In Search of Myself

Another Jake-ism

The other day, Jake and I were at my mom's, and I sneezed.

"Sneeze you!" he said.

"SNEEZE you?" I asked.

Shrugging his shoulders, he said "Yeah, it's a new word."

Gawd, I love that kid.  He is SO freaking funny.

Who loves you?

One of the things I say to Jake a lot is "Who loves you?"  And he used to smile sweetly and point to me and say "You do."  But now his reply is "Me.  I love me the most and you love you the most."  And if I ask who his best friend is?  (He also used to point to me and say "You, mama.")  He now replies "I am.  I'm my best friend and you're your best friend.  Everyone is their own best friend."

I don't know where in the world he came up with this, but if we're taking him literally . . . that's kind of a cynical view of the world, eh?  Or maybe he's just already figured out a fundamental truth in life -- that for the most part, people only care about themselves.

Either way, it's odd.

But for the record?  Jake-man, I DO love you more than I love me.  Just in case you're wondering.

New pages

It is so freaking QUIET at work today (there is NO ONE on campus!!!) so I've had time to catch up on my scrapbooking a little bit.  I've made 5 pages today.  Hee.  Here are four of them (I've been making a few pages for the new baby in the family, to help keep his mama caught up . . . and well, because the pictures I take are stinking cute.)  As always, clicking will enlarge the image.

and then this one is just a hodge-podge (my mom's favorite word) of everyone at Nannie and Pa's on Christmas (sometimes I just like to do a scrapbook page with a bunch of random pics like this.)

Visiting the baby

So last Wednesday (the 20th), we piled into my car with Kathy (my sis) and my mom, and went to M'boro.  We went to Panera first and ate, then got some food to go for Roger and Bonny ('cause hey, I remember that first week of having a new baby at home -- cooking and grocery shopping is SO not something you want to do!)

Since I had already seen the baby on Saturday, my mom wanted to hold him.  Jake was a bit hyper, so I spent most of our visit wrestling with him on the floor.  Once my mom sat down with Joel on the couch, we took Jake over to look at him.  The baby was all swaddled in blankets, and Jake said "Mama, that baby doesn't have any feet!"  We all laughed SO hard, and Nana unwrapped the baby so Jake could see that he did, indeed, have feet.  (And we are probably going to repeat that story constantly as the boys grow up, because it was hilarious.)

When we were getting ready to leave, Bonny's sister came over (her daughter was the flower girl and Jake was the ring bearer in the wedding last year) so I got a picture of Joel with two of his older cousins.  :)  (He also has a ton of cousins on Aunt Julie's side of the family.)  We went to Target on our way home because apparently we're unable to drive by one without going in.  Oh, and Kathy had discovered "Littlest Pet Shop" toys while at my house (we have a game with them) and she bought a bunch at Target and now wants to collect them.  She's so random.  LOL.

Christmas Program

Ok, so Jake's first Christmas program was ADORABLE.

It was last Tuesday, the 19th.  I took the first half of the day off, even though starting Wednesday I had a week off from work (because hey, I was NOT going to miss my kid's first program.)  I took Jake to school at 9 a.m., but the program didn't start until 11.  So Priscilla came over and we hung out for a while until it was time to go back.  We met my mom (who had Zoe with her) and P's hubby at the school and got really good seats right up front by where Jake and Elauna's class would be.

The kids sang some songs, accompanied by guitar, and Jake had a blast.  At first he was laughing and chattering because Zoe was there and he was excited to see her -- he was saying "Look, Zoe's here!  Silly Zoe!"  Heh.  He did a great job singing the songs and doing the motions and totally looked happy to be up there.  He did have a couple of picking his nose moments, which was totally embarassing for me and I kept trying to get his attention to get him to stop.  (But hey, we all have problems, eh?)  Then the kids sat with their parents while some other classes did a nativity scene (which was SO cute) and after that they went back up to sing again.  I had to leave for work, so I couldn't stick around long afterward, but I did manage to get a picture of Jake and Elauna with their awesome teacher, Miss Gaby.

Oh, and later that night?  We were talking about the program -- Jake said he had fun and then said "I want to do it again."  I said "What, stand up in front of a room full of people and sing?"  And he laughed and said "YES!"  Hee.  He is SO my child.  (And yes, I am SO PROUD that he was able to stand up in front of everyone and not only function, but smile and have a great time!)

Here are a couple pictures from that day -- I blurred the other kids' faces because I don't know any of them, and some parents don't like pics of their kids on the net.  :)

(and yes, Jake is a bit taller than all his friends.  All but one of them have birthdays in the coming semester, so he's like the oldest in the class.  Also, he's just a giant like his mama.  LOL.)

Ok, fess up

I just looked in my SiteMeter records -- which I haven't done in a while -- and today I've had readers from these countries:

Tunisia (where's that?)
Germany
France
Spain
Finland
Egypt
Japan
India
United Kingdom

Seriously?  People are reading my blog in these countries?  Or maybe they randomly got here through a Google search?  I don't know.

I saw quite a few more states here in the U.S. than I was expecting, too . . . which makes me wonder who in the world those stats are coming from.  :) *waving*  Hello to all my friends I haven't met!

I know that a lot of people lurk but don't comment, which is fine . . . makes me feel like I'm talking to myself, but hey!  I do that anyway!  (Seriously.)  So it's all good.

Christmas through Jake's eyes

    (courtesy of the Fisher Price camera for kiddos.)

P.S.  yes, all my hair is gone.  I don't want to talk about it.

Bwah ha ha ha

Jake and I are sitting at the dining room table.  I'm working on e-mails and he's playing "party" with ice and mulptiple cups and bowls of water.  (Don't ask.)  Anyway, he kept blowing bubbles through a straw in the water and sipping extremely loudly, and I said "Jake, you're making me insane."

His reply?  "I wub (love) to make you insane."

So HA.  I knew it was on purpose.  But he also just said "Look, I have a water mustache!" and that's just dang cute.

Kyle Matthews rocks

At our Sunday School party on Tuesday, we had a really cool special guest who gave us a mini-concert of Christmas music.  It was SO awesome.  Kyle Matthews is a local singer/songwriter/really cool guy who also happens to be the son of one of our church members.  And dude, I just found out from his website that two of my favorite songs -- "If You Want Me To," recorded by Ginny Owens, and "God Forbid," recorded by Point of Grace -- were written by him.  DUDE!  I wish I had known that on Tuesday . . . no, I don't, I would have totally gushed about it and looked absolutely stupid in the process.  Heh.

So anyway, he sang a lot of Christmas songs that he wrote and that are on his "Timeless Christmas Child" CD.  If you click on that link, you can listen to every single track on the CD!  (Well, half of each song -- enough to really get a feel for them.)  They're all so deep and beautiful.  If you're tired of all the traditional Christmas music out there and feel like there's nothing inspirational about them any more, this is the CD for you.  Every time I hear Kyle sing -- he has visited our church before -- I get chills.  And I laugh.  And I cry.  This Christmas music is totally relevant and Christ-centered.  Two of the songs -- "Inconvenient Christmas" and "Everything Santa Knows" are really funny but at the same time really deep.

I've been getting pretty cynical and stressed about the whole Christmas thing -- trying hard this year not to be, but you know it's not my favorite holiday to start with.  This CD was just what I needed.  In "Inconvenient Christmas" he says "So when the stress hits each Deecmber how it helps me to remember / God is with us most when things just can't get worse."  That's my favorite line in the whole album.  And in "The Gifts We Give" he says "May the gifts we give this Christmas meet the needs that go unmet / May they heal the hurt between us, may they say what's gone unsaid / May we find, at last, in Jesus, the gift we've always sought / May the love we show each other be the gift we give to God."  That's such a wonderful way to view the Christmas season.

I can't decide which is more impressive about Kyle -- his songwriting, or his piano playing.  You can't really tell from the CD, because there's a back-up band in addition to his playing, but he is an amazing pianist.  At the Christmas party it was just him and a piano -- and holy cow.  It's like he and I play different instruments.  My friend Jen was there -- my piano student Alexis' mom -- and I told her that.  She told me that she's sure if I practiced a lot I could play like him.  Ummmm . . . no.  Not so much.

Anyway, I've been listening to this CD all week in my car, over and over.  When we were running around on Wednesday I made mom and Kathy listen to it, too.  At one point, Kathy said "You know, he really does have a really nice voice" and I was like "DUH, Kat."  LOL.  If you're in the market for some new Christmas music, you can buy a CD from Kyle's website.  Let me know if you get a chance to listen to his stuff!!!

What I'm reading right now

When I was browsing in Border's the other day, killing time and looking for interesting books about Sensory Processing Disorder that I might have missed from browsing on-line, I happened upon this: A Different Kind of Perfect: Writings by Parents on Raising a Child with Special Needs.  I looked through it a bit -- it's a collection of essays by a bunch of different parents, about dealing with their child's issues (here is the link at Amazon) and decided that at $17, it was well worth a purchase.

I've read about half-way through.  The children the parents are writing about have Down Syndrome, genetic "defects," hearing loss, autism, and two so far have had the sensory problems that Jake has (which I was glad to see -- made me feel like less of an imposter, reading the book.)

Why do I say that?  Well, I feel like I'm kind of in a no-man's-land in the whole "special needs child" thing . . . while it's true that Jake isn't developing "normally" or "typically," we're not faced with the whole "he'll never have a normal life, never drive, never live on his own" kind of thing like so many parents have to go through.  Sure, he needs extra help and understanding right now, but I'm fairly positive -- and this isn't just a mother's hope, it's based on what I understand about his condition -- that he WILL grow up to be a normally-functioning and independent adult.  And he LOOKS normal.  And he doesn't have a label that's easy for other people to understand.  Most people and even some doctors don't know ANYTHING about SPD. 

And he will be in "main-stream" classes in school, but will probably require an IEP and possibly some special attention throughout the school day -- which isn't that odd of a thing.  Heck, when I was in K or 1st, I had to be taken out of my class a few times for some "speech therapy," simply because I had learned to talk in Texas and then moved to Montana and all the teachers thought I talked funny.  Totally not my problem.  Soon after, I was being taken out of class for a "gifted and talented" program (which even then, made me wonder why they couldn't make up their minds about me.  Heh.)

But back to the book.  I love it.  I love reading what other parents have to say.  Sure, hearing from medical professionals and all is great, but I want to talk to someone who has been there, done that, and has some perspective.  And that's what this book offers.