Lights and Rain

There is at least one or two times a day when something pops into my mind or happens and I think, "I must remember to blournal that."  Yet, in the last month my mental blournal list has sat stagnant, mostly unwritten or half written, some written and deleted, and some forgotten.  And the reason isn't because I don't have time to blog or even motivation.  I'm just simply interested in doing other things during nap time or bedtime lately.

Because life is quite lovely right now.  My family is happy, my sons are both going through some wonderful maturing phases, my husband has had a couple excuses to come home earlier in the week, my home is more consistently in order, and my world just feels very comfortable.

Of course, not every moment of every day has been rainbows, unicorns, and kittens, but it's been good enough that even the bad things like illness and crummy weather don't seem so defeating.

So instead of rehash all the lovely little moments I've missed blournaling, I'll just mention two things about today.

The rain and the lights.

It was raining all day today.  Not the violent storms we experienced this summer that have left me a teeny bit traumatized, but the constant steady rain that sounds like a soothing CD and reminds me of my family cabin near Yellowstone National Park (my mental "happy place").  I opened the windows and Little Bro and I went peacefully about our day caring for our home, giggling and cuddling with each other, learning our letters, not pushing each others buttons, and listening to the rain.

It was just the sort of day that made me stop and think "I don't want to be anywhere in the world more than I want to be right here, right now."

And the lights.  This morning, in a spur-of-the-moment attempt to avoid loading the dishwasher after breakfast, I finally took control of an area of my house that I have aesthetically hated for a long time.  We needed some more light in our dark and deary front room, but the outlets and layout didn't lend itself to anything.  On a whim, I dug out some old lamps of ours and moved some stereo equipment my husband had just piled practically near our TV.  It was free, took about ten minutes, and had made all the difference to me. The soft yellow glow of the lamps and the cleaner look of the area in general has left me feeling all warm and cozy inside all day long.

And that is where my head and heart are at right now.  Warm and calm and soothed and refreshed.  And when seasons like that come into your life, I think it's worth remembering.

The Language of Love

It's no secret that my Little Bug is hard to understand when he speaks.  His apraxia and low tone in his mouth make his speech patterns come out very muddled. He is, usually, unintelligible to strangers and about 30% intelligible to those who casually know him.  Even Appa sometimes has a hard time understanding a new phrase or word.  In fact, the only person in the whole world who truly understands him almost totally is me.  Like anything else you adapt to, I have learned the language of Little Bugese to a point where I have to remind myself that people can't understand that "Obama ah Daooo" means that "Grandma lives in Idaho."  I serve as a translator when people need help understanding him, and it has become second nature for me to automatically repeat things he says when we are with other people so they can understand him better.

Right now, I'm his translator to the world.  And while I wish for him that he didn't need one, I am proud to be his mouth when he needs one.

But something interesting has happened in the last month.  Little Bro has learned to speak Little Bugese.  Although Little Bro's language is superb and even likely advanced for only hearing English for 5 months, he seems to understand anything Little Bug says.  He often repeats his brother, only in a more traditional English articulation, or will just continue on with their conversation without skipping a beat.  To listen to them is like listening to two kids speaking different languages (and it becomes adorably comical when they both start speaking Korean on top of it all), but to them, it's normal.

They're bilingual.  Trilingual?  1.5-lingual?

As these two have truly become brothers, their bond has extended to work around Little Bug's language delay.  I've been worried for a while that it would impact Little Bro's own language or his ability to bond with his brother, but there is not a phrase Little Bug utters with regularity that Little Bro doesn't immediately understand.  It's shocking and amazing and very, very cool.

Because now Little Bug has another person in his corner who can help him access others socially when he needs it.  I imagine in the years to come (because this apraxia is something Little Bug is going to struggle with for a while yet) when my sons are playing with friends in a fort or playground and Little Bug excitedly exclaims something no one understands, his little brother will be there to back his big brother up.

His brother will have his back when his mama can't.  Or, as Little Bug would and has said "wiw bha, ah boo bah?"  Little Bro's translation: "Little Bro, aboobah?"

I fiercely love these two boys.

Mommy Has a Ghina

The last 5 days in my house have been an intense period of time where all four of us focused on two things and two things only....pee and the penis.  We're big believers in giving our kids the correct terminology upfront for things (expect, of course, for the mythical "fire bus"), so we now have two little boys who are very comfortable talking about their penises, what their penises can or are doing, what their penises look or feel like, and who they know who has penises, which in their little minds, is everyone.

So far we've established that Appa, Little Bug, Little Bro, Pappa, cows, kitty cats, tigers, and Santa Claus all have penises.  Carousels, trains, and raggies do not have penises. But it's been a hard sell to convince my boys that their mommy doesn't have one.

But today, randomly, they got it.

So now, when they are sitting on their potties listing off the anatomy of everyone in their world, when they come to Mommy they always laugh and point at me and say "Mama has a GHINA!"

And that, truly, is the story of my life right now.

Oh, and my Little Bug rocked the crap (pun intended) out of his first day at school in big boy underwear.  He asked to go to the potty three times (including once while outside), never had a single accident, and kept it up all evening long.  He is awesome.

An Apology to My Little Bug

It's been a lonely couple of weeks for me.

Sometimes being a mom of a kid with special needs, especially behavioral special needs, just plain sucks.  It's stressful, emotionally draining, depressing, and scary, which leads some (me) into periods of isolation as I try to swing our family pendulum back into sync with some serious sleep and diet modifications and a super low-key environment.  Even as I took the boys on a 5-day vacation last week, I felt so off, a mirror to Little Bug's off mood (that was likely a bit of a cycle between the two of us by the end).

And that isolation extended to my writing, which I deliberately avoided, simply because the things I wanted to say were not things I actually wanted to say.

In fact, I just had about seven additional paragraphs to this post detailing my last couple weeks that I just deleted.  Because it wasn't what I wanted to say.

Instead, I want to write about how amazing my Little Bug is and how humbled I am tonight to be his mother.

Little Bug came to us as a sweet, beautiful 10-month-old infant.  He's always been so far behind in development that Appa and I just grew accustomed to parenting him at his delayed age.  He was our first child, and our parenting experience has been entirely built upon ignoring all conventional parenting methods and milestones. What we have given as compassion, acceptance, and avocation have in some instances been nothing more than enabling or selfishness.

That has now been put into blessed clarity for us.

Little Bug is a couple months away from turning 4.  Yet, he has never been formally sleep trained and has been cosleeping in a most unhealthy way since his first birthday.  Why have we never bitten the bullet and kicked this habit?  Oh, that would be because he couldn't be walk, then he couldn't stay in his big boy bed, then he couldn't fall asleep without us, then he needed his sleep and it was easier to put him to sleep in our bed, then we would be going on vacation, then he was getting a new room, then he got a new brother, then then then then then.

All excuses, every one of them.  The real reasons were that Appa and I loved having him cuddle in our bed with us and that we simply didn't have enough faith in him to be able to go to sleep on his own and cognitively follow the rules.

In the last four days, he's almost completely sleep trained.  We still have tears, but they are short.  And most importantly, he understands the expectations and accepts them.  Appa and I are ashamed to think of the YEARS of sleep deprivation we have imposed on our tough son simply because we underestimated him. 

And we started potty training him today, too.  Again, I didn't think this would work, at all.  If anything, I thought Little Bro would potty train and help eventually with Little Bug's training.  After only 4 hours, my son who has never peed on the potty in any intentional way was telling us, over and over during dinnertime, no less, that he needed to go potty.  He kept his big boy pants dry for hours as he motored back and forth to put his business where it needed to be.  (And he started taking the stairs without holding any railings.....another first for this super kid.)

In 3 days, I actually think he'll be potty trained.  Officially.  And it shocks me, to be honest.  Both Appa and I are pretty incredulous.

And we're both a bit humbled and ashamed to have underestimated our son in such huge ways.  In every challenge we've thrown his way, he's breezed through it.  Not even really struggled, but just breezed through it.  He's shown us time and time again that he's up for the challenge.

We just haven't been challenging him like we thought we were.

So although there are still a lot of challenges facing Little Bug that can't be fixed with a modified sleep training program or a 3-day miracle potty training program, there are a lot of little life lessons that Little Bug IS probably ready for.  And that is going to force us to change how we parent him a bit, which includes me cutting out some of our isolation therapy. Which is probably going to make us all happier.

I know every mother thinks this of their child, but I just really feel deeply that there is something special about Little Bug and what his future holds.  Of course I think Little Bro is very special, too, but I feel strongly that Little Bug was given his gifts of a fighting spirit, charming disposition, and joy of life to turn his challenges into something really amazing.  He's going to inspire people in some way, some day; I know it.  I know it.   And someday, when he reads this note from his mother in the midst of all my random musings, I hope he knows that I, more than anyone else in this world, have been blessed beyond measure by him simply being who he is.