Abandon Ship!

I've hit the middle of the semester, where all of the group projects, term papers and weekly assignments build up into one big mess.  C'est la vie.  I am always amazed when I see fellow classmates who are working full time. Children are a full time job, don't get me wrong. I have very little time while my son is awake to post on the discussion board, let alone work on a paper or project. However, I feel like working full time and trying to go to school full time, while probably bringing your work home with you and being totally exhausted by the end of the day, would be so much harder!  Call me crazy, but social engagement can be mentally exhausting! I prefer days when Jace and I are alone, sprinkled with a couple of outings a week to keep us from getting cabin fever.

On a brighter note: Jace is 3 years old!!! His party was fantastic, a few neighbor friends, family, pizza and a Mickey Mouse cake. So much fun! There is nothing better than spending time with family and friends. The kids were a riot, and Jace got all of the presents we had asked for. I'm so grateful to have such a loved and blessed child.

We moved Jace to a big boy bed, which has actually been rather uneventful. This was my biggest transitional fear, and he hasn't gotten out of his bed once. I don't know how I got so lucky. I give all the credit to us keeping him in a crib until the last possible second. I feel like he totally understands that the bed equals "time to sleep" and even if he has a hard time falling asleep, just like in his crib, he just tosses and turns in his bed.  I'm a lucky Momma!

Anywho, I can't stay on here because I do have at least 2 projects that are due by the end of the week and, sadly, are still in the very preliminary stages. Read: I've formulated thoughts about them. Sigh.

Until next time =)
mom2jace

It Has to be Said

I do NOT believe we have a right to terminate life. Not in the name of women's rights; not in the name of religion; not in the name of justice.

I believe that life begins at conception.

I am a hypocrite because I LOVE eggs and bacon and hamburgers and the occasional hotdog. I even have an IUD.

I believe only in the event of self-defense should any one person harm another.

I do not believe that being left or right means you believe what their respective extremists are preaching.

I believe that each and every one of us deserves to be treated equally, with the same rewards AND the same punishments for ALL (that includes the poorest AND the richest of us!).

I believe that if we lead with fear and bigotry, we will bring down the greatest thing about our country - acceptance and freedom.

I don't believe that science is anti-religion or that religion is anti-science.

I do believe that the first particle in the universe had to come from somewhere - the UNIVERSE had to come from somewhere!

I believe that if you ask the chicken and the egg, they will agree that neither of them knows which came first, nor does it matter.

I believe that if there is a higher/celestial being out there, he's pretty sick to watch innocent people suffer their whole lives with no hope of ever living in peace, never knowing love, always being scared and watching each other die of war wounds and hunger.

I believe that religion keeps most people on the straight and narrow. It may not be right, but it seems to work. For the most part.

I believe that if we are going to take religion completely out of schools and government, they better be replaced with some pretty strong morals and ethics backed by more than "because I say so" policies.

I don't believe that people are inherently evil. Sly and secretive, yes, but not evil.

I believe that the biggest struggle is the one within ourselves. Fighting our bigotry, our hatred, our wrongdoings and our hypocrisy. There is nothing worse than confronting your own demons.

And nothing better.


I wrote this today in response to all of the far-left and far-right political controversy I can't escape on the news the past few weeks.  I feel like we've all lost sight of the fact that we are all living on this planet together, all made the same way, all just trying to make the best of our walks of life.  I feel like these extremists are just stirring up the fear in anyone they can without realizing the ramifications for anyone who might disagree with them.

There IS a middle ground, a compromise. Not on all issues, perhaps, but most can be peaceably resolved.  The issue of abortion is highly controversial.  It could be set up so that only rape victims are offered the plan B option if they report the rape and the hospital administers the pill.  Pregnancies in which the mother's life is at risk due to the baby are the only cases in which abortion would be allowed, and the procedure, again, is done in a hospital setting.  This keeps the Pro-Life AND the Pro-Choice groups satisfied without compromising too much on either side.  I'm not saying this is the only answer, I'm just trying to point out that there are options beyond one extreme or another, and even very difficult topics can be compromised on.

I really feel as if we've lost a bit of our core values, our core beliefs, amidst all of the propaganda and extremism.  I love defining my core beliefs to myself, as I've done here. It gives me a chance to evaluate what values I hold and what compromises I am willing to make in order to function in a society where we treasure individuality and freedom of thought, where I am expected, as a citizen, to co-exist with others who may hold views opposite of my own.  I also love to document my beliefs and revisit them to see how I have grown as a human being.  I am not the same person I was as a 17yr old. And that person is vastly different from the person I was at 23yrs old. Now, at 27yrs old, I feel I have grounded myself in my beliefs and become grounded and centered by them.  I can't wait to see what I think in another 5 to 7 years!

Striking a Balance

After having some time to cool off from the preschool teacher fiasco, I have decided that ignorance is bliss (as has been made quite obvious by the teacher's... Oh, stop it!) and I am letting bygones be bygones. My son absolutely loves school and I think I can let go of some inattentiveness if it means he gets to have a few hours a day playing with kiddos his own age.  He gets so excited to get on the bus, and I have to admit that 4 hours of peace and quiet to get things done or just veg in front of the TV is absolutely wonderful.  So preschool will remain a presence in our lives. At least for now.

We've come full swing into fall, as indicated by the fall book order catalog in my son's backpack.  I'd totally forgotten about school book fairs and catalogs and fundraisers and... well, the list goes on and on!  I've order nearly $200 worth of books. That may seem like sticker shock, but books are a wonderful thing and we just can't have enough.  We've also dropped into the 30's at night, so out come the flannel sheets, footed jammies, and the smells of crockpot meals that permeate every room of the house.  Nothing says home like walking into a warm house that smells of roast beef and vegetables.  Well, maybe pumpkin pie, but its a bit premature for that.

Which takes me back to a story about my first experience being a single mom.  Jace's dad and I were together from the time he was born until just after his 1st birthday.  During this time, we had dealt with a lot: finding out our son was deaf in one ear, finding out he lost the other, and trying to make our relationship work while disagreeing on almost every parenting issue imaginable.  Ah, hell. How I don't miss you.  Which isn't to say that we don't have disagreements even now, but it is so much easier to disagree when your ex is 100 miles away.  During our time together, though, I tried to be domesticated.  I've never been a cooker.  My meals came from my parents, a restaurant, or whichever box looked more appetizing.  Prep time was 1 to 2 minutes, wait time was 3 to 10 minutes, and clean up was that handy dandy trash can that seemed to fill up every day, not that I could figure out why.  Jace changed all that.  It took time. It took burnt meals and a LOT of patience.  But I've gotten the hang of it, and now I don't even use measuring cups.  I've come pretty far.  Don't go throwing ingredients at me and expect a masterpiece, but I am proud to say that the bulk of my shopping is done in the fresh produce isle these days.

The best part about becoming domesticated is the lessons you set forth for your children.  Parents of hearing children have it easy. You say a word, they hear it, you repeat and eventually the child mimics it.  For a hearing parent of a deaf child, you have to hunt down the words for everything.  Try signing plantain or starfruit, I dare ya.  I am still learning common words in the produce isle. And the problem with sign language is that they don't have a sign for everything.  There are so many words that you have to finger spell.  Which means you either spend the first year of your child's life diving deep into the world of sign (I hope you don't have to work for a living because you'll need all 18hrs of waking time in your day to learn everything in a year) or you have to be OK with the fact that your child will be delayed in learning some things.  It can be very frustrating.  Especially if, like me, you didn't begin learning sign in that first year because you held hope that your son's one good ear would remain good.

This is when you kick yourself over and over and over again for not being proactive from the day you learned of his initial diagnosis of unilateral deafness.  Maybe I wasn't ready, didn't want to face the fact that my son would probably be deaf, as most children with unilateral loss end up losing the other hear, too.  Maybe I was so consumed by my son's overwhelming colic and fussiness that I couldn't think of anything else for the first 5 months, then just focussed on enjoying him for the next 5 months before realizing he wasn't hearing me any more.  Whatever the reason, the result is that I was unprepared to relate my son's surroundings to him through sign at a very crucial time of learning and language acquisition.  He will be fine, and we are learning everything now, but we missed a very important developmental window and we can't get that back.  Commence with the kicking.

So my advice to parents with deaf/hoh children today is to be proactive from day one.  Hindsight is 20/20, and we don't get take backs.  This ties into my ideals about parenting/teaching... Always be doing the very best for every child, and you won't have too many regrets later.

Until next time!
mom2jace

Old Man Winter

I'm exaggerating, of course, because it topped out at 50*F today, which is hardly what one would call "winter."  However, I have donned my woolen socks and sweats, thrown the flannel sheets on the beds and even made a pot of 3 bean chili for dinner tonight.

I think I've been ready for winter since early September, and I'm not even sure why because I hate being cold! My toes and fingers have horrible circulation, I have to bundle Jace to go anywhere, then un-bundle the two of us before he can do water/slush damage to the interior of the house.  I like the first snowfall, and pray for the first blizzard, but when it comes time to shovel I like to find a cozy place deep inside the house to hide from the mountains of snow piling up on the walkway.

But winter is a wonderful time of year. It means more time cozied up with my son, more family get-togethers, and, of course, presents. haha :)

So Much for Preconceived Notions

I know I said I wanted this to be a blog geared towards helping other parents of disabled kiddos (well, more specifically deaf/hoh kiddos), but I've read an article today about bullying and its got me going. So here I go...

The article was about a 50 year old man who had been bullied throughout his school years.  According to the article, he had told the teachers, and they always said to just stand up for himself, yet they never took action while he was beat up on the playground, used as a target in ball games, and pushed, tripped and harassed in the school hallways.  In fact, according to him, they never even noticed.

I bring this up because my own son just entered preschool, with a classroom size of 16 children, 1 teacher and 1 or 2 aides, depending upon the day.  When I first heard that number, I cringed. But I wanted my son to have socialization, and thought he would learn quite well with the example of his peers, especially considering his speech delays due to hearing loss.

WELL, this whole preschool thing has turned in to a major fiasco for me.  Jace seems to be doing well (he's beginning to count, learning his colors, and talking a lot more), but I have serious doubts about the attentiveness of the teacher based on some serious and not so serious occurrences since the first day my son began preschool.

First impressions are almost always telling... So here's my first encounter with Jace's teacher.  She walks in the door, a middle-aged woman with died-Auburn hair, 3 or 4 tattoos showing on her arms, even with the short sleeved shirt she's wearing.  Her mannerisms are laid back, and I get the impression that she is a little hard, rough around the edged, like maybe life hasn't been all that easy on her.  This is the encounter when I was informed that she would have 16 students in her classroom.  Ugh.

Jace's first day home, I open his backpack and there sits a packet of papers.  Jace's first preschool drawing, a parent handbook, and a form to sign and send back to school.  I signed the paper and sent it back the next day. That paper spent over a week sitting in Jace's backpack unnoticed by the teacher.  I wouldn't have thought too much of it, except that more drawings and letters kept coming home, but the paper wasn't being taken out.  Then, a week later, a sippy cup appeared in his bag with his name written on the bottom.  I left it in there with a note to the teacher telling her that it wasn't his sippy.  2 days later, Jace comes home in a shirt from school, with the sippy still sitting in his backpack along with a note requesting that I send a backup set of clothing.  I think at this point it is safe to say I was boiling.  Had that teacher taken a moment to look at Jace's pack, she would have noticed that the front compartment was bulging due to the spare clothes I had packed in there.  Top it all off with a piece of laffy taffy candy in my not-quite-3 year old's backpack, and you've got a hornet for a momma!

I like to think of myself as a rational person.  I understand that there just isn't funding for a 5:1 ratio in the public school classrooms.  I understand that maybe, just maybe, teachers have a full plate and the backpack is the very last thing on their mind.  So, after writing a nasty gram detailing her every flaw, I sent a much nicer, more concise email to Teacher of the Year.  That day, she responded (apparently her attention isn't so divided as not to be able to check emails) asking that I send her an email when I place things in his bag so she knows to look, apologizing for the candy and thanking me for letting her know where his clothes are.

I felt so much better.  Better because I didn't send her a nasty gram; better because she responded immediately and took my concerns seriously; better because I was sure this wouldn't continue to happen.

Boy was I wrong.  The very next week, this week, I sent back the borrowed shirt (now clean, of course) with the sippy cup rolled inside it.  I even pinned a note to the shirt that read "Please Return to Preschool."  I sent his teacher an email letting her know that the two items were in his bag for her and sent my son on his way. That afternoon, I open his pack and there's the shirt, with the note pinned on it, but no sippy cup.  The next morning, I pinned the shirt (with the note, of course) to the outside of his pack, which seemed to do the trick.  At least for that day.

Day 3 of week 3 of Preschool teacher from hell opens with an empty pack, and a leery mommy.  Son is off to school, mommy is working on her homework, and 4pm rolls around all too quickly for everyone involved.  OK, maybe just for Mommy.  My son gets home, we hug, we get milk and sit down to watch some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  I open up Jace's pack to see what artwork he has for me, and there sits another sippy cup.  This mommy is about to split her seems. I mean really, how difficult is your job?! And if it is SO difficult that you can't keep track of who brought in what, then maybe you need more teachers in the classroom, or a different teacher all together.

This whole dramatic story I've told has a point beyond my need to vent.  There is a serious problem in our school system.  It isn't a lack of education.  I'm quite happy that my son, who can't even speak clearly yet, is beginning to sound out numbers and colors and has taken a more serious interest in books and imaginative play.  No, it's a serious lack of attentiveness on the part of the teachers.  I'm not sure if there are just too many children to keep track of, or if they live under the umbrella of "everything will be fine" thinkers, who piss me off anyway.  I don't approve of a lackadaisical approach to teaching, or parenting for that matter.  I don't approve of allowing kids to be bullied in class, on the playground or in the halls.  I don't believe that just because we are busy, we should be permitted to be inattentive.

I DO believe that we only get one chance, one opportunity, to be the best teacher, parent, caregiver, moral compass, and confidant to each and every child out there. If we are stretched too thin by the number of children in our care, then we need to ask for help.  It is not acceptable to say "nobody can be the best."   We must always strive to be our best, and we will not fail if we try our hardest and pay attention to all of the little clues along the way.

Now, to be the best for my own son, I need to get off here so that we can play imaginary trains and put his favorite bunny down for a nap :) Until next time...
mom2jace

Welcome

I'm not a blogger. I never really understood blogging. Is this a way of writing your own book? An online diary for all to read? A slow-paced twitter account?

What I do know is that I have a lot to say - usually about nothing, sometimes about something, but always, always a lot to say.  So here we go, delving into the world of Blog.  I suppose I do have some preconceived notions for what this blog will be, but I really want to let it unfold and see if you can figure it out.  Subtlety isn't really my forte, so it shouldn't be too hard, but I'll let you try just for my pleasure.

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I won't throw you into my personal life without a life vest.  That would hardly be fair; I've only just met you. I can tell you that it isn't typical, and in that respect is about as typical as any life out there.  I have a 3 year old who was born deaf in one ear and lost the other ear by a year old.  God, was he a fussy baby... I remember asking his dad if we could send him back (on more than one occasion!) during the first 5 months. "This baby is malfunctioning; he's fundamentally flawed and we need a replacement FAST!" I would say.  But that didn't happen. Damn uterus has a no returns policy.  Must look into that.

So now I have a high needs, deaf 1yr old and to top it off, his father and I can't seem to make a real go of it. Turns out that after 8 years of being off and on, the off was a better choice than the on.  C'est la vie.  Like I said, I'll take it slow on the personal life.

I'm not sure how many people out there have been broke, single and had a 'disabled' child. I have, but maybe nobody really has an interest in what this combination of circumstances brings with it.  For those who do, boy do I have a story for you.  For those who don't, there's a nice blog about stamp collecting under "hobbies."

But thats enough for now. Next time, we'll talk about infant screenings and heartbreaking news.  I promise not to be a downer.   My real hope is to help someone else maneuver the "system" and deal with the guaranteed grief every parent of a disabled child deals with for even the briefest of times following diagnosis.

See, I told you subtlety isn't my style.

All the best ~ mom2jace