The Song That is Stuck in My Head

Thanks to my dear hubby for all the work that he has done lately to stick all kinds of dumb songs in my head.

Ok, there were some good ones, too.

Tony has been working on a project that he has wanted to do for years: writing parodies. Here is one that he made into a video:



He has been quite inspired lately and has stayed up late at night singing to the computer.

The song that has really stuck in my head lately, however, is not by my husband. It is the new Weird Al song, Skipper Dan. It's really, really sad. Not that I cried or anything, but I could have if I was that kind of person. I wonder as I plan for our trip to Disneyland this Thursday for Becca's birthday how much this song will come up in my husband's inevitable conversations with the people who work there. He likes to talk to the people who work the rides. He tends to remember their names, too. It really bothers me when later on in a conversation with me he will refer to a person who drove the tram or something by their first name. I have no idea who he is talking about...ever. Not that I don't see these people as people or anything, but striking up a conversation with them just never occurred to me until I started going places like that with him.

To be perfectly honest, I would probably never have listened to Weird Al if it weren't for Tony. There are a lot of things that I have experienced in my life that I wouldn't have without Tony, though. Some important and life changing, some annoying and I could definitely do without. Tony makes my life complete. I have to have the odd to balance me...hahaha! I'm not balanced! I was odd well before Tony...well maybe not before him, I did meet him when I was like 5. I don't think I was all that odd of a 5 year old... Maybe it is Tony's fault! :-)

Anyway, I just thought I'd share my pain...hope this stuff doesn't get stuck in your head.

Behavior Therapy

Over the last couple of weeks Micah and I have been subjected to a behavior therapy assessment that turned out to be a complete waste of time.

The therapist who came out said that my son was too well behaved for their one-on-one program, and though she wasn't sure I needed it, offered to recommend to the regional center (who is paying for this program) their parent training class. She actually asked me at one point why I was asking for this service.

Maybe I should have left Micah off his meds for a couple of days instead of just the mornings of the assessment sessions. I just couldn't deal with him beating on his sisters and me while he is out of school. The poor kid would spend his life in time-out. It just seems mean to me.


I guess I'm just beating the wrong bush. Micah's behavior problems are not really prevalent at home. I did everything I could to provoke him at home, and it worked, all the way up until the therapist showed up. Micah turned to smiles and laughter. We tried making him lose at board games (something that usually drives him nuts). I tried letting him play Wii for a couple of minutes and then taking it away as the therapist came. He transitioned quite well.

I'm convinced that he knew what was going on and was trying to thwart me.

The problem is that the assessment will be sent to the regional center who will no longer believe that my son is in need of...anything.

Not that I would try to get a service that my son doesn't need. Right after the therapist left Micah would go into a full blown tantrum throwing chairs and hitting anyone who came near him, screaming the entire time.

Yeah, it wasn't pretty. It happened twice.

Normally he is quite good at home. His behaviors tend to come out at school. I did do a whole lot of provoking, though. His timing was perfect. He accomplished what he wanted. Nothing in his world had to change. The fact that he did it without meds tells me that he has the ability to control himself without them, or at least with less in his system. He just doesn't want things to change.

That just makes me want to change things up a bit.

I don't know what I'm going to add to my expectations yet, but it's coming. He's just to comfortable where he is at. Not that I want my son to be uncomfortable, but he isn't functioning "normally" yet, so being stagnant is not acceptable.

Well, when school begins again on August 4th he will be at a new school with a new teacher (the one he had before was the teacher he had since kindergarten). Church is about to change around the same time. I don't think I'm going to change anything yet, just in case there is trouble adjusting there. Still, once that becomes the new routine, I'll be looking for something to change at home.

Summer Begins

Does it seem to you that every other mom of school aged children who blogs take a break right after their kids get out and then when a few weeks go by feel bad about it, or is it just the blogs that I read? Well, maybe I just don't relate to those women who are so put together that they can still schedule their kid's new found time and continue to stay connected with people in a more than tweet-like way.

Anyhoo. My kids are out of school. I have pictures. They are here somewhere. Becca graduated from Kindergarten. I took pictures, I know I did. I made it a point to go to this graduation thing. Somewhere there are photos...I will find them...I just don't see them on this computer...that's not good. Maybe they were just uploaded to Snapfish and just didn't get loaded on the computer...I don't know.

I also have more pictures. I went camping with the kids without Tony last week. Ok, some people are making fun of me because they don't think I was really camping. I didn't say I was "roughing it," I said I was camping. I slept in a sleeping bag...on a futon in an air conditioned cabin. We were in the mountains...at a resort. We went fishing...in a man-made lake that they stocked with catfish. Not that I actually fished, and not that my kids caught anything. I wasn't going to give them a hook. Those things are dangerous. Not to mention the fact that I don't want to have to clean the things and they aren't old enough to do it themselves.

We went swimming at this resort-thing. Well, it was actually a camping-resort thing that our friends who we camped with own into. It was fun. I hadn't gone swimming since I have been out of the hospital, so it was a different experience. I had a little trouble figuring out balance again when I got out of the water, but the freedom while I was there was fantastic.

Throughout that week I really focused on trying to walk on my own. It worked. I still use a cane, and I keep the wheelchair in the car just in case, but I really haven't had to use it much except when I went to the mall with my brother, his family and all my kids on Monday after the 4th.

Speaking of the 4th, for that weekend, we all (the kids and I, and Tony for part of the time) went out to my in-laws new house in Hemet. Yeah, my kids were already tired from camping all week, and we went to their house. I guess it wasn't the greatest of ideas, but the kids weren't too bad. We went to their church out there for their celebration, but Micah and the twins were not up to staying around for the fireworks, and neither was I. We went back and watched Empire Strikes Back. It has fireworks at the end, right? Ok, the kids didn't really care about the movie, and they were asleep for the fireworks part, but that was fine with me. Becca had stayed with her Grammy for the fireworks display that they watched from Grammy's church. She was tired, but enjoyed herself.

Today is the second part of an assessment for Micah to take part in a behavior therapy program. I have to irritate my son this afternoon in front of a therapist so that she thinks that he has issues still, and so that she sees how I deal with it. I don't know if it's worth it, but I'm going to do it anyway. He's been pretty irritable since school let out anyway. I can't wait for August 4th. Does that make me a bad mom?

I think that's all caught up. One of these days I'll find pictures, take the ones that are still on the camera off, and make a slide show. Maybe after the kids go back to school...maybe a summer in review or something. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my kids.