Brief Update

Hey y’all – I know I haven’t updated in forever. Life has been… complicated.

Basically, I’m dealing with my twins starting preschool, and being given “an educational label of autism” which is not the same thing as an autism diagnosis from, say, a medical professional. However, there is a strong correlation between the two. At the very least, we’re dealing with Pervasive Developmental Delay (PDD), and I have evaluations for them scheduled to see if they really do fall on the autism spectrum, and if so where, and what do we do with that information, whatever it may be.

The kiddos are going to preschool on alternate days right now, which seems to be working out well for them, and well for the school staff, and pretty much great for everyone but the mom (that’d be me), who was kind of counting on preschool representing little patches of Me-Time on a regular basis, for the first time in four years.

Granted, I’m pleased as punch at the boys’ progress, and am glad as anything that they seem to be (finally) settling in well at their preschool, and I’m getting to know their special ed teacher, and their occupational therapist, and their speech therapist, and they all are seeming to be good people with a lot of creativity and knowledge to bring forth on behalf of my kiddos, so that is an unmitigated GOOD.

But dudes, I am more exhausted than I have been in AGES. It used to be, if I was feeling blah, we could just hang around at home all day and bum around. Now I’ve got to get everybody dressed and into the car so that one kid can be at school on time, and I’ve got to keep straight who’s seeing who and when, and I’ve got to make sure the house isn’t a complete wreck when the OT comes over, and… yeah.

Like I say – life has gotten complicated.

It’s, overall, a good kind of complicated, I admit. I’m seeing progress already with the boys and I’m thrilled about it, and I’m learning a lot about them and me and the brain, which is always interesting. And I’m learning that I’m not as bad a mom as I always thought I was, seeing as how it takes a small fleet of trained professionals to properly do what I’ve been schlockily doing all on my untrained amateur own. So that’s been something of a relief, honestly.

And I’ve been trying to figure out what one mom and one kid do on their own together, because well… that’s kind of a whole new thing for me. I’ve always been so busy using the Zone Defense style of parenting that this whole man-on-man, time for actual conversations (well, as much conversation as my kids are willing to offer) and creating opportunities for “teaching moments” thing is throwing me for a real serious loop.

Seriously, I’ve been finding myself often saying to people, “So um… what do you DO when it’s just you and one kid? Does this mean you can like, go to actual STUFF together, and not break out in a nervous sweat the moment you arrive? Because I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.”

So… yeah. That would be why nobody’s seen hide nor hair of me lately (though I am on Twitter, for anyone who is interested). I still lurk around a bit, and try to keep up, but it’s going to be a while before I can even try to get back to posting even as irregularly as I was.

Keep on fighting the good fight, y’all, and I hope to be back soon!