to have fun which requires that he thwart his rebellion by obeying me.

All 4 are a constant source of entertainment as they attempt to enter the world of adults.  Their delight and disgust with the adult world is always comical.  Each one believed that drinking coffee sounded very adult.  We don't have it at home, so they have had to buy it for themselves.  One by one, they have decided that coffee is only good in the form of overly sweetend, overly creamed cappachino. 

The three younger teens help to keep the house running.  There is no way that I could take college classes without their help.  All three help with the younger kids.  Sarann puts a supper in the crockpot 4 days a week.  All three help with keeping the housecleaning done.  Shane takes great pleasure in quizzing me for tests. 

I guess that it is possible that my teens are out of the ordinary, but I really believe that people are judging teens based on negative encounters that they have had with other teens.  Just as you can't lump all Italians together as bad because you had a bad experience with one Italian, you can't lump all teens together.  Teens are people and in my experience, they're great people.