I'm No Good at Green Thumbing It...

I read lots of books. And oddly enough, I read mass amounts of books on food, growing food, organic food, origins of food, etc... Why is this odd you ask? Oh. That's easy. I'm not really a fan of food. I should be. I work in Food and Beverage. But honestly, I love all things processed, sugary, unhealthy and overall bad for me. I try to enjoy the finer things. But I just can't seem to fully understand the pure joy so many people get from foods in their purest form.

I do have a thing for gardening though. I try. I really try. But that is also something that I just do not seem to have a knack for.

Seriously. Last year, I killed one tomato plant, a cherry blossom seeding, a watermelon vine and countless other attempts at growing things. I blame this, of course, on my place of residence. Things just don't grow in the desert. Las Vegas is not suited for living things. Okay. Maybe I just suck at the art of growing things.

This year though, I've tried again. My Spring 2009 attempts include two lovely tomato plants, a jalapeno pepper, an eggplant and a banana pepper. So far, I have managed to keep them alive (and at the risk of sounding like a gardening snob) and thriving!

Here they are in all their glory!

And look at them at a week old!


I know, doesn't look like much yet... but it will! I've even taken to having short (yet meaningful) conversations with them in the morning. My friend swears by this... his tomatoes grow... I'll give it a shot.

My flowers are thriving this spring. Every one of them came back from last year. That's one of the few positives to living in this climate. Everything becomes a perennial. Even with two days of snow this winter (I'm originally from Buffalo, this shouldn't be as exciting to me as it is), the mild winter months mean that flowers thrive in the early spring. (I'll post some pictures in the dead of summer and you'll see that this lovely colorful sight is temporary...)



But I can say this... I've kept my plants alive for almost two weeks now. That is, quite possibly a record for me. And if I should run into any plant suicides issues, I'm breaking down and purchasing this...

Raising a Man.

Lately, I've taken to obsessing reading Matt Logelin's blog about his life.
It's heartbreaking and beautiful all at the same time.
And for some reason, it makes me look at my life in a completely different way than I had before.

When I finally ended it with Michael's father, I was absolutely sure that I could do this parenting thing without him. "I don't need a man to help me raise a man" I told myself.



See... Michael was little when this was all occurring. All he needed was his Mom. And I did a damn good job. And anytime I found something that I might have needed a man for, I figured it out myself and patted myself on the back. I always have been all for women's lib. How hard could this be?

Times change. Children grow. The perfect man walks back into my life. And slowly it hit me. I was lost raising a boy on my own. That man that walked back into my life raises this boy with me. And with his help. We are raising a man. And with that comes manly things that I know nothing about couldn't have taught him.

• Like changing the chain on a bike.


• Setting up the tent when we camp at Zion.


• How to replace the blade on a hockey stick.


• Why you should always bring flowers home unexpectedly.


• How to pass level 126 on Tony Hawk.


• How to build an entire Indiana Jones world out of Lego's.


• The importance of complimenting a woman.


• What a happy home looks and feels like.

And that's just the beginning. And that's what I realize every time I read Matt's blog. If our situation forces us into something, we find a way. We look within and make things work to the best of our ability. He's living proof of that. But reading his blog also makes me grateful as hell for not having to do this alone. For having that person to hold my hand when I need it, to take over when I need it and to teach Michael all the things that I couldn't wouldn't have taught him like a man would. In the end... I could've would've done it on my own if I'd had to. But I'm endlessly thankful that I'm not.

Focus... It's What You Make Of It.

Every night, without fail, I sit with my son and oversee, make that assist him with his homework. Typically by the time we sit down to do his homework, he's all over the place and what should take 15 minutes takes closer to an hour.
Tonight, I got him started and walked away for a minute to throw something away. I listened as he began to sing (at the top of his lungs) what appeared to be a System of the Down song but in Spanish. Now my son does not speak Spanish, but he does a mean imitation, accent and all.
I rolled my eyes as I realized that I'd have to return to the table to re-focus him on the task at hand.
As I walked back to the table, I was stopped dead in my tracks. He was singing as loud as he could, in fake Spanish, and completing every math problem on his sheet perfectly and without missing a beat.
And here's what hit home for me once again. ADHD is not attention deficit. It is attention overload. It is the ability to focus on anything and everything at one time. I've read articles about it, most recently in Time http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1887486,00.html?iid=perma_share and it made perfect sense. ADHD kids do better and are more successful when they are able to fidget, tap their pencil, etc... Allowing their brain to do more than just the task at hand actually enables them to focus on what they need to do.
And there he was. Singing in all his glory. And doing his math.

So here's to System of a Down, en Espanol.

ADHD

My son is almost 7 years old.
He has ADHD.
I know. I know. There are mass amounts of people who truly believe that ADD/ADHD doesn't exist. I know this because once upon a time I was one of those people. It took me forever to accept it. As a parent, it is nearly impossible to admit or accept that anything could possibly be wrong with our children. I remember joking when he was a toddler that "I guess I didn't get one of those docile children." He was active. Really, really active. He never slept. But I thought it was no more than that. He was just on the go. All the time.
In hindsight, there were clues. All kinds of signs that I either didn't notice or chose to ignore. I focused on his intelligence which was off the charts. His speech and vocabulary which was years and years ahead. His ways of saying the most inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times but still managing to charm the pants off whoever he had made "said" inappropriate comment to. His ability to focus so intently on something that at times I thought he was in a trance.
Looking back, I wouldn't change the way in which I came to accept that my son was "different" than most of the kids I encountered. I took my time. We saw doctors. I read books. I searched the Internet. We saw more doctors. We met with his teacher. We saw more doctors.
I was careful and tried everything I could. I removed all the sugar he was consuming. No change. I removed any possibility of food allergies. No change. I disallowed all food dyes. No change. I took away all of his video games and took away all television. No change. I asked his teacher to give him a second desk and let him move freely between the two. A little, tiny change. I blamed myself and tried to figure out what I had done wrong. (This also resulted in no change.) Things were getting worse by the day. School was a nightmare. He'd cry and scream daily begging not to have to go. And finally after a year and a half I made what I felt was my last resort choice. The choice I had so resisted from the start. The choice I had sworn I would never do.
I started my son on medication. I made an educated and informed decision for my son. I did not make it lightly. I begged his pediatrician to refer him for a cardiac workup prior to starting the medication. (I lost that battle.) The day he started it was one of the scariest days of my life.
But it worked. I'll never forget the look on my son's face as he was suddenly able to produce at school. The calm that came over him. The realization that I should have tried this sooner. But ultimately the relief in the face of a 5 year old boy who had nearly lost all hope. It was that, that I realized that day. He had given up. My beautiful, brilliant baby had given up. And the medicine that I had so adamantly refused to try, in one day, gave him hope.
It's never easy with him. I don't expect it to be. And I have found with him that just when something starts to work really well is when I need to be most prepared for setbacks. But he's hopeful now. He's seen what he's able to do. And he's finally starting to believe in himself again. And seeing that gives me hope and keeps me strong.
If there's anything I've learned raising a child with ADHD it's this... everything must be taken one day at a time. And I've got all the time in the world.

Choking... and my lack of an appropriate response.

I've always told myself that in the case of a real, serious and life threatening experience I was sure I would automatically go into survival or life saver mode. I guess I assumed that it would just come to me.
I was wrong. I was absolutely, completely wrong.

Saturday night we went out to dinner. We ordered my son's absolute favorite appetizer of all time, deep fried cheese curds (really... they're good... I promise.)
Being 6 years old and having no concept of how many is too many to put in his mouth at one time, the unthinkable happened... he started to choke.
Now let me explain something. My son is overly dramatic. We've told him "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" story at least a million times to no avail. He tends to think it's funny to pretend he's injured, dying, in pain and sick on a pretty regular basis. So what was my initial reaction? "Oh brilliant... here he goes... putting on another show." Honestly, this actually crossed my mind. That is, until I noticed that he was becoming visibly red and the red was quickly turning the strangest shade of blue I'd ever seen.
Now the panic mode set in. He seemed to be gagging and now I don't have one clue what to do. I jump up and put a napkin in front of his mouth. An eff-ing napkin? But that was exactly it. The situation went to dire in what seemed like no time flat and my husband and I crouched around him both realizing uncomfortably quickly that neither of us had any clue how to actually administer the Heimlich maneuver.

It is an awful and unbelievable feeling to watch your only child turn blue. It is worse when you've worked in and around restaurants and bars for your entire life and have stared at the giant choking poster with specific instructions on how administer "said" maneuver for 15 plus years and clearly learned nothing from it.
Seriously... it didn't even occur to me to slap him on the back. I was helpless.
Thankfully humans are incredible and helpful beings and over comes a nurse (much like she had been sent from above... or from 2 tables over eating dinner.) I'm not even sure exactly how it all went from there on out. The evil cheese curd was coughed right out and into my sons hands. I just know that suddenly my son was breathing and color was quickly returning to his face. The relief that washed over me was indescribable. I could see it in my husbands face too.
And how did Michael react once he was breathing and able to talk?

He stuck that evil cheese curd right back in his mouth and ate it.

Crisis averted.