May looks like it will be a season of closure in some ways. SJ will be graduating from the toddler program at her school, J will have his last day where he is currently holding a temp job, and Ezie will no longer be exclusively breastfed. However when I look back at the past month I see that along with some of the bittersweet springtime goodbyes this season also gives us plenty to look forward to.

Whether it’s Tiger Woods or Toddler’s in Tiaras some children are trained at the youngest of ages to be the best of the best and do whatever it takes to achieve their dreams. But whose dreams are they really?

I saw an ESPN documentary on Netflix called The Maronovich Project where a father raised his child from birth to be a professional football player. He did stretches with him as a baby and he never allowed any processed food to touch his lips. He had rigorous training throughout his entire childhood and eventually did go on to be a quarter back in the NFL. Unfortunately he also became a drug addict which would end his football career shortly after it began.

On a more positive note I read an article recently where a family with 10 kids had 6 of their children in college by age 12 and the younger four that remain will probably follow suit. My first reaction was what is the hurry? It’s not about how soon you start, but how you finish. So far it turns out they finish well. One is a space craft engineer, another an architect, and another is on her way to becoming  one of the youngest Doctors in history. The parents claim that they are just “average folks” and attribute their success to homeschooling. In a CNN interview 16 year old Serennah Harding speaks highly of her parents saying “They found our interests and they cultivated those and helped us pursue those and learn at our own pace” and she gives credit to God for what he’s done in their family and how he has blessed them. It’s easy to think these parents from Alabama were pushing the kids too hard and stealing their right to childhood, but after watching the interview I am convinced that they are a sweet loving family that just happen to have really smart kids.

I personally know of a couple different families who claim their kids knew what they wanted to be at a young age and they held them to it and I know them as successful adults now. For example one of my elementary school classmates did pageantry when we were younger and she eventually became Miss Missouri in the Miss USA pageant. Now she is a news anchor woman in Cleveland. She is expecting her first child, which they just found out is a girl. The city lit up one of it’s historic buildings in honor of the announcement.

Her brothers have been equally as successful. Their parents truly are the sweetest most loving couple, but they are also “average folks”. Their dad was and still is a coach at the school I went to as a child. At a resent graduation banquet he was quoted saying “Good stops at good, but great never quits.” Call me miss lack of motivation, but that sounds exhausting to me. 

Speaking of quotes one of my favorite lines is from a Rhett and Link video about a college student telling his parents he is switching majors.

“I only did engineering because of that time when you said You’re so good at Legos. maybe you’ll be an engineer. Mom, engineering is harder than Legos.”

This scenario is probably more common than the child prodigies we’ve seen on Oprah. More than likely the sweet little girl you bought so many kittens for, the one that wanted to be a veterinarian, will end up in real estate loathing the chore of selling homes with pets and you will be left raising all of her cats. Isn’t that more typical? Seriously though, when is a reasonable age for a child to know their passion or their calling, and to strive for it? All I know is that right now Z wants to be Batman when he grows up  and when he turns 20 he wants to own a “batmovehicle” and I support him 100%.

My 5 year old dresses like a white cholo. For those that are unfamiliar with the term Cholo, the Urban Dictionary describes it in part as a Hispanic male that typically wheres a flannel shirt unbuttoned except for the very top button. This is how Z dresses every day.

 

When a friend of mine posted about the M.O.B (mother of boys) Society doing a book club I signed up immediately. 

The book is called Wild Things- The Art of Nurturing Boys. I had three brothers and was the only girl in my family, but I still could definitely use some guidance in this area. 

I checked online to see if they had the book at my library and they did not have it at our specific branch, but I could order it. The next day while at the library I told them  I had put a book on hold, but it was coming from another library and I wasn’t sure how to order it. The librarian looked up my card number and informed me that the book had already been delivered and was on the shelf waiting for me. I went to look and sure enough there it was labeled with a slip of paper that had my name on it. I couldn’t believe it. The night before I had just clicked a button requesting the book and it was pulled off the shelf, put on a truck, driven to my library within 24 hours just for me, and it didn’t cost a thing. God bless America! 

This is my first book club and it all starts tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll learn a thing or two about how to raise up strong godly men without going loco on my ese. 

This Miscellaneous compilation is part of Miscellany Monday. Check out Lowercase Letters for more random fun. 

It was one of those mornings. Again. SJ did not want to put clothes on and naked students are frowned upon at her school. I couldn’t find any quick grab breakfast items so the kids had to share a granola bar to which Z insisted on picking out the parts he didn’t like. It took at least 5 trips from the house to the car before I had everyone and everything packed up and ready to go.

While we were in the car I realized SJ’s headband was not clipped to her hair. She wears headbands to keep her cochlear implants on and if they aren’t clipped it slides off pretty easily.

No, I did not take a picture in the middle of the craziness, this is from another day. 


Oh dear. Where is a barrette? Please tell me there is a barrette in this car! I shouted out loud. When I became a mom I stopped talking to myself and started sputtering words to my kids. It’s the same thing really.

I did in fact find a barrette and we were on our way! I don’t love driving 45 minutes to school every day, but it gives me a chance to sit down and stay put, and the kids are forced to do the same. So that part is nice.

“Mom,” Z said, “You have the best looking eyes.”

Wow. I thought I didn’t hear him right so I asked what he said, and he repeated himself. It’s almost like he had read my thoughts, or my blog post from yesterday, about how women want to feel beautiful. I was reminded of the time he told me I smelled like a princess. My love language is words of affirmation and this boy knows how to speak my language. I told him Thank You and that it was a very sweet compliment that meant a lot to me. Then Z said “Sometimes I have the best looking eyes, but today it was you.” I was a little confused by what he meant, but I am glad he likes his eyes. He continued on “Because you were the one that found SJ’s hair barrette! Good job, mom.”

I think I could have laughed the rest of the way to school. I have the best LOOKING eyes, because my eyes are so good at looking and finding things. Of course.

I still take it as a compliment.

So it’s a big old viral deal this “Dove Real Beauty Sketches” thing.

The video was released a week ago and now there is link flying around the internet as a response (or better yet, a rebuke) to the Dove campaign. There are several actually, but Jazzy Little Drops Tumblr is the one I saw posted by my friends on Facebook. With as much as I was not that passionate about the Dove video, for whatever reason I was passionate to defend it. I think the reason I feel this way is because Dove is TRYING, they may not be perfect and have the exact amount of diversity per second, and maybe they need a better representation of the plus size market, but they are working towards changing the way women think about themselves. Those that responded negatively to the video were also trying to take a stand for real beauty and I applaud that as well. What surprises me though is that there are hundreds or thousands of brands that want to suck every last bit of confidence out of you so that you are at their mercy in your quest to find the pot of good looks at the end of the rainbow. Dove is actually doing the opposite. They are saying YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL the way you are naturally, and don’t be a slave to all the negativity. I understand the thing about inner beauty, but Dove makes products for our body. We might use moisturizer because it makes our skin supple, or deodorant because we don’t want to smell like a steamy swine. The thing that gets me about these Dove complaints is that some people want to act like external beauty doesn’t even have a place and that is what I want to talk about.

 This was one part of the Jaz’s tumblr that caught me off guard.

A lot of people ask if we still sign. We do. SJ isn’t actively learning anymore at this time since it takes absolutely everything we’ve got to get her caught up orally now that she has the cochlear implant. However SJ knows 50+ signs and some of them, like “potty” and “sorry”are absolutely critical in our house. She also knows “where” and “hearing aid”. The sign for cochlear implant is actually different than hearing aid, but it’s what she knows from when she had hearing aids so we go with it. There have been times where she took off her CI’s and we just sign “where are your hearing aids”. She can request  her processor using this sign too which was an exciting milestone. Even as I write this I have to pause and use the signs “share” or “clean up” (go figure). This video shows 10 more signs that we use on a regular basis. SJ is, as always, the star of the show, but you can hear the brothers in the background. Hopefully they are not too loud.

                                                 
This post is linked with Top Ten Tuesday and here are the links for Signs SJ knows part one and two.  

From the moment I started a blog many people have assumed I have an online diary where I divulge every juicy, or more likely boring detail of my life. Those people are mistaken. There is so much that I don’t talk about. I just recently started (in tiny increments at a time) watching Call the Midwife. It’s a historical drama based off of Jennifer Worth’s Memoirs from her time studying and practicing midwifery in the slums of East England. She has some pretty incredible stories. I’ve got the book on hold at the library. I would love to write memoirs someday. I’ll tell stories of living in a fog. It will be riveting, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. There will be a nail biting climax and I will testify about how I stepped out onto nothing and God allowed my dreams to materialize beneath me. I hope to share that. For now I am just searching the barren cupboards of my soul for some mustard seed belief.

I hate to sound so glum. The truth is I could change every word in the previous paragraph to “blessed” and it still wouldn’t be enough to tell of just how blessed and fortunate I am. For those that don’t know here is a really brief, not even cliff notes worthy, glimpse of my story. We lived in Texas. We had jobs, we had a house, we even had chickens. We left all of that to be near my family and see what the Lord had for us in Northern Kentucky. Within months after moving in with my parents we found out that we were pregnant and that our 2 year old daughter, SJ, was deaf. Since then we have moved in with my brother and his wife so that we could get SJ into a good school that is about 30 miles from where they live.

The other day we were having a conversation with Z about people in need and I explained that there are some people that don’t have homes and he responded “Like us?” Hearing your 5 year old describe himself as homeless can kind of knock the wind out of you. We may not own or rent a home, but we definitely have a roof over our heads (a nice one). There are so many people that can’t say that. There are plenty of people that are unemployed that don’t have loved ones to take them in.

That being said, it’s time to find a place. I humbly ask that you would join us in prayer. This is the biggest spiritual mountain I’ve ever had to see moved in my lifetime. My husband needs a job desperately! He’s been able to do temp work here and there. Between the odd jobs, savings, and even help from things I am too proud to mention medicaid and food stamps we’ve been able to get by, but it’s been a year and half now and we are ready for some stability. Until we can move to Ohio we have to privately pay for SJ’s school, not to mention the hundreds of dollars of gas we put in our car each month just to get her there. Z starts school in the fall so our goal is to be moved by then. Finding a job that can sustain a family of 5 and a place to live in 3 months is not looking too realistic.

I don’t like talk about that aspect of our lives. I wouldn’t mind if it was a part of my memoirs and I could tell you how it all turned out, but as far as the present tense, it just makes me uncomfortable. However, I felt compelled to open up and I do appreciate the prayers. When the storm has passed and the battle is won we’ll look back and see how far we’ve come

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SJ is about to be 5 months in terms of her hearing age. Her first therapist drilled that idea into my head before we got the implant “hearing age, hearing age, hearing age”. So many parents get discouraged if they don’t have realistic expectations. I can now see how easily that could happen. When I feel like she should be able to talk or understand more I remind myself of her hearing age. One easy way to think about it is by comparing her to baby Ezie. He was born almost two months before SJ was activated. A little side note, you start hearing In Utero and the neural pathways begin forming before you are even born so he has that much more of a lead just from the work he did listening in the womb! That puts Ezie and SJ neck and neck when it comes to hearing and speech. Granted SJ has tons more cognitive experience and abilities that will allow her to learn faster than Ezie, but they are going to start learning language at approximately the same time. 

This makes our family dynamics interesting. Even though I have 3 kids that are all 2.5 years apart I’ve been listening to ONE kid talk our ears off for the past 4 years. He more than makes up for the lack of communication from the other two. Believe me, Z is a talker! It will be interesting to go from one talker to three next year. On top of that I have a 3 year old and a 6 month old that jabber to each other with grunts and basically “oohs and ahs” It’s hard to tell their voices apart.

 People get them mixed up all the time when I’m on the phone or the kids are in another room. I took this video that gives a little glimpse of what I am talking about. SJ is the squeaky high pitched (that’s her way of singing) and the other squawker is Ezie.  These are just some of the sounds they make.

It’s like their ears are twins. It’s a little heartbreaking in a way. I watch Ezie take in the world around him. He turns to sounds, he bangs on things, and blows bubbles with his mouth. We are all giving him an earful to listen to and he is taking it all in without even knowing how it’s stimulating his brain. He will learn our language naturally and effortlessly. For SJ she has to go to school full time and have daily therapy sessions. We have spent the past 4 months just getting her to detect sound and she has taken off with this skill and is doing great. But you can see how much work it is. I know God will be glorified through this and he has a plan for SJ. I look forward to seeing it play out.