This evening while going through some files I came across Alexander’s science journal from 1st grade. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before. The pages were tabbed by subject with weather being at the end. I decided to look at the weather section first and instead of finding a weather entry, I found a general journal entry. The entry was from 5/15/2008.
Yesterday I had a Dr. apointment. I had it because I was mad during my sleep. Then we went to get a blood test to find out what was wrong. I had to go see Dr. Cook. He has to decide to go to the hospital so they can tape me to see me do it.
This brought a tear to my eye. Alexander usually draws pictures as a series of events. The first picture is obviously the needle getting ready to go in, the second is the blood and the last is the bandage that was placed on his arm.
Alexander has always articulated himself so much better in the written word than the spoken word. He always writes me notes or letters instead of talking to me. Alexander doesn’t remember the episodes where he gets mad while sleeping as they are a type of complex partial seizure which comes with amnesia of the event.
I remember the day of the blood draw rather well. Our pediatrician referred us to have the blood test to rule out thyroid issues. When Alexander heard that, he immediately hid under the bed in the exam room. I explained to Alexander that the blood test is at another facility (he has had it done before). I had to coax him out of the car and across the walkway.
He sat quietly with me and when the nurse called his name, he started to walk with me. About halfway there he said “uh uh” and turned around and bolted out the door and nearly into the road before I got to him. I carried him in and he was just screaming and screaming. I sat down and placed him on my lap and the two phlebotomists started to talk to him in such a calming voice. He was able to calm down and let us open his arm up for the butterfly needle. He got a little upset but as soon as the needle was in - he said “oh” and that was it.
I saw this on Memoirs of a Chaotic Mommy and wanted to help spread the word!
Remember your summer vacations? Doesn’t every kid deserve that kind of fun? We have over 200 children scheduled for Fresh Air trips this summer and need your help to host or find hosts!
The Fresh Air Fund has provided free summer vacations to New York City children from disadvantaged communities since 1877. This is your summer to help!
The end of July is growing closer and we still have 200 children who need to be placed with host families for this August. Unless all prospective host families are screened and vetted by the end of July these 200 children may miss out on an invaluable experience.
Please host a child or help us get the word out that we need folks who can welcome a child from the city into their homes next month. One last thing that is actually very important. We are looking for families who want to extend an invitation to a 9-12 year old. We really need more families who want older children and boys.
Please Email Angie, angie@freshair.org, immediately and she’ll speed you through the process! Or, you can call us at 1-800-367-0003 (212.897.8900) — ask for Angie. If you want to help but don’t live in these areas - BLOG about this program, tell your friends, recommend someone, or DONATE.
I couldn’t go without pink for along and have just found a fantabulous Wordpress Theme. I hope the bright pink doesn’t bug you! 
I first heard about Twitter a few months ago from a friend of mine. It looked cool but I didn’t sign up. As time has passed, I’m reading more and more about Twitter so I caved and signed up. If you’re on Twitter, let me know and I’ll add you to the list of those I follow.
Mindless Mommy’s Twitter Page
Alexander is very rule governed. If he believes that something is a rule, he will follow it to a T. He follows through so much that earlier this year when he was coming off of Versed after a dental appointment, he managed to kick me in the head while driving without taking off his seatbelt. You see, he was mad at me for having him take the Versed and he wanted to kick me in the head. However, the rule is, you leave your seat belt on if the car is on. So even in an irrational moment like kicking his beloved mother in the head, he still followed the rule.
So today he tells me that he is going to pick up his room. He loves charts so I create a chore list with little check boxes so that he can check off everything he did. Silly me didn’t realize that I would have to list everything in the room. He gets through the chore list and proclaims that he is finished. One quick peek in his room and it only looks marginally better than it did prior to starting his adventure.
I remind him that he needs to clean his entire room. He goes into his bedroom and comes out a few minutes later with a paper that states:
A New Rule
Clean only what is on the chore list.
I take the paper from him and rip it in half with a wry smile. His eyes got huge and his mouth dropped then he started giggling. He took the paper from me and put it in the garbage then returned to his room. Now I must say that Alexander and I have this very odd sense of humor so I knew how he would react to my ripping the paper. I was not being demeaning, etc - it was playful and he knew it as such.
After a few more minutes in his room, he walks back out with a new piece of paper.
A New Rule.
Moms who rip rule papers will get their butt kicked.
I immediately started laughing and he followed suit then quickly gave me a kick on the backside. We laughed and I put the paper away for posterity. Yes, I am a weird mom and I thought this was funny. What is even more funny is the rule is, we don’t say butt. We say bottom, behind, etc. He never says butt. I never said the rule was we don’t write butt.
Gotta love my little rule follower!
My son is being evaluated for a possible seizure disorder. He is having weird night-time episodes that his pediatrician, neuropsychologist and psychiatrist all think could be seizures. He has always had sleep problems, he has night terrors, chronic nightmares, odd night tantrums and other interesting night movements. Since he sleeps some nights in my room, I am able to observe these episodes so I decided to follow-up with a visit to the pediatrician. She ordered an EEG and has referred us to a neurologist (appointment is 7/1).
Our sleep-deprived EEG was this past Monday. We chose to have it done at the Children’s Hospital which is about 45 minutes away as opposed to the closer hospital. I have not had the best experiences with the closest hospital so felt that the drive was worth it. When making the appointment, she asked about his sleep habits. She then suggested that we keep him up all night to ensure that he would fall asleep during the EEG.
Sunday morning came and Alex was excited. Sunday afternoon came and he was still excited and just would not nap. Sunday evening came, yup - excited with no nap. 1:00 am Monday morning came and Alex was negotiating with us to take a nap. Eventually he was up for 30 hours and the EEG started, he did fantastic and didn’t have much of a problem with the scalp scrubbing/electrode placement. He doesn’t particularly like his head messed with but he was so tired he didn’t care. I don’t have the results of the EEG yet but based on what I saw, it doesn’t look like he had any suspicious activity occur.
Reading about the relationship between autism and epilepsy spawned my decision to right on the topic for this week’s Suite101 entry. Autism and Epilepsy looks at a few scientific research studies as well as information from the Epilepsy Foundation. I read several studies and a commonality seems to be that seizure disorders are more common among individuals with the regressive form of autism or those that are more significantly affected, cognitively. I found this quite interesting and although I didn’t understand everything in the studies (I love having PubMed access), what I did understand was eye-opening.
Last night I was finally able to watch Ricki Lake’s birth documentary The Business of Being Born
. I signed up for a Netflix account which includes live streaming video (what a great idea!) and one of the documentaries available was The Business of Being Born. Now I want to start off by saying that I had one very medicalized birth (induced for pre-ecclampsia, pitocin, magnesium sulfate, stadol, phenergen, etc). I actually fell asleep while pushing my son out. I remember the doctor calling my name and then reminding me that I need to push. I only pushed for about 15 minutes total so I guess I was doing it right (this was my first child).
I wanted a more natural childbirth with my second but ended up with preterm labor (dilating at 26 weeks and ten weeks on bedrest) so went with an OB out of fear. I wasn’t induced but caved and got an epidural (which only worked on the left half of my body, nice). Despite my medicalized births, most of my momma friends deliver their babies at home - yup, home births. Heck some of them even had unassisted homebirths - that is no midwife or other birth professional present. Lake’s documentary has been discussed heavily among my momma friends so it was time for me to watch it.
I have to say it was a fantastic film and I really wish that something like that would have been available when I was pregnant. My one regret with my second pregnancy is that I didn’t try harder to research my options. I ended up delivering at 36 weeks so I’m not sure if I would have been “allowed” to deliver at home however had I had even a birth doula then I probably could have had a natural childbirth.
If you are at all interested in normal, natural childbirth I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. It really shows viewers the sheer beauty of birth. One scene that really touched me was shortly after a mom gave birth, her son (I’m guessing he was 18-24 months) came over and patted his new baby sibling on the head. You just don’t get that in a hospital because the baby is whisked away to the warming table for examination.
We wanted Alexander to be at his sister’s birth but mommy hooked up to machines and the beeping just didn’t work for my sensory defensive son. He was able to come in and peek at his baby sister shortly after she was born but he was so overwhelmed by it all that he was pretty much disinterested. Had she been delivered in a more natural environment, it is likely that he would have acted differently.
Earlier this week I received an email from Sarah at Wikio letting me know that Mutterings of a Mindless Mommy had jumped up to #131 among their science blogs. This may not sound like a fantastic feat but considering the fact that Wikio has over 55,000 blogs listed in 11 different categories, I was proud! This lil mommy blog is my pride and joy (of the Internet, of course the kids are my true pride and joy hehe) so I love to see it get recognition.
I have been quiet lately as my freelance writing “career” has taken off - I’m expecting about six times myApril revenue once all of the accounts receivables for May are calculated. That is a lot for a part-time, work-from-home gig. I’m happy though so I’ll take it!
Julie at chezartz.com has posted a new blog entry that I wanted to bring to the attention of the readers of Mutterings of a Mindless Mommy. Here is an excerpt from the post:
The orphanage Clara & Emerson live in houses more than 300 other children and the food prices have made it difficult to provide the children with the food they need to survive. Our friends and several other adoptive parents across the United States have arranged for a 40 foot container to be shipped to the orphanage. If we fill it, 18 tons of food will go directly to these children.
Please read the entire post and help if you can: Help for Haitian Children in Need
I use Google Alerts to keep up-to-date on a variety of search terms - one of the phrases in my Google Alerts is mindlessmommy.com. Through this Google Alert I often learn of different sites that link back to my blog. Today’s Google Alert brought me to co-sleepingsurvey.com. There I am in the blog roll along with Hathor the Cow Goddess (among others) - Hathor is my idol. *swoon*
Here is an excerpt from the co-sleeping survey site:
That very special parenting choice that you had the instinct to make is now being considered “NEGLECT” by public health officials and may someday be illegal. There is something that YOU can do about it.
For all that come across this site that do, or have, co-slept with their children, please take a minute to fill out this very important survey.
Some articles of interest:
Nighttime Parenting and the Anxious Child
Engage in Nighttime Parenting
