unloading

There are some hard things that I have been dealing with about Kevin that probably started before he was even two years old. It was interesting because I would tell people about things that he did and they would say, "Oh, yeah, that's just boys. They're really active." But that never sat right with me. It was more than just that he's a boy, but it's been hard to put my finger on what exactly it is. I hoped that over time he would grow out of it, but in many ways it's stayed the same or gotten harder.

A couple of years ago there was a boy in the ward who, I learned, had Sensory Processing Disorder, and I ended up asking his mom to tell me about it. It was a really helpful conversation, and ever since then I've suspected that Kevin is also dealing with sensory processing issues. My friend recommended an occupational therapist, but I kept procrastinating making the call, thinking that he might grow out of it or that I could deal with it myself.

Now that he's started school I've become even more aware and concerned about some of his behaviors. He's getting a little better now, but for the first month he had a hard time getting along with peers on the playground and on the bus, and after getting a couple of notes and a phone call from the school I got really worried and decided we really should at least get him evaluated by an occupational therapist. I was ready to get some help and some answers, because I don't understand what's going on. The interesting thing was that after I made the phone call, Kevin came up to me and started crying and asked me what I had been talking about on the phone. I realized that he's aware that he's struggling with some things and it bothers him, even though he doesn't really have the resources to explain those feelings verbally.

Last Wednesday we had an evaluation with the OT. We talked about the things we are dealing with and discussed some things that we would like to work on with Kevin during therapy. It was reassuring to realize that it's not just my imagination--there really is something going on. I told her that he is constantly running away from me, explained what we go through every time I take him to a store, and explained what we have to deal with every time I have to bring him back in from playing outside, and I could tell from her response that this is not just Kevin being a normal active boy. So once we get things approved by insurance we will probably start to do some occupational therapy and get an idea of what's going on with his body and what helps him. The OT agreed that he is struggling with some sensory processing--definitely the tactile sense,  and probably the auditory and the proprioceptive sense.

Here are some of the behaviors we have been dealing with:

He runs away from me. Usually at playgrounds it's a constant battle to make him stay at the playground where I can see him. We've been bolting the apartment door since he could reach it because he would run out in the hall all the time. Even now he will get a chair and run out in the hall once or twice a day, and often more on the weekends. He doesn't stay in the bounds I set or pay attention when I tell him to come back.

He almost always throws a tantrum when we have to leave fun places like the park or friends' houses. Most of the time I have to drag him physically, and he will hit my hands to try to get me to let go of him. This is despite the fact that he actually has a hard time being in groups of people for long periods of time, which is often why we're leaving the park in the first place.

Going to stores or other places with crowds is always a huge ordeal with him. Just getting him to the car takes forever because he gets distracted by so many things, and then once we're at the store he has to touch EVERYTHING. He just can't help himself. It makes shopping trips take forever.

When his need for touch is out of balance, he goes nuts. He'll make loud and distracting noises, bounce in his seat, get aggressive, dump out tons of toys, and more. We've figured out that most of the time when it gets like that, the best way to calm him down is to squeeze him really hard. It usually makes him grin and he'll beg you to squeeze him harder and harder. After a lot of squeezing his behavior will get a little better. But sometimes, he can barely stand to be touched at all. One time he got off the bus very angrily, and when I tried to gently hold him in place to ask him what was going on, he couldn't stand for me to do that and told me I was breaking his bones.

He has a hard time gauging his own strength. He'll hug us so tight or bump into us so hard that it hurts without realizing he was hurting us. He used to hug the baby so hard that she would start crying.

He has a hard time following directions and answering questions directly. He gets distracted.

There isn't really any official diagnosis at this point. I don't think that's even necessarily the goal. I guess the closest thing is Sensory Processing Disorder. One of the most frustrating things over the past few years is feeling the judgment by some parents who don't get it. There have been babysitters or primary teachers who would try to curb the behavior by being really strict because they didn't understand that he can't help it (which caused a lot of stress for Kevin). The worst are the judgmental looks from strangers who see a kid who looks like a second grader (have I ever mentioned Kevin is really tall?) acting up and seem to think that it's a parenting problem. That hurts. I really, really appreciate the moms who have been supportive and nonjudgmental.

I am hopeful that OT will help us understand better what Kevin is dealing with and how to help him. This is really unfamiliar ground for me. What I do know is that Kevin is God's son and that he came to our family for a reason. We have the spiritual resources to help him grow and develop. Other people may be ignorant and misunderstand him, but I will never, never give up on him, and neither will Heavenly Father.

on humor

“I want to begin, strangely, with humor as an attribute of saintliness. I suggest that if you cannot laugh at yourself, and your foibles, and your small errors, you lose your dignity. The person who takes himself so seriously that he cannot smile or laugh at his own defects is, in the language of our time, a stuffed shirt. Humor, therefore, that is not ridiculing others, but good-willed about acknowledging one’s weaknesses, is an essential--I suggest--to spiritual life.”

--Truman G. Madsen, The Life and Teachings of the Prophet Joseph—Joseph Smith and the Saintly Life

A few weeks ago, I was at the playground with several of my mom friends, and the subject of showering came up. Everyone was joking and laughing about how infrequently they are able to shower and how much time they spend in their pajamas. While I could certainly relate, I was honestly a little uncomfortable about the fact that we could talk about this for at least fifteen minutes.

The memory of that day came back to me last night when I was listening to Truman G. Madsen's CDs in the car and he made this comment about humor. I realized that it's better to good-naturedly laugh at yourself over your small defects than to get depressed over every little thing you do wrong. If you can keep your morale up it's much easier to get yourself to keep trying. And I think this applies not just to our weaknesses and small errors, but also when things go wrong. When the dinner's burning and the toddler just had an accident and while you're taking care of all that another kid drew in marker all over his face and chest, you can cry or lose your temper, or you can choose to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. It's still hard, but it seems to me like it would be a little easier to handle it all if you can laugh about it, which reminds me of what Marjorie Pay Hinckley said: “The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”

I think that's why moms laugh about stuff like how hard it is to get a shower. It's a way of staying positive even though we're often frazzled and frustrated. Maybe it's a little awkward sometimes, but it's better than having a pity party and feeling like a victim.

Late August/September/Early October pictures

This was at the beginning of September when Ann Marie was almost ready to roll over all the way. Now she does it all the time.

One day Ryan found the very hungry caterpillar hanging out on our bedroom floor. It was pretty awesome.

The sister missionaries taught us about wearing the armor of God.

Heidi says this is her favorite book.

Here are the kids hanging out while we watched General Conference.

Kevinisms

Kevin is saying the funniest things lately. I'm trying to write them all down, but a lot of them are slipping through the cracks of my memory before I get a chance.

One day we were in the car, and out of the blue Kevin reached over, shoved his thumb in Heidi's mouth, pulled it out, and put it back into his own mouth. I asked him why in the world he had done that, and he replied, "Heidi just stole my germs from me, and I wanted them back, so I put my thumb in her mouth and squished the germs back onto my thumb and put them back in my mouth."

"I have a ear confection. Actually, I don't have a ear confection, I actually just have a lot of wax."

(At the library) "Can we go to the children's infection (i.e. section) now?"

He got his hands on a little piece of sidewalk chalk and wrote all over one side of the van while I was buckling the girls in the car. When I got to him he was just finishing writing his name on the hood.

stuff I feel like writing about

I am still slowly making progress with Couch to 5K. On Wednesday I thought I would be able to move on to the week 3 program next week, but yesterday was really hard and now I'm thinking I'll be repeating the week 2 program for the third time. If I push myself too hard my calves get too sore and then I can't do anything, let alone exercise. I wish I could get better a little faster, but at least I'm doing something.

For some reason my body thinks it's a good idea to wake up at 4:00 in the morning and spend an hour or so worrying about things--some realistic, some less so. Then I have to get up early to get Kevin ready for school.  The last couple of days have been a little better, so hopefully I can break the pattern, because I'm awfully tired.

Overall I feel happy about Kevin being in school. He is really learning a lot. It's true that kindergarten is the new first grade, at least when it comes to reading and writing. By the end of the year all of the kids are supposed to be able to sound out words and know several sight words (and spell them), and they are supposed to be able to write about a book after they have read it. Some of their methods seem a little weird, but mostly it's fine.

The school has a behavior system that is based on the acronym CHOMP (Care for others, Have respect, Offer peer support, Make good choices, and Practice safety). When the kids are caught doing these behaviors they get CHOMP tickets, and when a class has gotten enough tickets they can earn rewards like extra recess, wearing pajamas to school, etc. This is a research-based program and I think it's good for the most part. The one thing that annoys me is that the rules are a little fuzzy sometimes--basically anything that doesn't fit in any one category just gets lumped into Make Good Choices. But they are usually good about understanding that these are just little kids and they're still learning the rules. It's harder for kids like Kevin who don't really fit the cookie cutter kid mold because some of those behaviors don't come as naturally to him as they do to most of the kids. Just as an example, Kevin is a very curious person. He's always observing the things around him, and if he sees something interesting he wants to touch it and figure out how it works. That's certainly a positive characteristic, but hand-in-hand with that characteristic is a tendency to get up and wander if he sees something interesting. Sometimes it feels like they miss the positives because they're so focused on making sure he's sitting down. I understand that they need to do that because if they don't tell all the kids to sit down then things will go crazy (and sitting down at appropriate times is a skill he's going to need to figure out), but I worry that they'll see the kid who won't sit down and miss that he's also the kid who's great at seeing how things work. Make sense? I don't worry too hard about it because we do plenty at home to encourage his talents and he's a confident person, but it does still worry and frustrate me.

Speaking of how things work, we've discovered the How It's Made videos on youtube, and there are a lot of cool ones. I've been letting Kevin watch them as a treat sometimes, and the nice thing is that I don't have to feel very guilty about letting him watch videos because he really learns a lot from them. We've enjoyed the ones about sugar, noodles, erasers, and chocolates, just to name a few.

I feel like Heidi is working on finding herself. She copies a lot of the things that Kevin does or says. She is really talkative at home lately. Sometimes I just have to go in our room for a couple of minutes to get a break because she chatters so much. It's cute, but after a while it can kind of wear on you. In other places she is more shy. She's obsessed with nonsense words. A lot of the time she'll just call things a "da-nya-nya" or a "gonch" or whatever else she feels like calling it and then expect you to give it to her.

We've signed the kids up for soccer. Kevin is doing a great job participating and following directions. It's really cute. Heidi is pretty shy and has to have some time before she's willing to play. Last time it took Ryan about 25 minutes to even coax her to kick the ball, and then finally in the last 10 minutes she started standing in the vicinity of her team.

Ann Marie is getting more social and more capable of grabbing things and putting them in her mouth. There was one evening this week when she was really upset during dinner, and finally I went and got her a baby spoon to play with and she was delighted. It was like she just wanted to have an eating utensil like everyone else. She can grab things and put them in her mouth.

We had well-child checkups for Heidi and Ann Marie this week. Heidi is 29 pounds and 37 inches tall, and Ann Marie is 14 pounds and 24 inches long. As I recall, they're both around the 25th percentile for height and weight. The nice thing about having three kids is that the doctor assumes that I know what I'm doing and isn't as pushy about some things. It was a rough day for Heidi. She got a flu shot and thought it was horrible, and then on top of that we found out she has an ear infection, so she also had to start taking yucky amoxicillin twice a day, which she also thinks is horrible.

Meet My Great-Grandmas

I also have been blessed to know two of my great-grandmothers, so I thought I would write down a few memories that I have of them.

Grandma Taylor

Adelaide Collings Taylor was my Grandma Lois's mother. Here are some of my memories of her:

When we visited her in Wendell, Idaho, she had a bag with feather dusters and matchbox cars that we could play with. She had two large braided rugs on her floor that we used to drive the cars on like roads. It was fun to examine all the fabric that had been used to make the rugs. I remember a couple of cow clocks and a large old black stove. She had a black upright piano that was pretty out-of-tune. One time my mom and my siblings and I were visiting at the same time as Grandma Lois, and we sang hymns while my mom played the piano. It was a really nice experience and I remember Grandma Taylor really enjoyed it.

Grandma Taylor always encouraged us to be good to our mother and help her.

She always wore an apron, but they weren't like the aprons most people think of. They were kind of like a short sleeveless dress that buttoned down the front and had two pockets in the front. Now that I'm a mom and do most of the cooking I've often wished I had an apron or two like that because they have a lot better coverage and you wouldn't have to deal with the apron strings. Usually when I think of her I remember her sitting in the rocking chair wearing one of those aprons.

My mom's family lived in Wendell for several years, so there was a connection between my Grammy and Grandma Taylor. Apparently Grandma Taylor was my mom's brother Jay's Sunday School teacher for a few years, and she really loved my Uncle Jay. This isn't how my parents met, by the way--they met at an institute dance at the College of Southern Idaho.

My mom said that Grandma Taylor really welcomed her into the family when she married my dad, and she also helped Mom start to build a year's supply.

4-H was really important to her. I seem to recall Grandma Lois telling a story about how she ran back into a burning house to rescue all of the 4-H ribbons.

Grandma Velma

I remember that I really loved Grandma Velma. When she came to visit I always enjoyed talking to her, and she was a good listener.

One of my earliest memories is of going to her house in Kimberly and eating applesauce cake. Applesauce cake is basically sugar cookies stacked on top of each other with applesauce spread in between them, and it's best if you freeze it for about six months before eating it.

I remember she had an organ and a grand piano (which Grandma and Grandpa Glenn have now). She had a little bird that I always liked to look at. Her clothesline was the kind that spins, and I always thought it was pretty cool. I also remember an apple tree.

I think I was about eight years old when she died. The last time I saw her, she was at my grandparents' house and was pretty sick. I was really surprised because she didn't even smile at me, which was so out of character for her. I cried at her funeral because I was very sad. I also felt the Holy Ghost very strongly there and knew that someday she would be resurrected and I would see her again.

Ruby Snow

I never met Ruby Snow, but she did a lot of family history, so I've gotten to know her through the life histories she wrote of herself and many of her ancestors. She is my Grammy's mother. I'm really impressed by her. She and her first husband (Jesse Warren) moved to Idaho in the middle of nowhere and built their farm up from nothing. They pretty much worked all of the time. I have no idea how they did so much. Then Jesse died of appendicitis and she and her children moved back to her hometown of Mapleton. Later she married my great-grandfather, Hans Peter Jensen, and had more children. She loved her callings in church, sewing, and her family.

Meet My Grandmas

Family Search sent out an email recrently challenging people to write down some things about their grandmothers, and since I have two wonderful grandmothers who have greatly influenced my life, I am more than happy to accept the challenge.

Grandma Lois

My Grandma Lois taught me how to sew. I spent a significant portion of my summers each year at her house doing my 4-H sewing projects, and those are some of my favorite memories of her. When I was working on something difficult and got frustrated, she would always tell me, "Try not to get discouraged." She never got upset at me when I made mistakes. She always stayed calm. One time when I was using a serger to sew a skirt, I caught a piece of the skirt under the blade and it cut the middle of the fabric. I was pretty upset that I had ruined the skirt, but she calmly assessed the damage and helped me come up with a way to salvage it. Another time, I tried winding a new bobbin by myself, but I forgot to wind the thread around the knob at the other side of the sewing machine. Without the tension the thread got wound around the bobbin in a nasty tangled mess. I thought she would be so mad because I had let it wind up for quite a while before realizing what I had done, but she just said, "It's okay, thread is cheap," and then showed me how to do it the right way. I don't think I've ever seen her get angry. She is a very patient person.

My grandma has always loved to be a mentor. She led a 4-H club for many, many years, and as part of that she was able to get to know many girls and encourage them to become more than they thought they could be. She still stays in contact with many of the girls who were in her club and she loves it when she finds out about their achievements. I've mentioned this before on my blog, but she stuck by me during some of the hardest years of my life and made it clear that she would not let me fail.

I always thought that Grandma was a very classy and well-bred person. She has always faithfully and lovingly tended to her garden. I think at one point someone said she had 100 rose bushes in Kimberly. You can tell if she's visiting because she wears this lovely perfume that smells like flowers and doesn't make you feel like you're suffocating if you get a whiff of it.

I enjoyed spending the night at Grandma's house in Kimberly. She had the best bathtub ever. It was huge and square, and when you were done taking a bath the towels were right there in the cupboard and they were nice and big and soft. The bathroom mirror was also fun because it had three sections with hinges and if you pulled the side sections to just the right spot then you could see the mirror reflect itself forever. There was a pole in the basement living room that we climbed a lot. Outside there was a well house that we would play on for hours, and there was a really awesome bush that had a little alcove in it that was great for imaginative play. I remember spending a lot of time mixing witches' brews and pretend soups in a plastic Halloween pumpkin there.

Here is some of the best advice I have received from Grandma (this was after Kevin cut Heidi's hair): "May I offer some unasked for advice? It has been my experience that it is not possible to reason with children before they reach the age of accountability. It is better to just keep the scissors or other offending objects out of reach. For the most part children want to please their parents, so when they do something wrong it is not their objective to make the parent unhappy. They are just curious and don't think about the consequences of their actions . . . I had learned that anger is never productive and focusing on making things better was helpful. Derald and I learned to just laugh about a spilled glass of milk and clean up the mess. Getting angry just makes it worse. Please all of you enjoy and treasure the time you have with your little ones."

Grammy Jenna

I think my siblings and I are the only grandchildren who call her Grammy. She heard about another grandmother whose grandchildren called her Grammy and decided that she wanted to be Grammy Jenna. For a few years she volunteered at the elementary school and the kids there called her Grammy Jenna too.

Grammy loved her family. I vividly remember a time when we went to visit her and we found her talking on the phone, obviously very upset. When she hung up the phone she burst into tears and said, "Oh, Gaylene, it's Rex. It's his heart." (Rex is my Aunt Colleen's husband, so my mom's brother-in-law.) I was startled to see by the look on her face how dearly she loved him. My mom said that when Uncle Ricky was killed in a motorcycle accident she packed up her bags and drove to Utah in the middle of the night to be with Aunt Marsha. I remember she loved hugging and snuggling my younger siblings, and she would sneak them tastes of ice cream even when they were just a few months old.
I can still remember Grammy's laugh. It was so joyful and genuine. We used to love to tickle her toes to get her to laugh.

Instead of saying, "Excuse me," if she wanted to get past you, Grammy would say, "Toot, toot!" She also would say, "It's time to put on your shoes and stockings." When we got to her house she would smile and exclaim, "Well who are you?"

Grammy worked hard her entire life. She went to school to become a nurse so they could make ends meet, and she worked nights a lot of the time.

We always loved sleepovers at Grammy's house, and we would fight over who got to sleep in her bed with her. I remember watching movies and getting pizza and lemonade from Maxie's Pizza.

We always watched General Conference at Grammy's house on Sundays, and we would have a nice dinner in between the sessions. I know there was always green bean casserole, and for dessert we would eat razzleberry pie.

Once when I was little, Grammy was babysitting Melissa and me while my parents were somewhere. She had some plaster of paris and she wanted to put our handprints and the date in it and give them to my parents. I was not going to put my hand in that nasty white stuff, and she had to chase me pretty hard before she eventually managed to catch me and get my handprint.

Grammy was very talented with crocheting. She crocheted the amazing dress that my sisters and I were blessed in as babies, and Heidi and Ann Marie were blessed in the dress too.

The day my Grammy died, I was sitting in a class when I noticed that I had an empty feeling. After school, Grandma Lois was the one who gave me a hug and tenderly told me that Grammy had died. It wasn't really a surprise because she had been sick, but it was still very hard because we had spent a lot of time with her my entire life. I think it was really hard for my mom because she had been coming to Grammy's house on at least a daily basis to take care of her and she missed serving her and being with her.