Lament To Babies R Us

While Target may indeed be my favorite store, Babies R Us is most certainly not. Here's why:

• Lousy customer sevice. Many of their employees seem to be 14 year old boys who have no idea what you're talking about. When you ask a simple question such as "Where are the Boppys?" they will inevitaby lead you to the Baby Bjorns.
• Lines as long as The Great Wall of China. And only two of the six registers promise to be in proper working condition at any given time.
• Return policy? What's that?
• Their clothing merchandise is always a season or two ahead. Who needs a bathingsuit in January or a snow bunting in July?
• And the kicker...I once heard one of their employees complaining to another employee that "That woman better shut her kid up (not in reference to one of my boys) or I'm gonna do it for her!" Seriously. No lie. Um, you work at a baby store. Babies cry! Deal with it or get another job.

End tirade.

Just Made These...

You should too! They're delish and a healthier alternative to traditional chocolate chip cookies!

Banana Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies

1/2 c. unsalted butter at room temperature
1 c. sugar
1 egg at room temperature
1 c. mashed bananas (about 2 1/2 large bananas)
1 t. baking soda
2 c. flour
pinch of salt
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. mace
3/4 c. pecans
1/2 c. chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter and sugar in mixer til light and fluffy. Add egg and beat til fluffy. In a bowl, mix the mashed bananas with the baking soda. Let stand for 2 minutes. (The baking soda reacts with the bananas to make the cookies light and fluffy.) Combine the banana mixture into the butter mixture. Mix together the flour, salt and spices. Sift into the butter and banana mixture til just combined. Add pecans and chocolate chips. Drop onto lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake 11-13 minutes til golden brown. Cool on wire racks. Makes about 30 cookies.

Ode To Target

How do I love thee, Target? Let me count the ways...

1) You have practically everything I need in one place...for cheap. You stock my pantry, my wardrobe, my children's toy bins...for cheap.
2) You have everything I don't need (but want) in one place...for cheap.
3) You have dollar bins with wonderful treasures that make my three year old son (and his mommy) giddily happy.
4) You have sales, frequently.
5) You have Starbucks.
6) You have proficient customer service.
7) You are located just about everywhere. I love that I can turn around and find you.
8) You provide a meeting place for friends. I always run in to someone I know when I am perusing your aisles.
9) You take my money but leave me with a sense of "money well spent."
10) You just may be my "happy place."

Fashionably Late

I'm just now coming to terms with my my New Year's resolutions. Better late than never, right? There are so many areas of my life that need attention, but I refuse to get bogged down by the sheer magnitude of working on every little thing at once, so I have decided to make generalized resolutions in order to not become overwhelmed by too many details. It's so easy to get stuck "under the pile" of minutiae and then nothing gets accomplished. So although these New Year's resolutions are "fashionably late" they are still going to be taken seriously. Here goes...

Spiritually Study God's Word, don't just read it. Pray fervently and specifically for my children and my husband every day. Practice the spiritual discipline of celebration by keeping a gratitude journal.

Physically Move! Get on that elliptical! Put more miles on the jogging stroller! Make healthy food choices and stop "rationalizing" treats because I "deserve" them. I deserve to be healthy!

Financially Better distinguish between needs and wants. Apply the concept of delayed gratification. Refuse to use credit and say "NO!" to debt.

Relationally Be a better friend. Listen with my heart and respond with my hands. Seek out new friendships instead of "being content" that my "friendship quota" is full. Don't hesitate to truly invest in people and allow them to invest in me. Be more transparent. Ask for help when I need it, and accept it graciously. Get down on the floor and play with my kids without worrying that my "to do" list isn't finished. Give more of my "me time" to my husband.

Hey 2010! Ready or not...here I come!

First Day Of Preschool

“For all we have been through, there is so little I know for certain except maybe this: Motherhood is about raising—and celebrating—the child you have, not the child you thought you would have. It’s about understanding that he is exactly the person he is supposed to be. And that, if you’re lucky, he might just be the teacher who turns you into the person you are supposed to be.” ~ Joan Ryan, "The Water Giver"

Oh how I have needed to hear these words! God knew that I would especially need them last night as I prepared for Nolan’s first day of school. The physical preparations were all too easy—pack his lunch, prepare his bag, make sure his clothes were ready—but the mental and emotional preparations were much more difficult. I am still struggling with them in gargantuan ways today. I never dreamed I’d have a child with “special needs” who would attend school full time at the tender age of three in order to “heal.” Nolan was born wonderfully healthy and hit his early milestones on time and has never had more than a cold or mild stomach bug in his life. How, then, did he come to demonstrate characteristics of autism? As much as I know deep down in my heart that nothing Todd or I did or didn’t do “caused” his autistic behavior, there’s no way to shut off my brain that is “guilted” otherwise. Could we have done things differently? Of course! Would it have made a difference in who Nolan is today? No one but God can say.

God knew about Nolan’s issues long before he was even conceived. God also ordained that Nolan would be born into our family because that is the best place for him. I take comfort in knowing God’s plan is perfect, but struggle to make sense of it all. Are we doing all we can to help him? What more, if anything, can we do to help him achieve? Is he going to struggle for the rest of his life? What can we expect in the future? There are so many unknowns and no concrete answers. I truly feel as though I am on a completely different faith walk than I’ve ever been on before.

Over the course of the last couple of months I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on that is autism related. There is so much information out there…some that contradicts itself, some that seems far-fetched, some that appears legitimate, and some that is just downright terrifying. I am weeding through it and have come to a few promising conclusions about our little boy so far:

1) Nolan is most definitely mild in comparison to many other autistic children. We are grateful that he does not suffer from any of the bio-physical affects of autism—no repetitive illnesses, no seizures, no digestive problems, no allergies. I had no idea that autism can have so many physical manifestations until my recent research. We definitely are blessed with a healthy child.

2) Although Nolan has significant communication lapses, he can communicate. Many autistic children appear to be deaf mute. They are truly in their own little worlds. Nolan is present in every way, and again we are grateful.

3) Nolan craves social interaction but has a difficult time in groups. He talks about other people constantly but doesn’t exactly know how to conduct himself in social situations. He truly loves people but doesn’t quite know how to appropriately express it. However, one on one he is engaged and affectionate. We love our cuddly, snuggly little boy to pieces.

I have no idea who Joan Ryan is, or what "The Water Giver" is about. I suppose Google can help me with that one. But I do know that God placed her words in my life last night when I desperately needed to hear them. That’s just the way God is. His timing and His plan are perfect. For me and for my son.

Our happy boy on the first day of preschool

A Visit With Santa

Nolan just wouldn't have it. Maybe next year!

Merry Christmas Anyhow!

It's True...

...what they say about the second child. You don't love them any less although there are many less pictures to prove it. Soren is now four months old and so much fun. Our not so little (15 pound, 4 ounce!) "Meatball" is of the sweet and sour variety. Sometimes he is sugar sweet and cuddly and full of smiles and giggles, and other times he's about as sour as they get and screaming like a banshee. We are grateful that he has outgrown his refllux, but now he's dealing with cradle cap and eczema. The eczema must really itch because he claws his face incessantly. I can't keep his fingernails short enough and he throws a hissyfit if I try to cover his hands with mittens or socks. He is fiercely loved by us all but especially so by his big brother. Todd and I can't wait to see their brotherly bond grow in time.

Sweet sleeper

Being read to by our friend Noah Martin, 6 years old

Hates the bath but is happy as can be afterward!

A Rite Of Passage

Last night Nolan and I experienced a rite of passage together that I wish we could have avoided. It was his first trip to the ER...and my first trip to the ER as a mommy. We are visiting my parents in Mission Viejo and he is constantly on the go. Running down the hallway, the poor kid tripped and smacked his head straight into the spot where two walls come together. There were no bullnosed corners to soften the blow. This corner was sharp and vicious and took a gash out of Nolan's head. Of course he screamed that "Help me, I'm dying!" scream and I ran into the next room where he was laying on the floor cradling his head. In the three seconds it took me to reach him his forehead had a goose egg as big as a golf ball and he was bleeding...although not profusely like some head wounds do.

Unfortunately, my parents weren't home when this happened so I called my Dad's cell phone and asked them to come home ASAP because I needed to take Nolan to the ER. Both kids were screaming, Nolan was bleeding and swelling, and I was frantically attempting to keep ice on my 40 pound wrestler's head until my parents arrived. Good times. I am so grateful my Dad accompanied me to the ER...and that Nolan was OK. No stitches, no concussion...just a manly looking gash and a big purple bruise. In my panicky state I forgot to take a picture for posterity's sake, but that's OK. He'll probably have a nice scar to commemorate the event.

A Season Of Change

Our family has undergone a good deal of change in the past few months, but none moreso than our sweet Nolan. Since right around last Christmas, when Nolan was 2 years and 3 months, I noticed that his communication skills weren’t on par with other kids his age. I chalked it up to the fact that 1) he’s not a chatty girl, 2) he wasn’t in preschool, and 3) that he didn’t have an older sibling to “keep up with.” During the spring, when his communication didn’t worsen but also didn’t improve, I began to think I should pay closer attention to what he said and was able to respond to. I noticed that he never used the words “I” or “mine” which are a huge part of “standard” two year old vocabulary. He also was not using more than three words at a time, would not say “yes” to questions I knew “yes” would be his answer to, and would not talk to or socialize with his peers. This summer, to “err on the side of caution,” I completed paperwork for Nolan to have a speech evaluation with the school district. Four days after his third birthday we went to meet with a speech and language pathologist and our family has not been the same since.

The speech therapist was wonderfully sweet but very firm with Nolan as she proceeded with her evaluation. Nolan was belligerent, unable to follow directions and had difficulty completing the tasks she wanted to see him perform. I sat and watched with a heavy heart as Nolan could not respond in the appropriate manner to her requests. About a half hour through our one hour evaluation she stopped and said “Charla, I think there’s more going on here than just speech and language issues. I think it would be best for Nolan to have a thorough evaluation by our school psychologist and special ed team.”

My heart sunk thinking that my precious little boy was something less than “whole.” Todd and I grieved and prayed and grieved some more as we waited to hear what the next steps would be. Since mid October Nolan has had three additional evaluations and we are awaiting our “IEP” meeting on December 2. At the IEP we will not receive a diagnosis per se, but rather an educational plan to help Nolan through his issues. He does meet the educational criteria for autism and will be placed in a special ed preschool. We know he will also receive some occupational therapy and attend the school district’s Center For The Early Intervention Of Autism (CEIA.) From talking with other parents, we know that this program is pretty hard core and difficult on kids, but that it unequivocally works. We should expect to see progress quickly with the ultimate goal being that Nolan would attend Kindergarten in a mainstream class.

We have so many questions and so few answers at this point. Gratefully, our sadness has been replaced with great hope that Nolan will make huge strides and be able to function well…just with more guidance and molding than other kids his age. We feel so blessed that we live in the school district we do. If we lived even one town over the resources wouldn’t be there and we’d have to find other (much more expensive!) ways to help our son. Our journey is just beginning and we know it will be a bumpy ride with many potholes, unexpected detours and break downs, but we have hope that we will reach our final destination—Nolan’s complete wellness.

Better Late Than Never

I have neglected my blog for far too long now, but my time has been occupied with other more pressing things--namely Todd, Nolan and Soren.

We had lots of fun at three different pumpkin patches last month. If it were up to Nolan we would have visited one almost every day. Until next year...