Lettuce

I love to garden, that being said I traditionally plant lettuce on Valentine's Day. But alas, it really is to wet to plant anything, even in my containers which are nasty, yucky messes. So tonight I carried them up on to the back porch where hopefully they will thaw and drain so that later on this week I can plant me some lettuce!
I am also planning the garden for later on this spring. I have so many plans and good intentions, though with three kids my best laid plans sometimes take the back burner. I understand that winter is a part of the whole seasonal process and that winter winds and snow make for a more enjoyable spring and summer. But long about this time of year I become very anxious as I want to go out and play in the dirt!
On the "to do list" for this week, get some lettuce in the dirt!

I am Shellfish

For those of you familiar with the Junie B. Jones series of beginning chapter books, you will know that this means selfish, for those of you who are not familiar I highly recommend these as a read aloud, they are laugh out loud hilarious, but I digress.
I am being very shellfish right now, I want my body back, I want my bed back, and I want a normal relationship with my dearest Anit-Hippie. Looking back on it, I have nursed babies for over 72 months, not continually but as of lately I am going on 48 months of almost straight nursing. I want my breasts back. I love nursing, I love the sounds that babies make while they nurse, I love it when babies look up at you with that nourished look in their eyes, I love being the sole food source for babies for the first 8 months of their lives, but I want my boobies back. The current champion nurser, Danger Hawk, can almost one handed, get up my shirt and into the nursing cami. all by him self. He is currently at the stage where I am trying to wean him and he is protesting every minute of it. It does not help that he has been my sick kid, and nursing makes both he and I feel better.
Eddy, nursed until he was about 18 months old and one day he just did not want to anymore, there were other things to keep him occupied. Gnat, had to quit nursing because I became pregnant with Danger Hawk. Like I mentioned before, I am weaning so he only gets one or two chances a day to nurse, but he will hang on until I shut down operations, by pulling down my shirt and buttoning up the hatches.
I want my bed back, I think the whole idea of a family bed is a wonderful idea, it works for some and not for others. I have enjoyed having all three kids in my bed at one time or another. Currently Danger Hawk and I share the queen bed in my room, and Gnat and the Anti-Hippie share the twin bed upstairs in the kid's room. Gnat is a very anxious child, and she knows when you remove yourself from her bed, and she usually makes her way downstairs to our bed. Some parenting experts say that one should never share a bed, because it is too dangerous and because kids belong in their own beds. Whatever, I have enjoyed having my kids close to me and sharing snuggles and sleep with them. I want my bed back.
This however poses another problem, the problem of intimacy with my husband. Occasionally, we have relations in the early morn, while the peeps are still asleep, as we rarely share a bed anymore. Sometimes, albeit rare, we sneak off like teenagers while a dvd is playing or they are occupied. Other times we just make rain-check deals with one another. I want my husband back.
Children are in deed a blessing, I am blessed with three healthy children, sometimes they are not a blessing and I wish to be Shellfish.

What I Can't Say to anyone but my BFF's

**** Disclaimer: the opinion here is mine and mine alone

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I have posted on here before about my family-in-laws, and how irresponsible I think that they are, hey give me a break the Blog is titled "The World as I See It". Well they have gone and done it again, several times over since I last posted.
Let me recap, in the summer of 2006, they lost a baby to anacephaley, and did not get any genetic counseling before they tried to get pregnant again. In December of 2006, I found out I was pregnant with Gnat, by January of 2007 they were pregnant too.
Now these in-laws are 10 years younger than I, they did not go on to any kind of secondary school, and the husband, my BIL works for his father. I was so excited that we were pregnant together, she was not, she was excited that they were pregnant but more so at the prospect of having a baby. In April when we were finding out the gender of our baby, they found out that their baby had something wrong with her. By June they found out she was a girl, and that some of her insides were forming on the outsides. In July when Nat was born (naturally) they came and visited us in the hospital and told me that they could not wait to meet their baby "Princess" two weeks later she arrived 2 months early. Princess, ended up having shortened bowel syndrome and was in the hospital for the first 5 months of her life. Fast forward a year and she is on the organ donor list in need of a small bowel. Now I say all of this and I seem really cold hearted to the fact that they lost a baby and now had a baby with a ton of health issues, but I am not cold hearted, in fact quite the opposite. I love Princess, she and Gnat are best cousin buddies, I just resent the fact that SIL does not work, yet complains and tries to get rid of her kids every chance she gets, but acts the part of a martyr when she talks about all the struggles they have had with Princess.
Anyway back to my post, in February of 2009, they got the call that a small bowel was available and that they needed to hot foot it up to Chi-Town to get Princess prepped. In deed it was a match, and that was great, but here I go again, another baby had to die in order for Princess to live.
Princess's transplant went well and she was home by April, at which time they were pregnant again. They were living at my mother in laws, they had lost their house because they could not pay for it (SIL always wanted a newer house), they were driving vehicles that belonged to my FIL and my MIL and now she still was not working.
Fast forward still, we had baby Danger Hawk in July, I started a new job in September and they had Baby Fat Cheeks in December. Meanwhile they were getting anxious to move out of MIL's house, so I suggested public housing to myself, um yeah that was shot down like a lead balloon, in my head! Well some dumb sucker offered them a newly remodeled 3BR ranch house for contract for deed. They got a house last April, complete with cable tv. But still she is not working. Over the summer my kids and I would walk to their house so that the Bestie Cousins could play.
Fast forward again to November, and they get the call that they have just been awarded a Make a Wish and Princess wants to go to see the Disney Princesses. They also won a Christmas wish from a local radio station. Ok, I am not denying that it is hard having lost a child, and having a child who needs constant medical attention, but every chance SIL gets she throws that up in everyone's face. Everyone here in town thinks that they are so special because they have lost so much. No one realizes that they set themselves up for this: #1 by getting married so young and having such and outlandish wedding 25K, #2 by not getting genetic testing after the several mis-carriages she had before loosing the baby, #3 by mooching off DAD and MOM, #4 letting everyone think that by having a sick kid that means you can't work.
Fast forward to this week, they are getting ready to leave for their trip. Princess is 3 what is she going to remember about this? What about all the germs on the plane, in the hotel, and in the actual theme park? She was actually just in the hospital with a compromised immune system a few weeks ago.
Well I hope they have fun, I hope that one day they realize what they are doing and how wrong it is to those of us who know the whole truth.

I Found Him

I have not posted in almost a year and here I am feeling sorry for myself so I decided that I needed to post a secret that has been the bane of my existence for a couple of weeks. I found "my Baby Daddy" on Facebook. I was bored one night and was holding a sleeping kid and surfing and lurking on Facebook. This surfing and lurking thing has become a past time for me, as I like to see how the other half lives; anyway I typed in his name in the Friend Box and searched. The search netted me over 75 people to look through, and then I saw a familiar face, holding a kid. Oh shit, I thought, no I take that back I thought a whole bunch of stuff, but oh shit works. I clicked on his name and I could view his page but he did not have much activity, so then I searched his friends and found his brother, and then I saw the baby. Myka is her name, I do not know how old she is or who her Mama is, but I had these feelings.
I felt like I was sneaking around on my very loving and very wonderful husband, I felt shame that I have made it almost, albeit in the age of computers not totally, impossible for him to see his son, I felt sad because there are some grandparents out there who will never get to enjoy Eddy Haskel and all of his antics, and then I felt angry because of what he did to me. So for the past few weeks I have been internalizing all of these feelings and it is not fair to my new family that I am acting this way. Have I deprived my own kid, by not letting him know that I know where his dad is? Will my Eddy go out looking for him someday? Will Baby Myka know that she has an awesome half brother out there somewhere? Has the "Baby Daddy" changed?
All of these questions weigh heavily on my conscience and I wonder sometimes what life would have been like if I had never met him nor gotten pregnant at such a young age. I believe in some sort of destiny, but what if?... What if..
So as I keep on lurking I am thankful that I have a husband who is not abusive, who loves me, and appreciates me.
But now I know he is out there and I wonder if he has found me yet?

Listening to the sound of silence

Crabby Patty is giving me the silent treatment right now and it is wonderful. She is interfering with my parenting style and I let her know that I did not appreciate it, therefore my phone has not rung in 72 hours. It has been pure bliss. When Crabby Patty finds nothing wrong with the fact that I do indeed have three kids; that I am not raising them 'her' way; and that it is 2010 and kids are different than they were even 30 short years ago, she calls me all the time. She calls to tell me about so and so down the street, she calls to tell me about her horse who won the race, or about what my dad did. She calls all the time when she is not mad at me, right now she must be mad at me, because I am listening to the sound of silence.

Hair (not the musical)

I teach special education. Some days I am rewarded with students who know the answer, some days I am rewarded when a student comes to school, and some days I find it really hard to be a teacher. Today was one of those days.
I have a student who is 13 and a sixth grader for the second time. She comes from a very dysfunctional home. Her mom is raising three of her own kids plus a grand baby. Her mom probably uses methamphetamine and likes that kind of life-style. My student is very street wise, she dates and is probably sexually active with older men. She probably self medicates with god knows what. She also has a great big giant dread lock on the top of her head, the dread is from about a year of not taking care of her hair (this was not a planned dread). This student has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals but never stays long enough to see any results. When she is at school she tries her best to go home, with faking sickness, faking heavy flow periods, self mutilation, I could go on and on. Let me just say when she is in my class, I let her sleep.
Today, I had the school social worker help me call in a professional to help her get her hair under control. After an hour of working on her hair, a person not familiar with the situation would not be able to tell, but I was very pleased with the results. She was able to free several large clumps of hair from the 'hair-ball'. The professional said she would come back tomorrow and spend the whole afternoon. I am a teacher, I should be teaching nouns verbs, I should be teaching writing, and reading. Instead, I spent an entire afternoon convincing a student that I saw progress on her hair. I do what I can, but after today I can say that I have really seen and heard almost all!

Three in diapers

Eddy Haskel was diagnosed with encopresis several years ago. I have tried numerous doctors and self help books looking for a cure. Over the past few months I thought we had moved passed the pants pooping. Every book and doctor that we have ever gone to, have told me he needs to retrain his bowels. I have tried setting timers, letting him have the Gameboy while on the pot, pro-biotic yogurt, Metamucil, Fiber One, almost anything on the market that makes one move their bowels I have tried. Eddy continues to poop his pants. I can smell it the second that he walks in the door, I get angry, I yell, I scream, and that is not what I am supposed to do. I am supposed to ask him to finish having said bowel movement, get him clean underwear, and help him get cleaned up. Well, I do not do that either, wanna guess why? Because I have 2 other kids in diapers. One who is almost more potty trained than Eddy.
Last night I let him ride his bike, it was raining but I needed a break from him. I called him in a couple of hours later and he walked past me and the smell hit me. He sat in my favorite chair, thus causing the smell to get onto my chair. I asked him to go clean up and bring down his soiled clothing. He took a 30 minute shower and has still failed to bring down the dirty clothes for me. At dinner when I called him down, same thing; the smell of fecal matter. I asked him why he came down here when he had poop on his butt; his response was "I did not want you to get mad at me when you called me so I got up from pooping and did not wipe my butt." WTF? did not wipe your ass, came down the first time I called you? Bullshit.
I am tired of cleaning shit out of pants, I am tired of having an almost teenager who still shits his pants, I am tired of being nice about it.