Manufacturing Magic

We just got back from a lovely vacation to the Mouse House in Florida.  Overall, it was a wonderful week filled with true excitement and wonder from both our sons.  Our tender Little Bug was genuinely content to be part of the atmosphere and drank it in while still mustering some bravery to try new things.  Our Little Bro, the adrenaline junkie, couldn't get enough of the rides and characters. It's a true shame he has 15 more inches to go before he can tackle the bigger coasters. He'll tell you as much, too.

Honestly, despite the fact that we didn't take a single nap break, usually opened and closed the parks, and I had to go it entirely alone for a solid day at Anim@l Kingd0m after Appa got food poisoning, I'd dare call this hardcore week of Disney an easy vacation.

That is in no small point to a small red card we were issued, the guest access card.

I've been reading about it for a while.  It's a card Disney will issue for people with invisible special needs, people who might need accommodations that aren't outwardly apparent.  They are specific for each person and although easy to get, often come with a pretty negative response when other guests see you use them (we didn't experience anything like that, for the record). They can provide accommodations for a variety of things, but the two accommodations I was concerned for was the ability to wait in an alternative line with more room (should he get into one of his fits we've been seeing lately and have no where to go while trapped 20 minutes deep in a small confined line) and the ability to wait in a shaded area when available (Little Bug gets severe heat stroke very easily).  It isn't meant to allow you to skip lines or shorten your wait, but the reality is, it usually does.

I was wavering up until we walked through the gates as to whether or not I would request one for Little Bug.  Appa seemed highly skeptical of the idea, and I could see his point.  We try very hard to walk the fine line of treating Little Bug like a typically developing child and not limiting our expectations for him and providing him accommodations that will make his life easier. In this case, we very specifically chose this particular week when crowds are at their absolute lowest levels to go. We bought him a new device to help distract him when he got antsy.  We had his chewie necklace and oils for his sensory diet.  We very specifically made sure he loaded up on protein each morning (a must for his medication to work its most effectively).  In short, we had covered every base we could cover to make sure he was at his best to enjoy his trip.

But the fact remained that even with all our planning, wait times for his favorite rides that he would insist on doing over and over could at times reach 40 minutes or longer. Could he wait in a 40 minute confined line? Yes. Could he do it over and over? Maybe. Would it make for a positive experience for him? No. Would it potentially ruin his ability to participate in 4 days worth of 40 minute lines? Very likely.

So I knew that the guest access card could potentially help our family enjoy a more stress-free experience, but it also meant limiting what we thought Little Bug could do, which never feels good as a parent.

Long story short, we got the pass and it was such a blessing.  We only used it when the sun was beating down on us or when the lines got longer than what we thought Little Bug was emotionally and physically up for at that time (which, towards the end, got less and less, I will admit). But that card gave us the confidence and freedom to plan our days in a way that allowed us to experience everything we wanted to try, as many times as the boys wanted to.  Without it, I am confident that Little Bug would have melted down more than once, which would have resulted in fewer fun experiences for both boys.  With it, we knew we could experience a more typical Disney day, and we did just that.

So at the end of the vacation, both Appa and I agreed that getting the card was the best move for our family.  I'm grateful to Disney for recognizing that some people need different things in order to have their most magical experience.  I'm relieved that in this case, Appa and I also recognized that Little Bug needed something different in order for him to have the best experience he could.  I'm hopeful that we won't need a guest access card for our next visit, but for this trip, it really made the trip for one little boy.

When Little Bug has been talking in his sleep the last couple days, he routinely loving murmurs two words over and over: "Disney World."

As a parent who wanted to give her son something very special, that is all I need to hear to know we made all the right choices this time around.

The Happiest Place on Earth

Leave it to the happiest place on earth to make me a bit blue.

I've been doing well/fine/whatever with the expected, but ridiculous, hold ups in our process with Little Moon's adoption paperwork, and I still am.  (Low expectations and a pessimistic timeline, people, that is my secret sauce of adoption sanity.)  But watching Little Bug and Little Bro literally float on a happy high through the land of the Mouse today and knowing we have a full week of magic ahead of us, I've found myself thinking of Little Moon over and over.  Missing him, wishing he was here, imagining what it would be like to have three little boys sprinting toward the transportation boat like it was the greatest ride in the history of the world.

I did the same thing, to a lesser extent, the last time we were here.  We were waiting for Little Bro and I had this sense of guilt that we hadn't waited for him to come.  I made him an entire care package of Disney items, including a shirt he still fits in and will be wearing back to its mouseland tomorrow.  There is a part of me that feels like I'm making some wrong right by bringing Little Bro here and letting him have his fun.

But my Little Moon, his absence is something I am feeling more acutely than I ever have before.  I want him to be able to be here with us, experiencing things with wonder and magic.  I know he is in great hands right now, but here and now, I want him in MY hands.  So I'll scour the parks for just the right things to send to him, tangible proof that he was with us in spirit and a promise that one day we'll bring him here to experience it with us.

Hopefully just in enough years that I won't have to find a triple stroller set up....

Of Shoes and Shirts

I'm not going to lie, I hate light up shoes.  I think they are cheesy and ugly and usually accompanied by bright and annoying color combos that manage to match nothing.  Before Little Bug came home, I swore he would never own a pair.  And for a long time, he didn't.  He hoofed it (when he could eventually hoof it), in brown leather shoes, cute and basic and slightly bland...pretty much my taste.

And then, in a moment of lunacy at T@rget one afternoon, I bought him a pair of obnoxious Lightning McQueen light up shoes as well as a new pair of brown shoes.  Needless to say, the brown shoes got little wear after my son's face shone with joy and pride for weeks after those stupid light up shoes showed up.

And I swore that in this world where he has so many crappy things to deal with, bland shoes would never again be one of them.

But I'm here to tell you that light up shoes are gateway fashion.  Once your kid has a giant red race car with a face on his foot, it seems silly to insist he wear a cute stripped sweater or polo shirt when all he really wants to do is wear his Thomas shirt.  And because you've already debased his feet, what's the harm in letting him enjoy a neon blue shirt with a neon orange smiling train plastered across the front?  As much as it kills me inside, it's hard for me now to buy him any article of clothing that I can't imagine him getting excited about.

Hence the teal shirt with a hot dog wearing a mustard mustache, the multiple shirts with construction and farm equipment, and the most horrifically obnoxious Cars and Thomas shirts to ever grace screen printers. He even has a reindeer shirt that is in rotation during months it certainly shouldn't be in rotation.  God help us all the first time he sees a shirt that actually lights up.

And for Little Bro, I can't just insist that because he doesn't have to rely on his clothing to help with social skills he can only wear clothes his Mama likes.  In the couple of months since Little Bug got his coveted new fire truck shoes, Little Bro has been increasingly sad (and vocal) about his displeasure at his black canvas kicks that I adore.  If I am going to embrace it, I need to embrace it for both boys. Boo.

Despite my attempt at swaying him toward something, anything less red and bright, Little Bro insisted on fire truck shoes just like his brother.  This morning, they stood there staring at each other, both finally wearing light up fire truck shoes, and you'd think I just told them they won the lottery.  They both started jumping up and down and sqealing with delight.  "Look Mama, Look!  Little Bug/Little Bro's fire truck shoes!!!!"  There was much pointing and excited shaking of fists and stomping of feet.

It was cute and they were happy.  And I am a sucker for them being cute and happy.

And for the record, I may or may not have purchased a DIY screen printing kit to make 뿡뿡이 shirts.  Having your kid wear an orange farting thing on a shirt is probably rock bottom as far as kid's fashion can go.

In the Jammie Aisle

I'm on the hunt for Thomas the Train jammies in XS/S boys sizes (not 5T).  Little Bug's heart is broken into a million little sodor-sobbing pieces because he doesn't have any Thomas jammies, so much so that he will sneak into Little Bro's jammie drawer and shove his not-2T body into 2T Thomas jammies.  Appa and I don't have the heart to change him out of them, but I'm obsessive about checking every place I got for a larger size Thomas jammie.

Hence how I found myself hidden in a jungle of video game/angry bird/motocross jammies while Little Bro sang in his cutest, loudest voice "Mommy, come out and find you, Mommy, 123 noooooooow" from a couple feet away.  The woman next to me kept laughing at him and striking up a conversation, which eventually struck me as a little off.

When I got to the cart, I realized the woman actually wanted to talk to me.  She asked how old he was, etc etc, and then I saw her hesitate and I knew she was going in for the adoption/Korean baby daddy question.

Sigh.  It gets old. It really does.  I get it, but it gets old.

But I knew this wasn't that when her question was directed at Little Bro; "where were you born?"

Granted, that question could have backfired on her if I really did have a Korean baby-daddy, but I don't and she just asked my favorite icebreaker question.

Even better was Little Bro's reply, the first time he's ever been independently asked a question like that.

"I was a baby in KooooWeeeA and played with my Omma and Appa and this is my Mommy."  Then he pounded on my chest, likely the only thing that kept it from bursting with pride all over the floor.

And if you haven't guessed it yet, this woman was a mama with kids born in another country, too.  So we chatted for a few minutes, the three of us.  Little Bro was an active participant, insisting that all babies come on airplanes from KoooWeeA and that his buddies L and E (both recently home) got balloons and that Little Moon would get balloons too.  But mainly that babies come on airplanes from Korea and balloons are involved. End.of.story.

We'll work on that when he actually sees a baby come from somewhere other than an airplane from Korea.

Grief

Today I had a little breakthrough.

It's obvious to anyone who has followed this blournal (and even more obvious if you follow my private family blog) that in April of this year I kind of shut down.  I stopped writing, I stopped reaching out to people, and I stopped a lot of other things.  I knew this, I could feel this, and yet, I was perplexed as to why it had and was continuing to happen.  It hasn't made me happy or even made my life less stressful; quite the opposite really.

Side Confession: I see a counselor once a week.  She's a really cool woman whose prior career was teaching a masters program for special education teachers, so that makes her perspective really unique for someone like me...a working mom turned SAHM with a traveling husband, special needs child, and boatload of shoulds.   Weekly I go to her office and we talk about whatever is on my mind.  Sometimes, oftentimes it's housework.  Sometimes it's about marriage or friendship.  Sometimes it's about special needs.

Today our conversation veered from dishes to blogging.  That turned into her asking the question I've never answered before.

What happened in April that made you stop allowing yourself all the things you love?

Oh, the answers that poured forth.  The truth is, there was a trigger in April, but I honestly don't remember what it was now.  All I recall is that in the middle of celebrating Little Bro's Family Day, Appa and I realized that we could not help our son anymore on our own.  It wasn't going to work.  He needed help.

We started medication.  This post pretty much sums up my state of mind.  Only what I realized today as I started telling my counselor about that month is that it was the time where for the first time ever, I truly realized that Little Bug might never live the life exactly like I had always envisioned for him, and by extension, our whole family.  I started looking ahead 5 years, 10 years, 20 years and accepting scenarios that we had previously refused to give thought to.  We weren't just medicating ADHD, but finally admitting that whatever Little Bug's needs are, they are bigger than us....and I finally started to feel the weight of our unknowns and complete and utter helplessness in controlling his ultimate future.

Grief.  That's what she called it when I took in a sob.  Grief.  And now, finally months later as things seem steady in this ebb of ours, I am starting to cycle out of it.  I sought help for myself.  I started making changes in our routine and home life.  I started drawing from faith again. It's slow going, but she told me....it's happening.  Acknowledge it.

"Go home and write about it," she said.  Give yourself the gift of writing the words out that you are sad and scared for your son and your family.  Holding it in only keeps the grief constricted.

Let.it.go.

So there it is.  No wonder I am paying her good money.  Just getting it out in words does make it feel lighter.  I'm sad my son has to struggle and hurt.  I'm sad my other son has to live in a home that is structured for the needs of someone else.  I'm sad I can't have a "normal" parenting life.  I'm scared for what the future could hold for Little Bug, for kindergarten and high school and college and love and success.  I'm scared for what that could mean for Appa and I, and later, for Little Bro and Little Moon. I have spent the summer grieving these things.  And slowly, but surely, I am accepting it and moving on.

Yesterday

Yesterday ended with me laying in the middle of my family room floor, exhausted and sad and scared.  At 7:45 pm, I could literally do nothing but give up the day.

Actually it ended with me laying in bed watching the Presidential "debate" and then streaming season 3 Downton episodes to scrub the ick from my mind and make the day end somewhere happy.  (No spoilers, but that certainly didn't work either.)

Anyway, yesterday was a hard day.  Little Bro is excelling at being 3, which means he has already figured out every button and boundary I have and spends his entire day trying to defy them.  That, I could handle. But my Little Bug had a bad day.  A BAD day.  And it was the kind of bad day that leaves me scared and unsure of how to move forward.

Some things are happening in his body.  Things we don't quite understand how or why, but things that are increasingly not looking like quirks.  Things that keep me up at night but are pushed away in the morning as anxious worrying are now topics his teachers call us about during emergency phone calls from the classroom.  Are they side effects of medication? Of sensory needs? Of brain functions? Of seizures?

I had my first full blown panic attack (in years) a week and a half ago and have been on edge ever since.

And yesterday it all was on full display, along with some insane emotional and social stuff that left me actively restraining him for his and his brother's comfort.  None of my restart tricks worked.  Nothing.  It was scary and sad, for all three of us.

Yesterday I felt so hopelessly alone in life.  It's a dark place to be.

This morning has been better.  He's still acting off, but he's happy and trying and seems comfortable.  I'll run with that.

But the future holds increasingly more yesterdays for us.  More confusion, more fear, and more hard choices.  Yesterday convinced me fully that our tomorrows need to hold some new appointments, new avenues to explore, and more people on Team Little Bug.

There was no fix for yesterday.  But there is hope for today and tomorrow. 

Why Three Boys?

Never fail, every single person from my mom to the blind date babysitter we hired yesterday have asked me the exact same question since we announced our Little Moon.

"Why three boys?"

I get why many of our family members asked; we've been crowing about a girl for years now.  But even strangers and acquaintances head straight for the burning question.

"Why three boys?"

Unfortunately, I don't have a great answer for them.  I don't actually have three boys right now, so any poetic waxing I can do on the stereotypical answers is just conjecture. It hasn't been a life dream of ours, and neither Appa nor I even know many 3+ families with all one gender.  It "seems like it would be kind of fun" is sort of a lame answer. And when I am following that up with the fact that my boys will be 5, 4, and 3 when our last one comes home makes the "kinda fun" answer sound like I am delusional.

I've been told by others that boys are easier to raise, boys love their mothers, and boys are more fun.  As a card-carrying member of Team Female, I'm not putting too much stock into those answers.  I think I was probably a dream child to raise.

Wait, what?

But universally, what I have been told by all boy families is that they love it.  That they wouldn't trade it for all the girls in the world.  Granted, they're clearly biased and would likely sing a different tune should their families have included a shot of pink.

But that is the real answer.  The one I can't articulate to the babysitter or therapist or anyone who doesn't have 10 minutes to listen to me ramble about MY three boys. It's not a matter of wanting three boys, it's a matter of wanting the family that you were meant to have.  For many people, that means loving and wanting the children you bear, regardless of their gender.  For me, means Little Bug, Little Bro, and Little Moon.  Sure, we could have waited it out and hoped for a girl, but once I felt it for Little Moon, nothing else mattered.  The fact that he isn't a girl is nothing compared to the fact that he is this amazing little soul that I am so very lucky to be able to one day raise.

"Why three boys?"

Because the three children I love above all other children in the world just happen to be boys.