Hurry Up and Wait

we've all heard it. "hurry up and wait." it's ubiquitous in the military community.

our oldest son has had developmental delays off and on since he was about 18 months old. i say off and on because this is how our life works with him:

realize there is a slight (6 months to a yearish) delay.

wait a few weeks.

see doctor. confirm delay.

put in referral for evaluation or therapy.

continue to work on delay at home while insurance takes its sweet mother effing time to approve referrals.

son very abruptly catches up entirely. sometimes in the course of a day, and i am not exaggerating.

see specialist. child is not delayed.

begin cycle over again in 6 months to a year.

this cycle was on of the large pieces in the pie chart of reasons why i wanted to get rid of our tv's. (i don't think i've posted about that yet. we got rid of our tv's. everyone is alive 9 months later) he needs more room than a lot of kids to let his mind grow.

our younger boy develops very typically. he picks things up more or less as he goes along and then we have occasional cognitive leaps. in contrast, with our oldest we pour information in over and over, repeat it for weeks on end and he shows no sign of comprehension. and then one day, or one week, everything we've been teaching him clicks and comes together and he can do all of it. months of information and work will come to fruition in a matter of days.

it is very frustrating. however, it is also something we are getting gradually more accustomed to and thus it is becoming much less stressful. this past time when the doctor put in the referral, we never went to the specialist. because i knew he would catch up. and i was correct.

granted, i was incredibly worried. as of july he was not prepared to start kindergarten. academically i no longer expect him to be front of the pack, but there were overall concepts, themes and systems that i didn't think his mind quite had a grasp on. lack of mental coordination to some extent i suppose you could call it.

one week before he was slated to start kindergarten, all the pieces joined together, in a matter of days. suddenly he was pretending to read, tracking his finger along with the words and making up the story based on the pictures (we have been working on this seriously since march. MARCH), he was paying attention to his brother's needs and helping us accommodate them, following directions, staying on one task for more than 5 minutes. he learned to swim and sound out SOME letters and began figuring out how to identify the starting letter of a word by the sound it makes. all of this happened, and more, in about 4 days.

hurry up and wait.

in the past 2 weeks or so both boys figured out how to swim (though the little guy can only swim with one breath. he hasn't figured out how to pop his head up, tread water and get another breath. that'll come!), the big guy has figured out diving and can swim the length of a pool. wild.

 big guy also lost his THIRD tooth. he's not even 6 years old yet!!!

note the coloring on the wall behind him. THANKS, KIDS!

and our chickens laid their first egg

it's super tiny for now. they get bigger as the chicken figures its life out

hurry up and wait. for the rest of our lives, it would seem.

Kindergarten

 5.5 years ago i gave birth to my oldest boy. i had no idea what to do with a baby. i had very limited experience with newborns.

i tried to listen to what everyone told me. i read so many books.

as it turns out, a lot of the books were right, and a lot of the people were wrong.

i likely won't dole out a ton of baby advice on here, but let me give you my three most important pieces of advice real quick before we dive into the rest of this.

1. you will in fact sleep after your first baby is born. you'll sleep often. because newborns are only awake for a grand total of about 20 hours a day in their first week or two, and not usually awake for even half of the day in their first month. and you won't have anyone kicking you internally. people make newborns out to be life draining monsters. don't believe them. but do sleep when the baby sleeps. (disclaimer: note that i said FIRST baby. when your second baby comes, you are in fact effed. but after a couple of years, when your youngest child sleeps through the night and you have a normal routine again, you WILL sleep.)

2. always do what your heart says, not society. your motherly instincts will almost always be right. the most important thing for a new mom and baby is for a bond to be created and for nurturing to occur. trust yourself. your baby trusts you. do what is RIGHT for you, so long as it isn't abuse ;)

3. put towels under every car seat you ever use.

back to it. i have loved every stage of growth in my boys. i didn't find the newborn stage particularly awful, though it's not my favorite because they are really kind of boring, once you are done crooning for the day. we didn't have any true terrible 2s or 3s (my younger guy just turned 4, so i can't say anything about 4s for sure yet). we have trying periods, and we have good and bad days. but for the most part, i have loved watching them grow and develop.

i have often thought "holy cow, how did you get so big!?!?!" which is NOT the same as "where did my baby go!?!"

i have to admit that this may change and reverse when my boys are adults.

i do not look at my boys and see my babies.

when i look at my oldest, this is not what i think of:

i look at my boys and i am always seeing them in the future. imagining how their faces will grow and fill out and sharpen, how tall they might be, what kind of things they are going to be interested in, how they'll spend their time.

my oldest boy is going to kindergarten in 2 weeks. i doubt i will cry. i could not be more excited for him, for the life he is about to start. i realize that many parents cry out of excitement too!!

anyway, we as parents work so hard in those young years, teaching them to eat, to use a bathroom, discipline, to sleep well, kindness, their colors and letters, how to dress themselves, how to listen… we teach them how to function in social settings like classrooms and birthday parties. we imprint our values, our personalities, our moral codes, our ways of doing things on them, our music in the car, our favorite shows and movies. 

they know what we've shown them.

and now they get to go out and pull pieces from the world around them. they will be opened up to so many concepts and characters and topics, they will have a chance to learn from a different teacher, to open up new pathways in their minds. they will begin to find parts of themselves by themselves. some will be bad i suppose. it's a mixed bag, naturally. 

but what a truly magical thought: that we have begun a painting in these years, and now other hands will add to it. different brushes, strokes, color palettes, maybe entirely different mediums. all combining and mixing to make a collaborative work of art. 

i can't wait to see what gets added to this masterpiece this year.

Eggs

we are getting very close to having eggs!! our first group of girls are 18.5 weeks and our second batch of i'm-still-not-totally-sure-what-the-gender-make-up-is chickens are around 16 weeks. they have started this crazy weird moaning type of squawk and two of them are assuming the submissive squat position while just hanging out around the coop.

it's hard to see rosa parks back there, but she is definitely the youngest in terms of how close she is to laying. she's just a dainty lil lady, taking her sweet time.

i opened their nesting boxes 2 days ago and prepared them--they had previously been closed off so nobody would try to sleep or poop in them. i've also been searching around the run every day to see if they've picked their own place yet. so far, nothing. but i know it's coming!!

it's the two harry potter themed lavender orpingtons that are giving me fits. their waddles and combs seem far too big to be hens, and myrtle clearly has sickle feathers. i'm about 95% sure myrtle is more like a malfoy. except not evil.

hedwig up there, let me just tell you, is a giant, fat, ridiculous chicken. i have never seen a chicken so big. not that i've seen a lot of chickens in my day, but she is HUGE.

H.U.G.E. she has to be well over 8 pounds.

nobody is trying to crow yet, so we have some more time to prepare ourselves mentally for the possibility that one of those beauties is going to be dinner.

anyway, we are waiting very impatiently to see our first egg!! it should really be any day now, and i cannot wait to make a yummy soft boiled fresh egg with some cheddar grits. mmmmmmmm.

not much of an update. certainly a poorly worded blog to say the least.

can't all be winners!