Moving over to a different site, please update your links!

Sorry to pack up shop and move so quickly while this blog is so young, but hubby really does not want me on Google blogger and he wants to co-host our blog, so off I go! Please update your links!

http://allsortsofthingsblog.com

I moved all the old posts there also.

New Year's Resolutions - What are yours?

First of all, I am getting rather bored with typing my children's initials, but not exactly brave enough to type their full names yet with all the weirdos out there who might not be so nice. So I am going to do what Petra does (sorry to steal your idea, Petra) and use their nicknames instead. I am actually a self-proclaimed nickname queen; I rarely ever call my babies by their real names when we are at home. I have an aunt that was like this as well; she nicknamed everybody from her own children, to her siblings, to her pets. I think she should have just put "Wheezie" and "Bird" on my cousins' birth certificates instead of their real names! But I seemed to have inherited whatever gene she has that makes me automatically nickname children and animals.

I will refer to my seven-year-old daughter "C" as "Scooter". I have actually called her "Little Root" or just plain "Root" since she was a small baby and that is what little nursing babies do when they want a boob. When she began scooting at seven months of age I called her my Scootin-lil-Rooter or just Scooter.

I will refer to my five-year-old daughter "N" (I think I've given it away and used her real name anyway) as "Pumpkin Pie", which I have called her since she was a baby due to the naturally reddish tint to her blonde hair.

I will refer to my four-year-old son "L" as "The Destroy Boy". I call him that because well, he's a boy, and that is what he does best! He loves to get the screwdriver down and "fix" things himself, I have caught him doing that on more than one occasion.

I will refer to my two-year-old daughter "P" as "Owl", which I have called her since she was a small baby because of her big bright eyes.

I will refer to my baby boy, who is now four months old, as "Bay-bee-Q" because his first initial is "Q". When I walk into a room and he is on his playmat, I squeal "Baayyy - beee- Q! " the way some people say "Barrrr-beee-cue" when talking about barbecue. Sounds really stupid, I know, but he gives me a big smile when I do it.

Okay, so here goes, New Year's Resolutions:

To actually stick to our budget and get some of our bills from last year paid (I would love to work towards living debt-free)

To not give up too soon on the interventions I'm doing with Pumpkin Pie. (We start the SCD diet tomorrow and if anyone has intro diet ideas for me please share.)

To get in-home ABA for this summer for Pumpkin Pie organized ASAP.

To be a better overall parent to ALL my kids and be more consistent with the discipline (I'm really lousy at consistency, honestly.)

And that is about it. What are some of your resolutions?

Happy New Year!

Yes, I stayed up late to deliberately type this ASAP after midnight!

Welcome, 2009!

This yeast stuff is awful...

Well, I've been doing the antiviral/antifungal therapy for over three weeks now and I think that the yeast is starting to get resistant to the Nystatin. She improved and was way calmer and just a different kid for like a week, but now she is all hyper again. I know this is kind of a rude way to put it, but she's acting like a drunk monkey. Climbing up everything, standing on the counter and leaning over the top of the fridge, standing on the dining table and cackling and trying to swing the light above the table. It's driving me nuts.

We start the Specific Carbohydrate diet on New Year's and she starts a new antifungal in about a week or so; her DAN! actually has me rotating through two antifungals every other month because yeast is so difficult to overcome.

It is hard to see her noticeably improve and then see her regress again. To see her actually stop and LOOK AT stuff instead of running in circles vocalizing and then to see it disappear again. I just want to get this candida crap figured out.

She has four amalgams because the pediatric dentist in Hawaii put them in before I remembered to tell her not to. Which really aggravates me. Why do they even use amalgams anymore? I am going to be getting those removed probably in the next month as well.

The reason for my blog name...

Ah, my blog title. "All Sorts of Things". I really struggled with what to name my blog, and I'm actually thinking about changing the name now since I write more about my daughter with autism than anything else in my life.

I did not want this blog to be that way. I initially intended for this blog to be about me, my kids, my daughter's autism, and my interests. Yet it seems like autism has taken over this blog. Without me even trying to have it take over, it just seems to have taken root here and grown, overshadowing and coating everything that this blog was supposed to be about.

Autism is the morning glory in my garden of life.

Have you ever had morning glory grow and get out of control? I have seen it. The flowers are beautiful but the plant is very hardy and can get out of control quite easily. And it can be very difficult to rein in.

If my life were a garden and people were looking through the white picket fence, they would see four species of beautiful, vibrant flower in the soil. Maybe lilies, tulips, daffodils, daisies - four stationary, non-vining flowers, each with their own special attributes. A part of the garden but they stay where they need to and do not overwhelm the garden. But the morning glory? It's out of control and I am forever trying to stop it from covering everything, trying to stop the insidious morning glory from taking over my garden to the point where it defines what my garden is. Because dang it, the lilies are beautiful, too. And the daffodils and daisies and tulips deserve my attention as well. But they often get watered in haste so that I can go back to weeding, pulling, and trying to keep that morning glory under control.

The interests and hobbies that define who I am? They are the shrubbery, and the shrubbery is looking overgrown and in need of pruning not simply because I am trying to keep the flowers in my garden healthy and happy, but because that morning glory flower has covered everything and literally redefined the whole garden, even though I never intended it to. And sometimes I have to get up, wipe the sweat off my face, and work on getting it under control some more. That is my biggest hope someday is that I can rein it in and when people view my garden and see my morning glory growing and thriving, they will first take note of the gorgeous, purple, bell-shaped flowers and not the stifling, groping vines trying to cover everything in the garden with a thin sheath of leaves while I desperately work. It will simply be a PART of the garden instead of something that is taking over the whole garden in spite of my best intentions.

I really would love to write more often about the other flowers in my garden (my other children) and the shrubbery (my interests that I had before autism entered my life and changed it forever), but the writing for now is always going to be obscured by the leaves of the morning glory. Until I can learn to control it.

What Kind of Animal Are You? The quiz...

I mentioned a few posts below that I am a golden retriever based on the animal personality quiz. What kind of animal are you? Here is a link to the quiz below if you want to find out!

http://www.new-life.net/persnty1.htm

Everyone has attributes of all four animals, but you usually have at least one dominant animal as your personality type.

Only 364 days left until Christmas!!!

Well, the kids and dh and I had a great holiday; I hope you and yours did as well!

"C" got a Littlest Pet Shop Gym with some new Littlest Pet Shop toys that she just loves, "N" got an inflatable ball pit that unfortunately she doesn't care too much about (well, I tried, and I think she knows it, and that's what counts), "L" got the cement mixer of his dreams; it is so wonderful to see their little faces light up when they get exactly what they want, "P" got a Little People Noah's Ark, and baby "Q" got an infant play gym! He loves to lay on it and smile at the dangly thingies and he will roll to his belly and fall asleep on it. He is four months old already and the cheekiest, happiest baby boy that you ever saw. His smile will melt your heart. He is still happily sucking down my boob juice.

I have a really long post about this blog that I finally edited that I am going to add next. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!