Why I'm not sad for school to start

1. I am no longer a teacher.
2. Ty needs someONE and someTHING to focus all of his attention and energy on besides me. Seriously. He's an awesome kid. But he also has a lot of stuff inside and when he's not at school all day everyday he unloads it on me. Generally speaking, kids are their worst for their moms. Generally speaking, adopted kids have a lot of confusing feelings about their moms, even when they have a lot of love for their moms. That's a lot of fun. So, it's been 8 weeks of all of this energy and emotion pointed at me, times 2 moves, equals I'm ready for school to start.
I've kept him busy. He's done summer camp, vacation bible school, surf camp, vacation, and football practice. Now it's his birthday month and he's looking at school starting soon and there's a lot of excitement and anxiety. And it's aimed at me. I'll take it, because I love him and that's what I get for being a mom. I'll help him try to deal with his emotions in a healthy way. That's a slow process. But I will be quite a bit less stressed myself when we're a few weeks into the school year and we've all gotten into the swing of things. Oh summer, you are such fun, please don't go, okay see you next year!

Things I have recently made that have gone really well

I have recently made two new food items and a household item that I was pretty pleased with. I got all of the "recipes" from the interweb, but the shared success is a result of reading all of the comments I could find on these recipes, because people often point things out that I am either too stupid or busy to realize OR everyone has the same problem with a recipe and someone comes along and fixes it and I can avoid all the problems by reading the comments.

So, I made Italian Beef sandwiches, laundry soap, and funfetti cookies. In that order. Ty dubbed the sandwiches "better than firehouse or subway" (heck, yeah!) and also requested them for his birthday. When I stupidly questioned if he really wanted the sandwiches instead of the previously requested Little Caesar's pizza, he quickly rescinded. BUT, it was a nice gesture from an almost-teenager.

1. Italian beef. A friend gave me a recipe for these years ago and I made them and they were SO SPICY that Jerry and I couldn't even eat them and I never made them again. I never forgot about them, either, I just needed a bit milder of a recipe. I think I read 900+ versions of italian beef sandwich recipes the week before I made them. Here's my new, less spicy version:
I put a couple of pounds of some kind of beef roast in the crock pot with 1 can of beef broth, 1/2 jar of pepperocini juice and 8 pepperocinis, 1 bottle (or can) of beer, 1 chopped onion, several smashed garlic cloves (maybe 5 or 6), and random italian spices. Let it cook on low all day. Shred with forks. place beef on crusty rolls, with provolone cheese and broil in the oven until cheese melts but not long enough for the bread to burn. Generally this is a couple of minutes, but I'm new to broiling so keep your eye on it. Otherwise your meal with be RUINED! Not really, you can use a bread knife and slice off the layer of over-toasted bread. But it's easier if you pull it out of the oven before that happens.
This is really good with a side of roasted veggies. Look up your own recipe for that. Or share your veggie roasting secrets with me, because mine are just a touch on the soggy side.

2. Laundry soap. I know, I'm not super granola or green or THAT cheap, but I pinned a laundry soap recipe on pinterest and I just had the urge to go for it. So I did.
Here's the link for the recipe I used: http://www.howdoesshe.com/cheaper-and-better-diy-laundry-detergent
Here's what I did:
a box of borax (they only had 1 size box at walmart)
4 lbs baking soda
1 box of arm and hammer super washing soda (it's in the laundry aisle by the borax)
1 container of oxyclean
2 bars of zote soap OR 5-6 bars of fels naptha soap. In the laundry aisle. (If they have the powdered version of the zote soap get it, you will save yourself most of the work of making this stuff)
1-2 bottles of purex crystals or downy unstoppables (just for scent, get what you like. I got 1 bottle and it was fine)
(As noted in the comments on the original recipe) It would be helpful to have a 5 gallon bucket with a tight fitting lid and small children to roll the bucket around. I didn't have the bucket, so I couldn't use the children for rolling.
The only real work involved is grating the bars of soap. I got Ty to do it with me. I grated 5 in the time it took him to grate 1, but that's okay, we were working together to accomplish a goal AND watching the olympics, so win-win.
Anyway, once you grate the soap, mix all the ingredients up in a very large container of some kind. It's pretty dense, so I poured it back and forth between 2 containers several times. or you could try layering and mixing. Or the giant bucket + lid + children method.
It costs about $28 for all the ingredients (minus the bucket and children. Children are expensive and it takes years of raising them before they can help with such tasks, so don't have some just so you can make laundry soap.)
You can use a coffee scoop ($1 at walmart) and measure 1 scoopful for each load. Put it in the drum before you load your clothes. It is allegedly safe for HE washers. As for it's effectivenes? Eh, my clothes seem no cleaner or dirtier than they were with other laundry detergents. I'm trying to figure out if it's having any effect on the colors. Sometimes I think some of my clothes are dingier, but then I realize it's my 11-year-old's socks and those things haven't been white since the day I bought them, sooo.....yeah, it seems to work fine and it does smell good. And I'm just so dang proud of myself for MAKING LAUNDRY SOAP that I'm getting a little giddy about doing the laundry these days. Yeah, that'll last....

3. Funfetti cookies. Alright, why have I never heard of these and why has no one made them for me and why has no one told me about them????? SO EASY!!!!
1 box of funfetti cake mix (or any flavor, really)
2 eggs
1/4-1/3 cup oil
Mix ingredients until moist. Drop by spoonfuls onto a baking sheet. Bake for 10ish minutes at 350*.
In reading comments on versions of this recipe I discovered that pillsbury has apparently reduced the amount of cake mix in a box from 18oz to 15.5oz. You didn't know that doughboy was so stingy, did you? Anyway, it seems that if your cake mix is 18oz you will need 1/3 cup and if it's 15.5oz you will need a little less. Mine was 15.5 and I used about a 1/4 cup of oil and it turned out fine.
The other secret to these things seems to be to let them cool on the pan for about 2 minutes before you transfer them to a cooling rack. They're very soft at first, but give 'em a minute and they'll come off in whole cookies instead of crumbling for smooshing.
Also, I read if you are making chocolate cookies with chocolate cake mix you should add a bit of water.  I'd mix them up first, then add water by the teaspoonful.
You can also add chocolate chips (or any flavor baking chips) or nuts or oatmeal, allegedly.

So there you go, these are the things that went well for me in the past week. If you have any cool things to make, let me know!

I think I'm dying...again...

Forget WebMD. You want to really be convinced you are dying? Watch the news. There have been multiple reports this year on flesh-eating bacteria, something I assumed was reserved for campfire stories and BONES. (I've never watched that show, but it just sounds like something that would be discovered on there.)
It turns out flesh-eating bacteria is EVERYWHERE!!!!!! People are losing life and limb to it at an alarming rate. It's happening, folks.
What I have deduced is that in all the cases, the person one day didn't feel good (that's awfully general) and had a rapidly spreading bruise. Then they went to the hospital and either died or lost multiple limbs. What the what??
So, I keep noticing bruises. On my person. And making mental measurements of them so I will be able to tell if they "rapidly spread". I don't mean to do this, but let's say I'm shaving my legs and I see a bruise that I hadn't noticed before. Suddenly I'm trying to figure out how long it has been there- an hour, a day, two days? Then I have to assess the approximate size- a quarter? No, bigger than a quarter, maybe a half dollar? When was the last time I even saw a half dollar? I can't be sure how big one is...
The thing is, I seem to get a lot of bruises these days. No, not like anemia, more like I moved twice in the last 2 months and I have a toddler that has flailing tantrums sometimes on me multiple times a day.
So I'm pretty sure I have flesh-eating bacteria. Again. I hope it resolves itself. Again. ;)

Testing

Testing...testing...123

I'm trying out mobile blogging. Please disregard this post.

Dear Cable Man, I Love You

This move did not go the way I planned. I planned to have at least a week of overlap of time where we had access to 2 houses (old and new) and could move over a couple of days. Hahaha. Part of me is glad that we had to get completely out of the old house before finding the new house. Because it's slightly less obnoxious to focus on moving out before you go into move in mode. Those last 2-3 trips you plan on in a local move always turn into endless last trips and you feel like you'll never be fully moved out. I was spared that mess this time around. That said, I don't recommend needing temporary housing, especially if you have no idea how long "temporary" will be. I'm so glad our temporary was only 3 weeks. Truly, living with the inlaws went as well or better than I had hoped. They were incredibly gracious about messes and noise and a giant dog, etc. They watched one or both kids while I took one or none to appointments or the grocery store. But the fact is we were living in someone else's space, feeling like we (or me) were imposing, sleeping on a different and smaller bed, trying not to be in the way. I'm so thankful we had somewhere to go. But I'm so glad we have our own space now. I'm finding all my creature comforts to be even more comfortable and comforting. My bed is so nice. My pictures are so pretty. I feel incredibly shallow. And comfortable. Today the cable man came. He ended up having to dig a trench and bury a line to the house. Such commitment to cable TV! Or maybe he was just doing his job...either way he made me giddy. Guess what he gave us? A new remote for each cable box- all the buttons work AND there are battery covers on the backs! They are so beautiful! Now I can watch Project Runway (starts tonight!) and catch up on all the gypsy shows (have you seen these programs? Can't. Stop. Watching!) and order movies at the touch of a button. It's almost too much, it feels like Christmas. Okay, my DVR has gotten a 20 minute start on Project Runway. I need to go watch some fierce, commercial-free, fashion competition now!

On advocating for your child

One of the questions that plagues me as a mom is how can I better advocate for my child? Specifically, my adopted child?

My experience thus far tells me that people generally get that babies have a lot of needs, they have routines, they get overwhelmed, etc. People can generally respect the fact that sometimes being the best parent for your baby means you have to go home early or you can't join in the fun event they have planned at all. A lot of the time Sometimes being a parent = no fun for you.
So advocating for my little guy tends to be a bit easier.
Then there's my big guy. Sometimes A lot of the time I'm just not sure how to best advocate for him. I know his most complete possible  history, what his triggers are, often why he reacts to behaviors a certain way, and sometimes even what is bubbling under the surface when he wants you to think everything is fine. But not everyone else knows all that, so not everyone knows the best way(s) to interact with him, so often people will say or do things that that mean nothing to rest of the world, but to Ty are earth-shattering. And I'm stuck. Because I want to respect Ty's privacy. His story and his experiences are his to share, but without that explanation people would not get the magnitude of the effect of their behavior on him.

Okay, let's just consider a completely made up scenario:
A child spent several years in foster care after losing his biological family to drugs. In the child's biological family violence was prevalent. When the child went to foster care, it was not the kind of foster home you would wish for a child. It was the kind where the foster parent hurt the children in ways that wouldn't leave physical marks. Verbal abuse abounded with name-calling, such as "worthless" and "stupid", and the foster parent did things like pinch the kids' ears and flick them, so as not to leave evidence of anything for the rare DCF worker that dropped by. At some point the child was adopted into a forever family and then had to begin the arduous task of learning to be a part of a family. The child was so scarred by all the violence and had such reactions to daily tasks and interactions that he was diagnosed with PTSD- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and one of his triggers was the word, "hit". It gave him flashbacks to being physically beaten by his biological family and of his foster parent hurting him. He ran for cover and cowered under his bed whenever he heard the word "hit". Sometimes instead of hiding, hearing his trigger word made him fight back- screaming, hitting, biting, etc. Now, hit is a fairly common word and it is not used to specifically to refer to a beating. It comes up in conversation more often than you think. And the child has very strong reactions, almost every time.
So what should the adoptive mama do? Should she call people before every get-together and request they drop the word "hit" from their vocabulary? Should she send a mass email to everyone that may ever come in contact with her child? If she does either one of those, how much information should she include about her child's history and the PTSD and the beatings, etc.? What about when triggers change? Because this kid is pretty incredible and is responding well to therapy, but sometimes new stuff pops up. So should mama forwarn everyone when new stuff pops up? Is that respectful of her child as a person? Would anyone even want to hang out with her or her kid if she was doing all of the that?

Also, there's the whole issue of other people understanding the severity without having any experience with children like the one described above. Children who have grown up without anyone caring about them develop differently than children who are nurtured. Their brain chemistry is changed due to their environment and so their brains work differently than expected. (And even if you are "used" to this as an adoptive family, you never really get used to a completely different thought process, because you always fall back on your own way of thinking and then have to remind yourself to go back to where in the interaction you lost your lovey and build a bridge together. It makes my brain tired a lot.)

We've been on vacation with extended family for several days. It's been great, but it's been hard. Because even though many of their behaviors/actions/word choices/decisions are completely natural for them and many people across America, they are things that are hard for my little man. They are things that a year ago would have caused a violent outburst. All these relatives really care about Ty. They don't mean to cause him hardship. But we haven't told them everything (I'm not entirely sure what we've told them, or when, and that matters because things change), partly because I want to respect my son and his deepest, darkest secrets, and partly because I'm not entirely sure how to go about telling people that some of their most common behaviors are triggers for my son. AND our belief in parenting Ty is that (in a safe environment) he needs to be exposed to normal things that typically upset him so that he can learn that said behavior is normal, not harmful, and to be tolerated. He's going to have to face these things as an adult and he needs to be prepared.  But I don't know to what extent others are going to engage in any of these behaviors/actions/decisions/languages, so do I tell them at some point that enough is enough? Do I warn Ty ahead of time that these things might go on and he needs to prepare himself? I don't want him to make a decision to dislike someone before he even meets them.

It's messy and confusing and unpredictable and at the end of the day he feels discombobulated and I get to clean it all up.

We teach Ty that he can only control himself, he can't control the decisions others make. So where does that leave me on advocating for him? I can't control the decisions others make. If they knew more would they make different choices? How much should I share?

I'm so proud of Ty for all of the progress he has made. I know no other kids of any age that work even half as hard on themselves as Ty does. I know MAYBE 1 adult that can compare to Ty on working on his inner self. And that one adult is the most focused person I have ever met in my life. It's unreal to me how we keep asking our son to improve in specific areas and then he does (with support, but still!). He's the most amazing person I have ever met and the worst part of it is that he doesn't want you to know his real self. He tries to hide it. If I look back to where we were a year ago, two years ago, I feel like RickyBobby, thanking baby Jesus in his shining diapers that we're not there anymore. (It's a prayer of desperation. thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou that we are not there anymore. pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease don't make us go back there. I will do anything. ANYTHING!)

I don't know how to be a better advocate for my son. I don't think I'm doing a particularly stellar job.  Being Ty's mom has changed me. People who really know him or know kids like him do the best with him. I think because they're not just treading lightly so as not to cause a disturbance, they are really changed, too. But if you don't know him or any kids like him chances are you haven't been changed. And I don't know how to help you if you're still the same person you were before you met my son. But I want you to have the chance to know him. He's special. His mama says so.