The darned pneumonia just won’t go away. I still feel dragged out today, yet here I am at work. Might as well do something productive at the computer as opposed to surfing e-bay.

But, enough about me.

Let me tell you about my Nathan. He is jumping on one foot! This is a BIG deal, he’s only jumping an inch or two off the ground on 2 feet and has never had the coordination to jump on one!

He is reading “B” books. His teacher says grade 1 students read between a B-I book level. He started at (struggling through) A level, but after 2 months has moved on to B. The difference is more words and more words per page, as I can tell. They are still basically dealing with sight words, but are more interesting. His teacher’s goal is to get to I books at H comprehension by year-end. At 2 months per level, this could be a stretch but she says he can do it, so I’m gonna believe it and support it.

Also, he is singing. Constantly. Every song he learns in music class is coming home. The Pizza Song, the “Back to School Again” song and all its derivatives (like The Farmer in the Dell), Twinkle Twinkle -which he loves to sing in a “mad” voice, so funny.

He’s off key, misses a word or two and is so proud of himself, I can’t help but grin.

Happy Friday the 13th. Hope it is lucky for you!

Well, I’m not really sick anymore,  but I’ve been sick.  I went to my cousin’s wedding, which was beautiful and a whole other post….. and came home s-i-c-k.

I could barely get out of bed.  Fever, chills, body aches.  That lasted about 3 days, I started to improve, and woke up having trouble breathing.  So, off to the ER we went and I was diagnosed with………drum roll………. pneumonia. 

I’m off to the doctor again today for the “all clear” to go back to work and hopefully find out just what all the test results were.  I’m thinking it was H1N1 because of symptoms.  I really hope it was because I don’t want to go through being that sick again.  Two full weeks off work, even with sick benefits, is a long time.

The pneumonia was a bit of a shock – I’ve never had it before.  Literally, you feel like you can’t breathe or take a deep breath.  If that isn’t bad enough, your chest also hurts and weighs a ton.  Yet, very little coughing.  I might have coughed 10 times in 3 days before developing the pneumonia. 

For all those who are pro-vaccine and are now quietly chastising me for my anti-H1N1 stance, I’d remind you that I’m not even eligible for the vaccine yet anyhow.  It’s not as though I had a chance and passed it up, I haven’t actually had the opportunity to decide.  We’re still busy trying to reach the most vulnerable & I am not one of those.  Also, I’m not anti-H1N1 for everyone else, just my own family.  You do your own research, make your own decisions.   Don’t substitute my choices for your own.

One thing I would point out, (assuming I had H1N1) is that the complication of pneumonia was brutal to me – who has lost 15 pounds, runs 10 miles a week and is generally is excellent health.  If you do have an underlying medical condition, I would think hard before saying no to the vaccine.  The flu snuck up on me in about 6 hours and the pneumonia symptoms developed in 2-3 hours.  I woke up feeling pretty good and by 11:00 a.m. was in the ER.

Fortunately, I got a nebulizer, strong antibiotics and probiotics and am well on my way to recovery.  The kids are fine, hubby is fine, the preggo in my office is fine.  Thank God I didn’t expose her to this.  Take care readers, wash your hands and watch for symptoms!

I can’t seem to hold a decent thought in my head long enough to write a post these days, so I’m about to do a brain dump on you all. Let’s see…….

Nathan’s IEP was 2 weeks ago, it was very positive. I know. Shocking. But it really was. I got everything I wanted for him (more OT/PT, more focus on academics) and felt like the team really wants to see him succeed. It took about 1.5 hours in total but at the end, I felt like my kid is special, valued and fun to be around. You can’t ask for much more than that. Score: Mommy 1, Nathan 1

We went to the Eye Specialist last Monday for the twice annual vision check. Turns out Nathan’s eyes are now both working, independently. This is an improvement, but now we have to put Atropine in each eye, alternating weeks. Sounds easy? HA. Ha. ha.

Friday morning finds me pinning my screaming child to the floor, tiny eye dropper bottle in hand, attempting to force his eye open just long enough to get a single drop in. Total time required: 15 minutes. Adults required: Two. Score: Mommy 1, Nathan 0, and still really mad about it.

Saturday was my high school (mini) reunion. Now there was a blast from the past. A couple of people haven’t changed a bit. Draw whatever conclusions you want from that. But there was one who just seems so content in her life and I’ve never known her that way. What a change a little bit of happy makes. I wish we lived closer together because I think I’d like to be her friend. Score: Mommy, who acted like a teenager, just for one night: 1, Kids: 1 (they stayed with Grandma!)

My dress arrived from Ohio for my cousin’s wedding on Saturday. It is a Maid Marian-style costume & it is a size Small-Medium. You better believe I’ve been in the gym all month. I was pretty nervous about getting into it but it FITS! I guess I really am a size 8 finally. Yahoo me! The scale is still mocking me but I am going to assume it’s all the muscle I’m gaining in place of the baby bulges. Score: Sexy Momma: 1 Hallowe’en candy polluting my cupboard: 0

So, a good month so far, the eye drops not withstanding. Next up will be the plane ride to Calgary, the wedding and the hangover exhaustion that will follow.  Oh yeah, and the paper I have to write for my course by Monday, that I haven’t started.

It seems to be a good news/bad news type of week. Of course, being the cheerful optimist, I always prefer to think of it as bad news/good news. Better to see the sunny side, even if it doesn’t help, it completely irritates your enemies!

So here goes:

Bad news: It was snowing here yesterday and is cold and miserable today.
Good news: the snow lasted all of 5 minutes on the ground & there’s barely a hint of it today. (meaning I don’t have to shovel just yet which is always bad news)

Bad news: There are still 16 hills of potatoes left outside
Good news: Hey, there’s still 16 hills of potatoes – that’s probably another 80 pounds of taters I’m not shelling out for.

Bad news: My friend’s dad had surgery yesterday
Good news: She reports that he came through ok. I’m still praying for you all anyways.

Bad news: I have a paper to write due on Monday & I’ve barely started the readings.
Good news: The assignment topic isn’t nearly as horrific as the first one & I can likely BS part of the way through it.

Bad news: My family is not going to my cousin’s wedding on Oct. 31
Good news: I AM! I am flying out because she is that important to me. Hey, I can’t imagine missing the day & they’re doing a hand fastening which is new for me. Should be very fun. And, I have a very pretty costume to wear too.

Bad news: My costume is not here yet, it’s a size Small-Medium & I have NO IDEA if it will fit
Good news: There is still 20 days to go before the wedding & I have a gym membership. It’s only coming in from Ohio – shouldn’t take the WHOLE month right?!?!?!

Bad news: My gym membership has caused me to find muscles I forgot about. Ouch.
Good new: I’m tougher than any “owie”. And, tomorrow is my scheduled “rest day”. Back to the torture on Monday.

See, there’s always a silver lining!

I think there are easily 450707079796 things I could complain about today and 4583725960483820409 things I could be happy about, so here goes at least a few.

3 Number of meltdowns Eric had over the weekend about nothing. Literally. I swear, his exhaustion makes me tired.

2 glasses of wine it took to erase those meltdowns from my memory

0 number of Tylenol I needed this morning to erase a headache from the wine (I don’t have one!)

.5 amount of wine left in the bottle. Just couldn’t justify drinking the WHOLE thing myself (on a Sunday, no less)

8 number of kids at Circle Church on Sunday

6 number of kids that bothered to pay attention

0 number of those kids that were mine

112.50 price of a 6 month gym membership that I took out on Saturday

3838506837399 number of times I swore to myself that I will be going to the gym at lunch today

4 number of bits of mold on the top of my yogurt that i was just about to eat before going to the gym

1 number of times I considered eating it anyway (I didn’t)

85.6 pounds of potatoes I dug out of the garden on Sunday

16 number of hills those potatoes came from

18 number of hills that are still in the garden

2850659043894389 times I have wondered why the **** I planted 40 hills of potatoes

There’s my numbers. What are yours?

I’m always trying to keep the positive as the theme of this blog. Not that we don’t have negatives in our life, we do, but dwelling on them just makes everything harder. I believe every hard moment teaches something, helps us to grow and brings new opportunities.

So, even though I have plenty of reasons to be angry, resentful and sad, I make the choice to be happy. Sometimes making that choice is easy, sometimes it is incredibly hard.

To that end, here’s my list:

Today I am grateful:
- that my son got out of bed too early, just to give me a hug

- that my disorganized house, with all its clutter and dust bunnies is warm, dry, and beautiful. At least it is under the clutter and dust bunnies!

- that my child who couldn’t speak for so long now can’t seem to let me get a word in and loves to sing

- that my younger son is telling me all the secrets from school that I never heard about last year, like what they do in gym, music and lunch time

- that it is still raining which means my over-tired, overworked husband can spend another day in bed. We’re not done the harvest but one can only work 18 hour days for so long!

- that today is the Fun Fair. It’s a community fundraiser with silly kids games, dollar store prizes, cake walk and raffles. It’s loud, it’s exciting and my kids can’t wait! I think that might be the reason the little one got up so early.

What’s your list?

What a month!

I’ve missed blogging, I’ve missed reading. I’ve missed my spare time. What have I been doing?

Back to school for Nathan, Eric and me. Nursery school meetings, trying to get a before and after school program going, changing daycare arrangements, leading Circle Church, fundraising, enrolling the kids in skating……..and working full time. I’m exhausted but I have no idea why.

And just in case that isn’t enough, I’m still trying to get myself in some kind of physical shape. I was up to running 6 miles but took last week off. Now, with the cold suddenly showing up and the days getting shorter, this girl is thinking it’s time to move the workout inside! So, next it’ll be shelling out the $$ for a gym membership. I haven’t had one since Nathan was teeny tiny. Maybe it’s time??

Of course it hasn’t been all bad. Hey, it never is. Nathan is loving Grade 1, though he thinks it’s hard. Eric loves Kindergarten but thinks Nursery School was “more fun”. Gee this is not looking good for their school careers, is it? Nathan brings home little books that he can “read” now. Okay, it’s really memorized but it is reading to him.

To be fair to Nathan, he did read “combine” (as in the large farm equipment) tonight. He looked at the word, said the “c” sound and shouted out “Combine!”, so he is starting to catch on. I could tell by the way his face completely lit up at reading it all by himself.

We’re off to do IEP in mid-October. The school tells me this will take 30-45 minutes. I sincerely hope they are right. But, I doubt it. We’re looking for some academic goals plus more therapy concentrations so I’m not sure we can get that all sorted out UNLESS they school is thinking the same thing. We shall see.

Here’s 1 (ok that’s a number too) thing I haven’t yet done on this blog, Monday Mumbers…..

12 dozen – number of baked goods I made over the weekend
5 – number of pounds I think permanently attached to my rear due to said baked goods
0 – number of miles I managed to haul said rear out the door last week which might also account for the 5
pounds
8 – number of cookies I ate yesterday -which again might account for said 5 pounds
6 – number of sandwiches I made for hubby over the weekend as he is busy in the field
2 – number of tomatoes I brought in from the garden
0 – number I shared with anyone except hubby
38383 – number of times I felt guilty of said non-sharing
38384 – number of times I said get over it to myself as I ate a toasted tomato sandwich. yuuuuuuum

38 – number of times I went to pick up the phone to talk to a friend over the weekend
0 – number of times I actually did it

18.75 – hours of overtime I put in while my boss went on vacation
3 – hours of that overtime I actually will be spending on “time off in lieu”
48 – hours of overtime I should have put in but didn’t because I’m not supposed to do “overtime”

494 – number of kisses and hugs I got from my boys after being at Grandma’s all weekend (gotta love it)
493 – number of times I considered going back in their room last night for just one more

Those are my mumbers. What are yours?

We’re back into the harvest season. Neil has been combining for the last couple weeks, in between the rains. Nathan is so in love with the combine these days, he is pretty emotionally fragile if the machine is sidelined for repair or rain.

For me, this means I am single parenting (essentially). Neil still gets home at night though it might be after midnight. And, he can take the kids in the evenings for a ride for about an hour. Pretty nice but I do have to run them out & pick them up. I am not complaining, it just makes the “hour to myself” more like 40 minutes some days.

The single parenting thing is worse in the spring because he’s out before 7:00 a.m. most days and back late in the evening. Harvest is a little better, he can often wait until we’re out the door (8:30) before starting his work day. Of course, he’s generally still sleeping at 8:00, so I am doing the morning, evening and bedtime routines solo. But, it is much easier now that the children are older.

On to my “real” point – harvest thoughts. Last night Neil needed me to bring the old 3-ton truck out the to field since he was running short of truck space. I learned to drive this mid-1970s model back in high school and am fairly ok at it, if I do say so myself. In our younger days, I even hauled a fair amount of grain, but now that we have bigger trucks, my services are less often required. Getting in the truck, driving down the road listening to AM Radio really took me back.

As I’m puttering along, hey it only goes about 30 miles per hour now, I took a deep breath in and realized that I could smell “harvest”. It’s the smell of a warm truck, freshly threshed grain, dust on the windshield and the sweetness of knowing that we have again coaxed a crop from our land. There is nothing so satisfying as that smell.

We always say that being a farmer is genetic. (Depending on the day, it might be a genetic flaw). That it gets in your blood and you just can’t shake the passion to be out on the land. I think it is the smell of harvest. The scent that always brings you back to why we do this. Why we work so hard and why we love our life here.

You can keep your cities and traffic and shopping malls. I’ll keep the gentle breezes, the smell of dusty grain, the hum of an aeration fan and the knowledge that God is at work all around us.

Did you know the latest statistics are suggesting that Autism is affecting 1 in 100 children now?

I’ll repeat that really slowly so we all hear it.

One. In One Hundred.

One percent of all children age 2 – 17 in the US have an Autism Spectrum Disorder (autism, PDD-NOS, aspergers, or other autism spectrum disorder) and another .6% were once told they were on the Spectrum but no longer are. (We’ll talk about that one later)

Wake up people. Something is happening to our children. It isn’t just “better diagnosis” though I am sure that is a small part of it. Autism feels like the “disease du jour” these days – like it’s the cool thing for your child to have.

Well it’s not a cool thing to have. Waiting four plus years to hear Nathan speak in sentances? Not cool. Watching him struggle to simply throw a ball, never mind catch one? Not cool. Seeing him off in his own world, unable to make friends or join in a game? Not cool. Missing work due to yet another doctor or therapy appointment? Not cool. Giving him yet another antibiotic because he’s always sick? Cleaning up the disgusting diapers? Wondering why he was so sensitive to temperature, texture and changes to routine. SO NOT COOL.

I have all kinds of theories why we are seeing increasing numbers of autism. We know for sure that people with Fragile X are sometimes also diagnosed with autism, 30% was the last stat I saw. There is a genetic link though FX is only one of them. To that end, I urge you, get the The Southern Blot DNA test with PCR analysis. It is 99%+ accurate in diagnosing Fragile X. The only problem with these tests is that they may not pick up a deletion of the gene, which can occur but is a rare. Southern Blot DNA test with PCR analysis is less expensive than the older karotyping/chromosome analysis tests. (Thanks Sally!)

I love Nathan for who he is and all that I know he can be. We’ve pursued treatment for him, not because we want him to be “normal” but because we want him to be as high-functioning and happy as is possible. The same as we want for Eric. Nathan takes a thousand repetitions to learn a new task (which is down from the 10,000 it used to take, I am not really exaggerating) where Eric might take 10. So, we need the extra intervention and assistance to get that done.

Here’s the thing. Autism rates are rising & no one knows why. If this was cancer, we’d all be screaming. Well, I’m screaming. Something is happening to our children and the longer we wait, waste time and argue about the research the less we are doing to help them. We need help. The kids need it, schools need it, parents need it.

If you are facing an autism diagnosis, I urge you, again, get the Fragile X test done. Second, chin up. This is just a bunch of letters. If I have learned anything in the last year it is this – the only limit to your child’s abilities is the limit of what you imagine is possible.