It’s been an interesting day, a Murphy’s Law kind of day, and it’s barely past noon. After waking up to the sounds of Gavin pitching a fit downstairs with Justin, I knew today was not going to start off very well, but figured if I tried really hard, I could get past a rough start.

I got Gavin calmed down and ready for school, throwing off my own morning routine by a good 30 minutes. I hand Cooper his cup of milk to him in the crib and run to jump in the shower that I should’ve already been done with. I wash up quickly, get dressed, fight with my hair but it just kept doing this. Argh!

I go to grab Cooper, who by now is howling in his crib, and smell something weird. I though a cat had puked (i.e. that fun regurgitated food smell), but I realize that is the soy formula I smell (I put him on soy temporarily to help with the diarrhea since dairy can often make it worse). I look in his crib and the lid to the cup was not put on quite right and leaked a good amount of soy formula on him and his bedding. I get him cleaned up and throw his sheets into the washer because nothing stinks worse that warm soy formula than old, fermented, soy formula (gagging thinking about it).

We get out of the house 20 minutes late and get stuck behind an extreeeeeeemmmmeeeely slow-moving construction vehicle. Like it lumbered for 2 miles down a 2-laned road at about 7mph down a road that is 45mph. Even Cooper started hollering his protests from the backseat. Then we got caught by a train. I called and left a message with my boss stating that unless I got hit by a plane falling out of the sky, I hoped to be there within an hour.

Drop-off at daycare goes smoothly…yay! And nearly all of the other babies waved “bye” to me as I waved furiously at Cooper…yay again!

I get the rest of the way to work without any incident. But the fun starts again once I’m in the building. I nearly clobber myself with the door into my department because I didn’t grab it right, and I realized I forgot my lunch. And I have somehow managed to anger or annoy every.single.person I have spoken to so far today, business and personal. I just cannot seem to get words out of my mouth or in any form of electronic communication properly. Stuff is just coming out all wrong and backwards and is completely unintentional (well, except you, marketing person…you deserved the snide response you got from me because you were being a complete knucklehead). And then I’m generally making a bigger mess of things by trying to back-track, explain myself, panicking, or rationalizing my response. Even outright apologies don’t seem to be clearing things up, either. So I think I’m going to give up for the day. Just keep my trap shut unless an answer is specifically warrented. And will attempt to keep it as brief and Spock-like as possible to hopefully avoid getting any more people annoyed and irritated with me.

And just in case it means anything to anyone who hasn’t heard it yet, I’m really sorry for being an idiotic and neurotic mess!

Even Maggie down there is excited that we finally have some ripe berries. This time last year my mom and I were making the SECOND batch of blackberry freezer jam. Of course now that I invested in a fancy water-bath canner, I can’t seem to get these berries to ripen for me in a reasonable amount of time. I fertilized with some good ol’ Miracle-Gro and set the sprinkler on the silly blackberry bush this morning for 3-1/2 hours, hoping the water would help the berries plump and ripen. I’d like to have a few half-pints of jam before the end of the month, especially to share with friends. *YUM*

Just thought I’d share that I specifically had to have those cute quilted jelly jars instead of the standard half-pint jar because the quilted ones are cuter and just scream “Homemade Jelly!” And that I will only use Ball Mason products since I went to Ball State.

In preparation of friends and family coming into town and filling my house with fun and excitement in honor of Cooper’s 1st birthday on the 12th, we have been cleaning. And cleaning. And cleaning some more. And no, our house is still not all that clean because well, we’ve cleaned it like twice since Cooper was born. I might be exaggerating, but not by much.

Justin did some vacuuming and mopping; I’ve been tackling the bathrooms and the never-ending-piles-o-laundry (and really, WTH…every time I go to Target to pick up some more laundry supplies, they’ve stopped carrying whatever I’ve last bought AND they’ve rearranged the whole dang laundry aisle); we’ve been tag-teaming for dishes, toys, and general clutter (I admit, I am a clutter-monster and a pack-rat). So at least we’re getting somewhere so that come this weekend, we just need to do a few good wipe-downs of things and run the vacuum. Or so we hope. We’ll see how things go with weekend.
—————————————————
In other housekeeping news, Karen over at The Rocking Pony gave me this and I am tickled pink! I swear, she is one of the sweetest people I know.

I would like to pass it along to

• LaskiGal
• Sue over at As Cape Cod Turns
• Tranny Head
• LagLiv

—————————————————
I realized that due to Justin’s incredibly heavy work schedule in the past few weeks and my idiocy, we never updated you guys on the final say in Gavin’s Child Find testing, etc. The final decision was that he is about 6 months behind for Receptive Language (what he hears and understands), and about 11 or 12 months behind for Expressive Language (what says, his vocabulary, how easily is he understood by strangers). In other words his auditory processing is on par with that of a 3-1/2 year old boy and he speaks like a 3-year old. This has certainly explained a lot of our frustration in communicating with Gavin, and explains why when we ask him a question he sometimes gives us an answer that just isn’t quite right. Add in his stuttering, and it’s downright aggravating for all of us because he’s annoyed he can’t get his words out or get his point across or can’t understand why we keep asking him the same dang thing over and over. And for us…we just have a hard time seeing our child struggle, or hear his classmates speak so much better (or worse, hear children a year or younger have what seems to be better speaking and comprehension skills).

So thankfully we will have our IEP and will be starting services the first week of September. Three hours of therapy per month…well, technically in 3 weeks. The fourth week of the month is set aside for any additional help if needed or meeting with the teacher for in-depth discussions, etc. The neat thing is that it is going to be at the elementary school that he will be going to in Fall ‘09, so by the time he starts kindergarten he will be King of the Classroom and will know the school well.

This post started as a rant about the fight Justin and I had. But I realized that wasn’t appropriate to air that kind of laundry…at least not while he still reads my blog and has comments emailed to him. Suffice it to say it wasn’t pretty, complete with ugly words, and hurt feelings, and for what I think was the first time in nearly 10 years together, I retreated by myself to cool down. Usually I’m the one chasing Justin around the house, shouting like some crazed harpy.

But not this time. I was mad, I was wounded, and didn’t want it to get uglier than we had already allowed it to get, especially since the kids were right there.

I sat in our room working on laundry, watching something stupid on TV so that I could let my brain wander and sort out what was said, and what I was going to say once the kids were in bed, trying to formulate the best passive-aggressive remark to get my point across.

I finished up the laundry, put it away, and started running the water for the kids’ bath. Justin brought them up and, with very few words exchanged, we went to work scrubbing and rinsing them. I pulled Cooper out and got him dried off and into his jammies. I heard Justin doing the same for Gavin. I sat in the rocking chair to give Cooper his nightly cup of milk and snuggle, heart still hurting from the argument two hours before.

Instead of fidgeting around like usual, Cooper looked at me with those big slate-colored eyes of his, crawled up to put his head on my shoulder and nuzzled in my neck. We rocked for a good ten minutes, then I stood up and swayed to the lullabye music playing with Cooper while he kept cuddling and patting me, and stroking my arms, shoulders, and playing with my hair with his chubby little hands.

And I began crying. This little baby, not quite a year old, seemed to know I was hurting and took care of me the best way he knew how. God only knows how Cooper knew (actually, I think He had a lot to do with Cooper’s response to me). But I cried quietly, feeling the pain melt away, trying to not sob or sniff loudly lest I break the spell of my baby comforting his mother.

Since Gavin is exceptionally sensitive to loud noises and Cooper literally turns into this after 8pm:

our Fourth of July was spent managing a (hopefully) teething Cooper (up screaming for an hour at 3am), introducing Gavin to Star Wars Episode IV, lighting off a couple mini-fountains in our driveway, and scaring Gavin with sparklers (whereas Cooper wanted to eat them).



Why yes, Gavin is standing next to wax look-alikes of Cooper and me, straight from Madame Tussauds.