Ringing in Spring

Another fun Easter at our house!

After the kids were all in bed last night, I stuffed 48 plastic Easter eggs and Michael hid them out in the yard while I put together six Easter baskets, hid them, and laid out the evidence of the Easter Bunny's visit using the tools I've been using since Kevin was a tyke:

The girls had us up at 6:30 a.m. . . . sigh.

Finding the baskets was followed by a big breakfast -

And then the requisite Easter egg hunt.

Afterwards we took the kids to the park, and the rest of the day has been low-key and lazy.

Easter at our house looks much the same every year. One of these days I'll have to pull out Easter pics from the past several years and line them all up just so I can feel nostalgic about my kids growing up.

Facebook Friends Are a Funny Thing

According to my Facebook account, I have 155 friends. In real life, I don't even think I know 155 people. My circle of honest-to-goodness friends is much smaller than that. The funny thing is, the vast majority of my Facebook friends are people whom I have no idea who they are - I don't even want to guess at percentages, it might be kind of embarrassing. Most of them I share a connection with through the Down syndrome blogging community. Some are people I've met online in pregnancy forums. A number of them are friends and acquaintances from real life. Oh, and one of them is some guy I'm married to ;)

My understanding is that a lot of people use Facebook to reconnect with people from way back when, like high school and college. My husband even has Facebook friends who he knew in grade school! That kind of blows me away. I have exactly one Facebook friend who I've known since childhood. Growing up, my family was too unstable to stay in one place for too long (I attended 12 different schools between kindergarten and high school), so it was next to impossible to forge any lifelong friendships that took root in childhood. I never went to college, and although I did attend junior high and high school with the same general group of kids, there's just not a single person from back then who I have any desire to reconnect with (and it's not like I'm getting friend requests left and right from any of them, either; I was pretty invisible in junior high and HS, as evidenced by the fact that NOBODY even remembered me when I went to my 10-year HS reunion - extremely humiliating and traumatic, to say the least).

Anyway, I sometimes think that the whole collecting-Facebook-friends thing is kind of funny. Under what circumstances do you refuse a friend request? Usually if it's someone who has a child with Ds and has a few friends in common with me, I'll accept the request even if I don't know the person. Just because it's nice to feel like part of a larger community concerning being a parent of a child with Ds. Those are the most common friend requests I get. Otherwise, if it's someone who I just have no idea who they are or what connection we might have, I'll usually ignore those.

And what do you do when you break up with a friend in real life? Do you do the civil thing and just hide them from your Facebook newsfeed so you don't have to keep being faced with their status updates? Or do you just blatantly unfriend them? Or what if someone who you really don't like sends you a friend request? Do you ignore it on principle or accept it to be nice?

This morning I got a friend request from one of my mother's friends! This may not seem odd, except for the fact that my mother and I are estranged and have been for years. And this particular friend of hers contacted me by email about a year and a half ago (it had been years since I had had any contact with the friend), but dropped me as soon as I made it clear that I had no interest in rekindling anything with my mother. So why is she trying to friend me on FB now? Smells fishy to me, although on the other hand it would seem silly for my mother to be sending out spies since I know full well she reads my blogs (Hi, Ma!). Anyway, I ignored the friend request - what's the point? The only commonality we have is my mother, and really, we don't even have that.

Facebook. It's a funny thing, eh?

Requited Love

My addiction loyalty has finally paid off. Now Starbucks is sending me love letters in the mail.

Along with free drinks.

And they've promised me that if I keep allowing myself to be suckered into their marketing ploys and continue buying their overpriced drinks every day loving them, they will give me more free drinks from time to time.

You just can't argue with true love.

Teen Privacy

Thanks to everyone who offered their input on my teen privacy dilemma recently, and to those who participated in my poll on this topic. It looks like out of the people who voted in the poll, roughly half monitor their teens' email, cell phone usage and texting, and nearly everyone monitors online social networking. Thankfully, we haven't yet been faced with the social networking issue with Kevin - maybe it's more of a girl thing? He does have his own YouTube account, as he makes some really cool stop action movies with Legos and clay and whatnot, and uploads them, and he's developed a small following. Even that I'm a little wary of, just because there are all kinds of weirdos out there and I don't know how well Kevin can handle himself online with strangers. He knows never to give out any information to anyone online.

We're going to continue with the limits we put on his cell phone/texting usage, just because I don't see any reason to allow him at this tender age to use it for socializing. For the time being, it's really nothing more than a safety measure, a way for him to keep in touch with us, and vice versa, when he's not with us.

The biggie, though - email. I've stopped reading his email. I still have access to it, but I haven't read anything for the last couple weeks. I was feeling really guilty about it and the more I thought about it, the sillier it seemed to me that I thought I could rely on that to tell me any real news about my son. He's never given me any reason to be concerned or distrustful of him, so I'm going to allow him that privacy.

Ahhh, parenting. Just wingin' it here. Aren't we all?

Consider This

I have a confession to make - one that may (or may not) shock some people who know me.

I have been a registered Republican since I first registered to vote more than twenty years ago. Yes, it's true.

I need to change that.

Let me explain first, though. My conservatism has never come from any religious convictions (not even when I actually had religious convictions). And as far as human rights go, I've always been a liberal. Fiscally is where my conservatism has manifested. Why should my family's hard-earned money be forcefully taken from us to support charity cases? That's been my long-held view.

And then I had Finn. And I was initiated into the world of State-funded supports in the form of therapies available to children like Finn through the Regional Center. At first I felt really bad about taking advantage of what was offered to us through Regional Center. I mean, we're certainly not poor (though we're certainly not rich either). But friend after friend pointed out to me that "You guys have paid into the system for all these years; why shouldn't you benefit from it now that you need it?" And I slowly developed a different perspective about it.

I would like to pose some questions to anyone reading this who might be a political conservative, openly against government-funded welfare programs. Do you see my family as a leach on your tax dollars? What would you do in our shoes, if you had a child with special needs?

Let me take it a little further.

I challenge anyone who is vocally pro-life, who might sport an "Abortion Stops a Beating Heart" bumper sticker, to ask yourself: would I keep a baby I (or my wife) was carrying who received a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome (or some other life-altering diagnosis)? And if I did, would I not take advantage of all the therapies and supports available to that child and my family funded by tax dollars?

Because the truth is, if you're going to call yourself Pro-Life, you have to follow it through all the way. If you're going to demand that people stop having abortions, then you need to be absolutely willing to live by your own principles and keep any baby that lands in your womb - even if it's not the baby you dreamed of. And you have to be willing to support government-funded programs that assist those babies and their families in order that those babies might grow up to be functioning, contributing members of society. Tax-paying citizens just like yourself.

I and my family thank you for your acceptance of Finn, and for the use of your tax dollars to optimize the quality of his life. Rest assured that our tax dollars will be here for you when you or someone you love needs them.

Heart and Soul

It's the sixth game of Joey's first season playing Little League baseball, and he has yet to hit the ball in all the times he's been up to bat. He's got everything it takes: a good eye, grace, a strong swing, and the desire to slug it. He puts his heart into every swing he takes, but he's one of two kids on his team who still haven't gotten a hit. Maybe it's the pitching machine they use; seems like it's missing some human aspect. Maybe it's the pressure of being center stage. Who knows. But he's losing heart. After the last couple of games, he's asked his dad earnestly, "Dad, do you think I'll get a hit next game?"

The other night Michael and I were talking about his job, and all the stresses and expectations that come with being an attorney, and he said, "But you know, none of that matters at all when you just want your kid to hit the ball." It was a moment of pure clarity. It's not that it matters if Joey is a baseball superstar, what matters is that he taste the sweetness of success so he can feel good about himself. You want your kids to experience enough failure to teach them humility, and to succeed enough to instill confidence and self-worth.

So today: game six. White Sox vs. Athletics. Joey gets up to bat grinning when he sees us, his family, in the stands, pumping his arms up victoriously before he even steps to the plate. "Go JoEY!" I yell. He swings. Misses. Next pitch comes, Joey misses. Then a foul tip. He swings again, a little early, misses. That's it. "Good try, Joey! Next time!" I yell, feeling a pain in my heart for him.

A little while later, he's up to bat again. "Go JoEY!" I yell as he walks to the plate. I find myself biting my lip till I can almost taste blood, and praying even though I don't even believe in prayer, "Please let him hit the ball, please let him hit the ball . . ." The pitch comes in. He swings. Misses. "Please let him hit the ball, please let him hit the ball . . ." Another pitch comes in. He swings . . . and there it is, that telltale sound of aluminum smacking leather. "Go, Joey! Run! RUN!!!" Everyone is yelling and cheering. For a split second he looks bewildered, and then he runs towards first. I have tears leaking from my eyes.

The first baseman gets the ball and tags Joey out. But it doesn't matter.

He did it. He hit the ball.

Quite a Spectacle(s)

We got a note from the school recently that told us Annabelle may need glasses based on the routine vision screening they do of all the children at school. So today I took Annabelle to my optometrist. Daisy came along for moral support. Annabelle was a little nervous until I told her that the eye doctor is a girl and is very pretty (that's what wins Annabelle over). The doc was WONDERFUL with Annabelle - really, I love her, she's great (so if you're in my area and looking for an optometrist for kids or adults, get in touch with me!) - and she even did a quick, complimentary screening of Daisy while we were there. Daisy has 20/20 vision. Annabelle, sure enough, needs glasses.

She tried on about 20 pairs of glasses. They all looked cute on her!

She settled on this pair of modest gray ones, which really kind of surprised me. I thought she'd insist on pink sparkly ones.

So, we'll pick them up in a few days. Annabelle is actually excited about getting glasses!